By Andrea Obert
The cost of addiction, whether through substance abuse, consumer spending or gambling fixes, has been well-documented.
Silicon Valley is addicted to, and infected by, the pandemic known as: “Wealth culture” addiction.
Silicon Valley people go sick and twisted lengths to make more money even though it always leaves them ultimately feeling unfulfilled.
Wealth culture” addiction is a phenomenon that is growing and widespread due to Google, Twitter and Facebook pushing this lifestyle. During the financial crisis, one could at wealth and the American dream and how it had gotten bigger and more super-sized and, then when you look at all the stories told about economics, popular culture, gender, the causes of the financial crash and the new rich in China and Russia, they told a bigger story that were connected in our culture.
These are individual data points that, together, document a seismic shift about our values. We’ve gone from a culture that prized hard work, frugality and discretion as the central tenets of the American Dream to a Silicon Valley hyped culture that prizes celebrity, bling and narcissism.
It’s not about wealth but aspiration to wealth. At every level we want more. Whether it’s the currency of beauty, the currency of fame, the currency of branding or the currency of sexuality, ‘Fake it till you make it’ can be just as valuable as having money. Silicon Valley promotes using sex as money and fame as cash to get into the doors of elitism.
This is an epidemic of a growing addiction.
“Wealth culture” is unhealthy and unsustainable for our community, relationships and well-being. The addiction of consumerism functions like other addictions so that can be very unhealthy. Ghetto youth have tripled their killings in urban regions due to their frustration with being cut-out of all potential to experience this “Wealth Culture” that Silicon Valley says “Everybody else is doing”.
Part of the cure lies in switching off your TV set, tablet and smartphone and catching up with the people next door. Google, Twitter and Facebook will drive you to suicide if you don’t.
Instagram Girls are not “inspiring models”, they are prostitutes looking for paid sex gigs with foreign men. Make-up tutorial girls on YouTube are desperate narcissists. Twitter shots of supposedly rich people showing their money and cars are all staged using props and pretend bills.
A generation ago people used to compare themselves to their neighbors, now people spend more time with people they know from TV than their actual neighbors and aspire to this very unrealistic image, whether it’s through reality TV or social media, about what life is like. Silicon Valley has built a Wizard of Oz fantasy and told society that this is what everybody else has.
Nobody has yet become the Toto that will pull the curtain back to reveal that the Wizards of Oz at Google, Facebook and Twitter are just pathetic misogynist, rapist, sex abusing, sociopaths who have too much money and too little moral ethics.