Everyone is SICK of Entitled Influencers | Catherine Ebs & Mikayla Nogueria Meltdown

[00:00:00]These are some of the most outofouch videos I have seen come out of the rich influencer sphere recently. And that is saying a lot because that is already a spectacularly competitive category. So we are in this teeny tiny little town in the mountains and we're going to try and hopefully get all of our groceries for the next 4 days. This is a simulation.

[00:00:18]Their fruit does not look good. Like all their fruit looks bad. I just looked at Lauren. She's like, I'm stressed out, guys. This is not This is not good. I'm like low key, we should just order out cuz this is crazy. I don't think I could have ever gotten Lauren drunk or high enough to be in this place right now.

[00:00:34]>> Much as I would love to survive on an all pickle diet.

[00:00:38]>> So, I do have to stop there because look at the size of this fridge. It's twice the size of her.

[00:00:45]>> We need groceries.

[00:00:46]>> And I have a special guest.

[00:00:50]We're at the very iconic Macket Basket.

[00:00:56]Spoiler alert, and I'll save you the trouble of having to watch all of this.

[00:00:58]She buys enough food to restock every single Costco in the Northern Hemisphere. Apparently, grocery shopping is now a class-based psychological experiment. On one side, we have this creator, Katherine Ebs, who is walking into a completely normal grocery store and reacting like she's been dropped into District 12 of The Hunger Games.

[00:01:16]>> This is absolutely insane. Lauren and I literally just keep saying we're like we're [ __ ] mad at you.

[00:01:23]>> I feel like I'm in a simulation right now.

[00:01:25]>> On the other, we have Michaela Nguaria, I think, stalking her fridge so aggressively that lettuce has now become a status symbol.

[00:01:39]One influencer is horrified by the grocery store most people use every single day, while the other one has managed to make buying yogurt look like generational wealth. And the thing is, these are two sides of the exact same issue. For Catherine, apparently the normal life of lowly peasants, aka us regular people, is disgusting. And everyone's everyday life is so far beneath her, she would apparently need drugs just to cope with a 10-minute shop. I don't think I could have ever gotten Lauren drunk or high enough to be in this place right now.

[00:02:08]>> You could not get them drunk or high enough to enter a normal supermarket.

[00:02:11]Lady, it is a grocery store. Nobody is asking you to crawl through a sewer and hunt your own dinner with a sort of toothbrush. But for Michaela, the kind of financial freedom around food that millions of people in her own country will never achieve in their entire lives is just another content opportunity.

[00:02:27]>> We need groceries because there is literally nothing in my fridge.

[00:02:35]Backet basket here we come.

[00:02:50]And this is all just for her and her boyfriend. Like, you know, most of this is going to go off and just be thrown out. And both videos are being watched by people who check their banking app before buying chicken. That's the part that these kinds of influencers never seem to understand. The people funding these lifestyles are the exact people being mocked and alienated and flexed on. Your followers shop in the store that you're laughing at. Your followers have to put items back on the shelf while you turn a fully stocked fridge into like a cinematic reveal. Your followers made you rich and now you're looking at their lives like it's beneath you. I do think that if you've never had to turn your phone brightness down before checking your bank balance in public, you should be banned by the government from making any of these kinds of videos. Like thising video with Michaela. She's got enough food in there to survive three winters and a regime change while millions of people are standing at the checkout deciding whether or not a small bag of cheese is financially responsible. We've all been there. Not these two, though. And that's what makes these videos so enraging.

[00:03:47]They both might take different forms, but they expose the exact same problem.

[00:03:51]This brand of influencers have become so detached from ordinary life that even something as simple as groceries have now become either like a horrifying encounter with the general public or an extravagant display of abundance and wealth. Both are weird.

[00:04:08]This is crazy. Butter. I don't see any normal eggs. Oh, >> those are ours simply because those are >> right.

[00:04:21]How much do you hate me right now?

[00:04:22]>> I mean, not a lot.

[00:04:26]>> I feel like I'm in a simulation right now.

[00:04:28]>> No, Catherine, you are not in a simulation. You are in a grocery store with fluorescent lighting. The only glitch in the matrix is that 1.7 million people apparently follow someone who can be psychologically defeated by a regular ass shopping trolley.

[00:04:43]>> I move this cart so Holy Schnikes.

[00:04:50]You could tell the lady at checkout. Now it started raining. What is happening?

[00:04:54]Literally, what is happening now? It randomly started raining.

[00:05:01]>> Jesus, it was >> what is happening to us?

[00:05:04]>> Jesus, take the >> I literally was like, what is going on right now?

[00:05:08]>> Really terrifying. So, why exactly are people angry at these two specifically right now? Let's look at what actually happened in both of these videos because they are two completely different brands of annoying and tonedeaf. Katherine Es was staying in a small town over the Fourth of July weekend when her Sam's Club order was cancelled. I did have to Google what Sam's Club is. Sorry for being poor. So sorry, Catherine. I know that is deeply offensive to you. It's some membership for who knows. Anyway, her order was canceled. tragic, devastating, a a logistical failure from which I can only hope she eventually recovers emotionally and spiritually.

[00:05:45]Thoughts and prayers. But then this meant that her and her friend had to do something truly unimaginable. I pray for them to this day. They had to physically walk into a normal grocery store in a small town, God forbid, and pick out their own food. Oh my god. Jesus, Mary, and Jo. I don't know how they did it. I don't know. They're in They're inspirational.

[00:06:05]She walks into a shop, takes one look around, and immediately decides that she has entered some kind of rural alternate dimension.

[00:06:14]>> This is so small town vibes. It's not even funny.

[00:06:20]I have a feeling this is not going to be good news. We don't even have a car.

[00:06:27]>> This is a simulation.

[00:06:29]>> Oh [ __ ] Here we go. thing is while she's grabbing that, you do need a melon.

[00:06:40]Just sitting here laughing.

[00:06:47]>> I'm just sitting here laughing.

[00:06:50]>> Their fruit does not look good. Like all their fruit looks bad. I just looked at Lauren. She's like, I'm stressed out.

[00:06:56]I'm mad at Sam.

[00:06:57]>> A simulation of what? A functioning grocery store. There are shopping trolley, fruit, there's bread, several brands of hot dogs, none of which are good enough for her. You are not being air dropped into a famine zone with 9 minutes to secure the closest protein.

[00:07:12]But she spends the entire video reacting to completely normal food like she has been forced to scavenge through a garbage bin behind a petrol station. All the fruit apparently looks bad. All the options are terrible. She keeps saying the experience is insane and like she's in a simulation while standing in front of shelves full of the exact same brands sold in every other grocery store. We do need to bring back public shaming. Jesus Christ. And the thing is, I'm sure she uploaded this having no idea that it was going to have this much backlash, this much of a negative response. And that's the point. She is so far removed from all of this, from regular life, that she could not even conceptualize that this might be taken badly when it would be obvious to everyone else. And on that note, a big thank you to all of my upper tier patrons who keep this channel going. If you'd like to become a patron, there's tiers for as low as $3 a month.

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[00:08:18]There's more going up all the time. And you can get up to 20% off my clothing brand, Rift Supply Co., which is where you can get this jumper. Does that sell it for you? It is very comfortable and a bunch of other cool stuff that might interest you. So, if you want 20% off any of that, head to riffsupplyco.com and head to patreon.com/brienworth first to get that 20% off code. And thank you once again to all of my patrons. And this is kind of what the entire industry of influencer overconumption looks like. It's like an endless parade of people who receive free products and free holidays and private experiences and brand deals and special treatment and then act borderline traumatized. The second that the world is not perfectly arranged for and around them. And the thing that I don't get is like the whole basis of the influencer era that gave rise to this brand of person was because they used to be aspirational. It it mostly started out as like a relatable person who got successful and therefore became aspirational. It seemed like something normal people could achieve. And at the time where this got popular around like 2013 to 2016ish was kind of the peak. We did live in an economy where normal people could reasonably believe that they could also achieve that kind of wealth. But now that the economy is worse than it's ever been and the wealth divide is wider than the gap between minimum wage and a granola mom's eran receipt total. Not me having to learn what is because of this. By the way, aspirational has turned into like deeply irritating and finally people are catching on. Audiences are exhausted by creators pretending obscene abundance is normal. We're all exhausted by fake relatability from people who have not checked the price of anything since 2014. And we're definitely exhausted by influencers entering ordinary spaces and acting like they are on like a royal tour of the impoverished colonies. The entire like overconumption influencer industry depends on one very fragile illusion and that is that the person on the screen is still somehow connected to the people watching. You know, sure, maybe they have infinitely more money and a mansion that could house half of their audience and a fridge with its own postcode, but underneath all of that, there's still supposedly one of us. Then Catherine walks into a grocery store where normal people buy food and behaves like she needs an emergency extraction team. And then Michaela's over here filling her fridge with more food than most families could comfortably afford to buy in a month. So, suddenly that illusion starts to disintegrate. But the thing is, I don't think these influencers realize that they rely on that illusion staying intact. and they are single-handedly also destroying it.

[00:10:40]Glass mansions and whatnot. You cannot sell relatability while treating normal people like background extras cast as lowly peasants for your Tik Tok about how scary the grocery store is. And you can't keep flexing basic necessities at people and then act shocked when they finally tell you to read the goddamn room. Meanwhile, Michaela Aguia is also I hope that's how you say it. I should have looked this up. She's also making grocery content, but from the complete opposite end of the wealth divide.

[00:11:06]Michaela regularly films enormous shopping trips and like fridge restocks where she fills a trolley with meat and drinks, fresh produce, like a packaged food, enough condiments to outlive a minor government collapse. There is obviously no visible price checking.

[00:11:19]There's no swapping for the cheaper version of something. There's no like panicked moment at the checkout where she has to remove the grapes because fruit now requires like an approval from a mortgage broker. And these food halls follow the exact same structure as like a beauty or luxury hall, which she also does quite a lot of. She just uploaded a video quite recently where she hired someone to professionally organize her closet because she has that much crap. I didn't even know that was an option.

[00:11:43]Whose job is it is reach people's closet organizer? Where where was that at like the job fair? Over the last 3 days, I had my closet professionally organized and it literally looks like a museum.

[00:11:57]So, let me give you the full tour. Is this absolutely beautiful high heel wall. It's not just colorcoordinated.

[00:12:04]It's organized by style, patterns, textures. Right when you turn the corner, the boot wall. This is unbelievable.

[00:12:13]It literally looks like a store.

[00:12:15]Everything is so perfect. Look at my shoe collection. It's incredible. This was how I found out I have a [ __ ] ton of skirts. I could not be more in love with this wall. We have the iconic sneaker wall. This is absolutely incredible.

[00:12:30]These are all my dress pants, slacks. On the bottom is all of my jean shorts. I love dresses. I love colorful dresses.

[00:12:38]It's organized by color, but also function. So, we have strapless dresses.

[00:12:41]Then, it goes into spaghetti and tank sleeve dresses. This is going to be all of my t-shirts. More t-shirts, graphic t-shirts. This woman has more clothes and shoes than a small department store for just to start with. This is all like a vulgar display of wealth. Absolutely no one needs even a fraction of any of this. This is just consumption for the sake of consumption. And mind you, there's about 35 million people in America living below the poverty line.

[00:13:09]Many of whom are following people like this. And America is notoriously bad at like accurately measuring their actual poverty rate. So, it's likely much higher. And to be fair, there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with buying a lot of groceries or having like a stopped fridge. Obviously, that's not the point here. I wish everyone could have access to that. That's that is the point. The issue is the way abundance itself has kind of become the spectacle.

[00:13:33]>> We have no food in this house. So, let's go get groceries. We need groceries. We need groceries because there is literally nothing in my fridge.

[00:13:44]>> The entire payoff of content like this is looking at, oh my god, how much food she can buy. Look at how full everything is. It was empty and now it's completely full. And again, that is fine that she is blessed enough to do that. That's okay. But there is no way that her and her boyfriend, who I I believe it is just them living in the house, are going to eat all of this. There's just not like and a lot of it is fruit and vegetables. It's going to go off. It's going to be a complete waste. So Catherine's video is basically saying, "Oh my god, I can't believe the peasants live like this and I'm being subjected to this poor people filth." And Michaela's video is basically saying like, "Look how much I can over consume for absolutely no reason." And that's why people are angry. It is not simply because these women have money. People understand that successful influencers are wealthy. Nobody watches Michaela and assumes she is budgeting with supermarket coupons under candle light.

[00:14:31]We know this. The problem is that both videos accidentally or intentionally position the audience's uh like regular everyday life as something inferior. And in the current economic and political climate we live in. It is in really bad taste. It is extremely tonedeaf. A lot of people more than ever are suffering and and struggling to get by. The cost of living is through the roof. Rent is through the roof. Grocery prices are through the roof. Wages haven't moved since the60s. Like uploading this type of [ __ ] right now, especially doesn't hit the same as it did in 2016. That's kind of the point. And in this climate, you are creating and positioning content as if your audience's life is something inferior. And the the comparison itself is the content. Otherwise, who would give a if she was just going on a regular grocery shop like she probably normally does with the same amount and quality of food that everyone has, no one would anyone watch that? no one would watch. The point of the content is the comparison and the excess. That has always been the point. That was the point back in 2016 and peak like insanely rich influencer wealth flexing era. And that's the point now with these people. Again, the difference is it's not 2016 anymore. The social and economic climate is just so different that this is super tonedeaf. Far less people are looking at content like this and are feeling inspired as if it is achievable for them. Now it's just now it's just giving French Revolution. Now it's giving Where are the guillotines?

[00:15:52]You know, with people like Catherine, her followers are shopping in stores exactly like the one that she is openly mocking and acting like it. Oh my god, she's so beneath me. Her audience probably buys those same brands. They pick through the same produce that's not good enough for Catherine. We all deal with crowded aisles and shitty fluorescent lighting and the profound psychological trauma of the shopping carts being outside. And many of Michaela's followers are standing in supermarket aisles checking every single price, getting the calculator app out, choosing what they can leave behind, and wondering how long they can stretch whatever's already sitting in their fridge. So, you've got like one creator treating that reality as a joke, and the other one is flaunting the fact that she's just so far removed from it. She can buy food in quantities that she will never finish just to probably let it rot in the fridge just because, and by the way, this isn't specific to these two creators. This is just two recent examples of it. There is an entire industry centered on this content that regular people who will never be able to afford these lifestyles are watching and supporting and propping up for some reason. Stop that. The second their entire followings decide to just unfollow is the second that these people no longer exist. You know, Catherine looks at normal people's lives and responds with disgust quite frankly. And Michaela looks at a level of financial freedom around food that millions of people would consider genuinely life-changing and turns it into like a little throwaway restock video that's probably taxdeductible as well. And both of them are making their money from the people on the other side of that divide that they're kind of talking down to. I remember a few years ago when people were like postulating that one day fresh fruit and vegetables would become a status symbol and like a show of wealth and it's already happening. Groceries are not neutral content anymore.

[00:17:31]Groceries are content. Let's start there. That is how far we have fallen as a society. A completely full trolley now communicates wealth in the same way that a designer hall does, except somehow the flex is like way darker because we're obviously no longer talking about handbags, which are not a necessity.

[00:17:48]We're talking about food that we all need to survive. Basic that people need to stay alive has become aspirational content. And there was a video on Tik Tok that from a woman who responded to Michaela's video and it was a hard watch to be honest, but I think it really does sum up the entire issue with content like this and influencers like this.

[00:18:07]>> I'm 36 years old and I have never been able to go into the supermarket and just buy everything I wanted and needed and not worry about the price. And I'm saying this because I was scrolling on Tik Tok late last night and I came across a video by Michaela. Now, it was a simple video and normally I don't stick around to watch those videos because I am not really like a makeup artist or into makeup and most of her content tends to be around like makeup or luxury hauls and that's not really my forte. But this video stood out to me because she opened up her fridge. Mind you, a beautiful massive big fridge and it was empty, like damn near empty. And she said she needed to go fill it up.

[00:18:40]So, the whole vlog was her going to the supermarket with her man and just filling up the cart with the things that she needed. Purchased them and then filled up her fridge. And it got me thinking about a time when I was younger and our fridge was empty for a month.

[00:18:51]Like when I tell you it was empty for a month, it was empty for a month because we were poor. Very, very poor growing up. And my mom did not know English, did not know how to read or write. And she worked an underminimum wage job. So putting food on the table was heavily reliant on public assistance. We were on food stamps. And because my mother did not know English, did not know how to read or write. Um, a lot of the paperwork and the renewal forms for food stamps, I used to have to fill them out.

[00:19:13]I remember this one particular month, I guess I hadn't filled out the paperwork properly and there was something that was missing and our food stamps were delayed that month and we did not get our food stamps. And I remember how much we struggled that month and we had to go to food pantries and churches to try to get food. And I thought to myself, out of all the years I've been on this earth, I've never been able for myself, I've never been able to go to a supermarket and fill up my fridge and not have to worry about the price, not have to think about it twice, not have to shift through the shelves to look for bargains, to be able to look at something, buy it, and put it in the cart and not think twice about it. And as I was watching the video, I just saw her put just simple things like simple things like tomatoes and lettuce and meat. And she got steak from the butcher. And like there was no pause.

[00:19:58]There was no hesitation. There was no getting to the counter and looking at the money and not having enough and having to take some things out and having to figure out what's important.

[00:20:04]What can you leave behind? What do you what can you take? What do you actually need? No negotiating. She was just able to buy all the things in her cart. I don't know what it feels like to not have to worry about money, to be able to afford. To be able to just buy it and not think twice about it. I know this is going to sound so simple for some, but I don't want to leave this earth without knowing that feeling. Without knowing that feeling of being able to go into a supermarket, being able to buy whatever I want and not have to worry about the price to be able to fill up my fridge, not just in the beginning of the month because of food stamps, but to be able to refill and replenish my fridge whenever it needs to be refilled and replenished. That is the reality that's sitting on the other side of of Michaela's video and content like Michaela's and Catherine's. For her, this is just another content format. But for someone else, the fantasy is not like the mansions and the cars, the Porsche or whatever, the designer wardrobe that you can pay someone else to organize for you. I'm still hung up on that. The fantasy is simply being able to buy food without mentally calculating every cent like they're trying to diffuse a bomb. That's why the fridge reveal feels like a flex in 2026.

[00:21:05]And that's also why the content works, mind you. Uh the flex isn't just that she like she has the food or she can go and buy the food. The flex is that the price is so irrelevant to her that she can buy it in a quantity she will never be able to finish. Again, I'm assuming she'll just let half of it rot and never notice the money is gone or even probably look at the total that she spent on it. And for tens of millions of people, wasting food is not something they can just do carelessly. It's actually not something they can do at all. It's just financially impossible.

[00:21:32]It's not even an option. And Catherine somehow makes this even more insulting from the opposite direction. Again, this is like this is just two sides of the same coin. Again, she's walking around this like fully perfectly fine, fully stocked grocery store with enough money to buy whatever she wants. And she's loudly complaining that none of it is good enough because it's not from whatever premium granola mom subscription she usually uses. It is so tonedeaf. The fruit is ugly. The options are bad. There's no 100% beef. The store is beneath her. Meanwhile, there are people watching. There are people probably beside her in the store who would be thrilled to leave with that exact trolley of supposedly unacceptable groceries she's treating like evidence of a traumatic event. Mind you, she's complaining that she can't find anything and there's nothing there. Meanwhile, she leaves with everything that she needs.

[00:22:17]What is the point? One video glorifies this endless abundance that most people on Earth can't access, and the other shows contempt for perfectly usable abundance because it's not aesthetic and it's not exclusive. It's not expensive enough. And this level of detachment does not happen overnight. Obviously, big influences like this increasingly live inside environments that are built around them. Huge brands send like tons of products directly to their homes.

[00:22:43]Businesses invite them to private events. Trips are organized for them.

[00:22:47]They've often got assistance and delivery services and staff who remove most everyday inconveniences that we all have to experience. Their friendship circles are often other influences living the exact same way. Restaurants recognize them. shops accommodate them.

[00:23:01]Their homes are designed to look good on camera and they're like, in my opinion, brain deadad audience validates the routine constantly. And all this being said, it is the audiences that allow this to happen. Without the people who are fans of these people, they would not have this lifestyle and therefore they would not have this level of entitlement. But I digress. I'm not going to I'm not trying to pin blame directly on audiences here, but they obviously play a huge part. So with like influencers and people like this, after a while the exceptional treatment that they get stops feeling exceptional and it just starts to feel like a a normal normal way of living and it's not. And then the few times that they're actually exposed to real normal life, it feels like some alien poverty nightmare to them. And this is exactly what seems to be happening with Catherine. Like a crowded or visually imperfect non-esthetic grocery store does not register to her as a minor inconvenience. It feels like something worth making a video about to begin with. And like the environment around her has personally failed to accommodate her standards specifically. And that is so apparently equally horrifying and amusing that she has to make a whole video out of it. That's how detached she is from the reality of normal life. She has to physically look for things herself. It is it is horrific what she goes through, what these people go through. If we could all please say a prayer for the influences. Someone alert the United Nations. This is not okay.

[00:24:21]And again, spinning back to Michaela, she shows the exact same kind of detachment. It's just manifesting in a different way because she has like unlimited choice and abundance. And that no longer registers as a blessed state of being or anything unusual. Buying a monumental amount of food, filling an enormous fridge, and then casually showing it to millions of people who can't do that feels completely normal to her. There is no visible moment that we can see of like, oh, okay, maybe this is like a ridiculous amount of food that will probably go to waste. because in her world it's probably not ridiculous and who cares if it gets wasted for her for her level of wealth that haul is probably like a normal person dropping a dollar on the floor and I don't think that like either of these women wakes up in the morning and thinks how can I mock the pause today the more likely explanation is almost worse and that is they are truly that detached from reality and tonedeaf that it didn't even occur to them that they might come across as entitled and out of touch by posting these things that their lives are so dramatically privileged that they genuinely no longer longer recognize what looks excessive or wasteful or insulting from the outside. That is what being out of touch actually means. It is not simply having money. It is losing the ability to see your own privilege because everyone and everything around you keeps reinforcing it as normal. This type of influencer content is is built around acquiring things, anything. The basic cycle is almost embarrassingly simple. You just you buy it, you film it, you unbox it, you can organize it, flex it, eventually declutter it, end up with so much of it that you have to hire someone to organize it for you. Again, still not over that. And you can make content out of that, too. And then you can buy more. Beauty influencers did this with makeup for years. And then lifestyle creators expanded into like clothes and home wares, kitchen products, storage systems, office setups, whatever. And now apparently enough groceries to provision a research station in Antarctica. And again, the amount of it matters because quantity is what creates the whole spectacle of it.

[00:26:16]Again, no one is going to look at someone being like, "Hey, I got a really normal amount of food today. Here's my two breasts of chicken and a bag of rice." Like, a weekly shop is not interesting. An overflowing trolley is.

[00:26:26]Just like with the beauty influencers, a few new lipsticks that that you might need and use all of is not content. An entire Sephora counter spread across the floor is though. And that kind of thing is why overconumption in this space is not just like a bad personal habit some people have. It is the whole business model. More purchases create more content and more content creates more views which means more money which means that can fund even bigger purchases. And it's just this big spiral. It is designed that way. It is the the perfect little overconumption oraura except for instead of eating its own tail, it is eating the planet and linking everything in the description. So you can cop like a 20% commission. It's fantastic.

[00:27:05]>> We stock $1,000 worth of grocery with us. Ryan starts by steam cleaning the fridge while I rinse the produce. And as always, all the containers I'm using came from Amazon, and they can be found by clicking the link on my profile. And there's no natural end point because saying, "Oh, no thanks. I already own enough crap. I don't actually need this is a death sentence to this kind of format and therefore the income of people like this." So, no, they're not going to stop doing this until people stop watching it. Being at peace and satisfied with what you already have does not produce another haul. And having a bit of self-restraint does not create a dramatic before and after that their audience demands. Encouraging people to use what they already have is terrible for their affiliate links. Why would they encourage anyone to do that?

[00:27:49]Speaking of using what you have, this is so unrelated. Like genuinely has no relevance to this video, but I do want to show you. I've been getting really into basket weaving with things that you can just like forage outside or things that you've got around the house. And I learned you can weave baskets with [ __ ] anything. You can just whatever.

[00:28:05]Including old jeans and some string. Let me show you. Get back. Is we This was jeans.

[00:28:11]This was jeans and now it's a basket that I collected pine needles with so I can make more baskets.

[00:28:18]Why can't we have more of this kind of content? I would personally love it.

[00:28:20]Like making cool [ __ ] out of old [ __ ] I'm not personally going to start making that kind of content, but someone should. Can we get on to that? How sick.

[00:28:27]Anyway, that's what I've been up to.

[00:28:28]Thank you for entertaining my show and tell briefly a little intermission there. But that's like the real point.

[00:28:34]The the kind of uh content that influencers like Katherine and Michaela lean into. And again, they they are far from the only people that do this. That kind of content doesn't just reflect over consumption. It requires it. Their whole business model depends on there always being more to buy and more to show and more to organize and then more toing pay someone else to organize and then eventually more to throw away so they can buy more. There is also a gendered element to this conversation that is worth acknowledging because female influences get absolutely annihilated for overconumption in a way that male influences often do not. And a lot of criticism that women like these two receive is obviously valid. If you own enough makeup to supply a regional mecca for 6 years, people are going to question it and they're allowed to. But men regularly engage in the exact same behavior and somehow it like it gets rebranded as simply being ambitious or just grinding and and attaining success.

[00:29:27]A woman owns a bunch of makeup and she's wasteful and she's vapid and she's addicted to shopping and and mind you those things might be true, but a man owns an entire room full of sneakers and watches and gaming equipment or whiskey and suddenly he's just an esteemed and passionate collector. A woman buys 10 handbags she doesn't need and and that's a problem. But a man buys 10 sneakers he doesn't need and he's suddenly a legend.

[00:29:49]How does that work? A female lifestyle creator posts a clothing haul and all of the comments are asking how one human could possibly need that much. And again, that is justified. But a male creator fills a mansion full of designer clothes and expensive technology and enough LED lighting to interfere with a local airport and everyone is worshiping him for it. The waste can be identical and sometimes the male version costs dramatically more, takes up more space, serves absolutely no purpose, and is significantly worse for the environment.

[00:30:16]But culturally, male consumption is often interpreted as evidence that he's successful and that he's made it. Female consumption is treated like evidence that she's lost control and she's selfish and wasteful. Even the language changes. Women shop, but men collect.

[00:30:30]They're both just shopping. They're both They're both just shopping. Women are just hoarding, whereas men are curating.

[00:30:36]Women have too much stuff, but men, they're building their empire. This is just the exact same run-of-the-mill misogyny and sexism that seeps into just about every single facet of life, even when the underlying behavior is exactly the same, which is buying far more than one person could ever realistically hope to use. Because ownership itself has become part of their identity and content. And that does not mean that every criticism of people like Michaela and Catherine is inherently misogynistic. Obviously, her content is very deliberately built around excess and abundance and purchasing, and it's completely fair to discuss that a fridge full of food that she is very unlikely to finish doesn't suddenly become sustainable just because sexism exists.

[00:31:14]But the standard does need to be consistent. If we are concerned about female influencers filling entire rooms with makeup, then we should be equally concerned about male creators filling warehouses with the ugliest sneakers that you've ever seen in your life and 6 billion supplements that they don't use or energy drinks, cars, guns, whatever other stupid [ __ ] people are hoarding.

[00:31:33]It's all the same. It it is all asinine.

[00:31:36]If the problem is flaunting wealth during a cost of living crisis, it does not suddenly become harmless because the flex has four wheels and a podcast microphone. And male influencers are not merely like given more permission to overconume. For many of them, excess is again the entire appeal. Their audiences are seeking this out specifically and they're actively encouraged to admire the fact that they can purchase dumb things that ordinary people can't afford. The the spending is not treated like an embarrassing lack of restraint.

[00:32:03]It is treated as proof that they won capitalism. So yes, there is a legitimate criticism to make of all over consumption content, particularly in lifestyle and and beauty spaces. But there is also a very obvious double standard in who gets called wasteful and who gets congratulated for flexing. The answer is not to stop criticizing entitled women. It is to stop pretending that the male version is somehow more meaningful just because the shelves contain watches instead of jewelry. And all of this is why people are developing such intense influencer fatigue.

[00:32:35]Audiences are not suddenly furious that influencers are successful. That's not what's happening. Despite all of the claims from every bootlicker in the comments, every time I even touch on any of these topics, there is always a legion of regular everyday people jumping into the comments to defend rich people and billionaires from any kind of criticism. I'll see you guys down there.

[00:32:55]But wealth and access and aspiration have always been part of the appeal. And I do think that's part of the reason why people are so like so aggressively defending billionaires or celebrities or just really rich people because because they on some level must think that they will one day be there and therefore they're taking it as a criticism against their future selves. I don't know what the psychology is. Delusion and a lack of class consciousness, I think. But people have always watched like mansion tours and designer halls and luxury holidays for years without acting like every expensive purchase was a personal attack. The difference now is that a lot of creators no longer just have more than their audience. They seem openly detached from them, as we've seen in this video. And they also seem to actively look down on the people who got them there. Catherine, for example, looks at the completely ordinary and regular environment that her audience lives in and sees something that is embarrassing and dirty and beneath her.

[00:33:45]And that kind of imbalance you you expect from celebrities but from influencers who are supposed to be like more on your level, more relatable or whatever they're trying to frame it as.

[00:33:54]That imbalance becomes a lot harder to ignore when the people who are watching are dealing with grocery prices that feel like extortion and constant rent increases and debt and unstable work and a housing market that increasingly just seems to be part of like one big elaborate practical joke. People are not angry because influencers have nice things. They are angry because the person with the nice things increasingly seems to have forgotten about what anything costs or what life is like for most people. And they often have this weird disdain for normal people who allowed them to have nice things in the first place. They all seem to forget what life looks like outside of their very insulated bubble. And that's the that's the core issue. And before someone says it, no influencers do not need to pretend to be poor to be relatable. No one wants to watch a millionaire stand in a marble kitchen and claim that she's just a normal girl trying to make it work. The fake relatability is even more insulting.

[00:34:46]That's not the solution either. They also don't need to apologize every time they buy something expensive. But they do need enough self-awareness to recognize that their reality is exceptional. Privilege becomes unbearable to watch when the privileged person won't acknowledge that it exists.

[00:35:01]And that is kind of like the real definition of what being out of touch is in this context. It is treating egregious amounts of excess as completely ordinary and unremarkable while also treating everyone else's ordinary life as pathetic and inferior and and disgusting to them. Uh so thoughts and prayers to Catherine following her devastating encounter with a normal grocery store. And congratulations to all billionaires and political leaders and celebrities and influencer culture for successfully turning fresh vegetables into a luxury good. Thank you so much for that.

[00:35:32]Anyway, that's all for this week, guys.

[00:35:33]I hope you enjoyed it. If you're still watching, subscribe, leave a comment, leave a like. It helps out a ton. I will be down in the comments having a chat about this one and probably arguing with people. So, I'll see you there. As always, make your bed, eat your veggies, and I will see you in the next one.