fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2643 ]

[ SECRET POST #2643 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2643 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 075 secrets from Secret Submission Post #378.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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I'm not in either of those fandoms, though I imagine something starring say, Tony Stark, might not be completely inaccurate. lol

but yeah, being rich doesn't mean you have an easy life, or don't work, or have no stresses or worries. But I guess it's similar to the "noble poverty" fantasy. Is it inherently wrong to enjoy a fantasy and write about it? No, I don't think so. As long as you can separate that from reality.

DA

being rich doesn't mean you have an easy life, or don't work, or have no stresses or worries.

So tell me about these stresses, worries, and uneasy life you have, anon.

- You never have to read a price tag. On anything. Not even food. Especially not food. You don't have to ever calculate whether or not buying one item in bulk, which will exhaust your budget, but will provide your food over a couple extra budgets.

- You never have to make a budget -- a personal one, I mean, I'm sure you make corporate ones.

- You always have access to the best of medical care, even in places where socialized medicine is the norm.

- You never have to stress about unexpected expenses, i.e., car breaks down, roof on the house leaks, unexpected vision/dental/drug costs.

- You never have to worry about a roof over your head, or if you own a brand new multimillion dollar McMansion outright, you never have to worry about THE roof over your head.

- You never have to worry about your kids getting a good education and/or being provided for, for the rest of their lives. Depending how wealthy you are, this might even extend to your grandkids, should you have any.

- You never have to question whether or not you can afford a luxury item.

So, tell me about your stresses, worries, and unease, Rich!Anon. We're all ears.

yeah this came off more bitter than it should have--my power bill was just shy of being four digits last month, which ate away nearly two paychecks

ayrt

I'm not rich. Just because I recognize that not every problem in life is financial in nature, and I don't have an image of rich people sipping tequila at their beach houses all day, and never feeling stressed, anxious, afraid or miserable, doesn't mean I'm not juggling full time school, full time job, a slew of bills for my apartment that I can barely afford (especially with my roommate threatening to move out) and know that no matter how much I work I'll still be up to my ass in student loans for the next ten years. Sorry you aren't able to empathize and have this knee jerk reaction at any suggestion that rich people are human beings.

AYRT

I absolutely regard rich people as human beings (don't know where you got that I didn't), and I apologize for misreading you as one of the rich anons. I just don't believe the 1% have the same human problems as the rest of us. (All of the ones you listed, all of the ones I listed, etc.)

You think rich people don't have human problems?

Just confirming.

Because rich people never get sick?

I remember when a local wealthy woman ran off on her husband and kids. My gut reaction was to laugh at the "Stepford gone wrong." Then I realized while yeah, the kids live in a six bedroom house and go to the local snob school, their Mom still left them. That fucking sucks whether you're rich or poor. So yes, rich people still have human problems.

I just don't believe the 1% have the same human problems as the rest of us.

I hope to god you just phrased that wrongly. Seriously? Rich people's loved ones never die? Rich people never get cancer? Rich people's spouses or parents never hit them? Rich people's girlfriends or boyfriends never leave them? Rich people's pets never die? Rich people never have a fight with their best friend? Rich people never get paralyzed in an accident?

Some things are not reducible to money.

(reply from suspended user)

I don't know what bitterness you're talking about. In fact, I side-eye the fuck out of people who are bitter, especially when they're resenting people who never personally wronged them. Why should I feel bitter about the fact that rich people exist? They didn't steal my money, and I hope to get richer one day so it'd be pretty damn hypocritical of me to be bitter about them.

The only people I feel bitter towards are the rich people who purposely screw and extort poor people with no other options in order to increase their bottom line, and the governments that facilitate it. I don't even feel bitter about the people who re-elect them, because they're understandably duped the way everyone without a degree in political science and the time to scrutinize the political landscape every day is duped.

(reply from suspended user)

Sorry, I'm nayrt. That was very bitter. And as other commenters have shown, the ayrt's rant totally falls apart upon scrutiny.

I get bitter from the opposite direction. When I was bullied in school, one of the rich girls was the only one who stood up for me.* After I left that school, everyone started bullying her instead. (And this was around the same time her father died, so she wasn't in stable condition as it was.) Her money got her a nice therapist, but didn't really solve her underlying problems--she struggled through them just like anyone else. I get frustrated on her behalf when people act like money makes it all better.

* I've been told she wasn't super-rich, but she lived in a really, really nice house and had a lot of really, really nice trinkets. The place always seemed too large for her, and it must have seemed even larger after her dad died.

Money doesn't solve all problems, but it helps a lot of them. Emotional, mental, human problems - those things that touch everyone just because they exist will happen no matter your wealth. Just about everything else takes money.

Rich people do experience the same human joys and sadness as everyone else, but they often don't have to have the extra, sometimes monumental, stress of having to worry about the cost of every other little thing in their life. Their day to day priorities are often so much different that people struggling with money have a hard time not being annoyed even if they're experiencing similar things.

Especially when you also have some of the very wealthy who also happen to be jerks saying things like "poor people should just stop being poor" and that getting out of poverty is as easy as "just hold down a job for a year".

Your lack of details is unconvincing. It sounds like you're talking more about what your idea of a rich person is than actual people.

Rich people's problems are very, very, very low compared to your problems, and decent rich people wouldn't try to equate them to yours. If they do, they are ignorant or selfish. But that doesn't mean they have NO problems, or that they don't need to worry about them in order to take care of them.

If you were grading worries on a scale of 0 to 100, just because 90 is way, way, way more than 3, that doesn't mean 3 is 0 or that it's remotely helpful to anyone to behave as if 3 was 0. All it does is make you look like an idiot. Just like rich people look like idiots when they behave as if 3 was 90. Behave as if 3 is 3 and 90 is 90.

Seriously, how hard is this? Just act with some kind of modicum of logic. Your problems >>>> rich people's problems. Rich people's problems =/= no problems.

Uh what? You have no idea what anyone's problems are, how could you say they are worse? I'm poor, I struggle bill to bill, but I get by and I'm more or less happy. I get bitter when my paycheck runs out, but I don't think I have more problems than, say, some who got raped, family or best friends are dying, suffers drug addiction, has cancer, any number of very serious problems that have nothing to do with money.

I mean, holy crap. Normally I'd be on the "cry moar rich people" end of this conversation, usually in regards to obnoxious stupid politicians or ignorant asshole businessmen. But to actually, honestly assume anything about anyone's problems? fuck no. Yes, the money can help with a lot of problems, and they don't have the same survival anxieties that poor people face. but how about we don't make assumptions about anyone's lives or problems.

Well, it's comforting to know that having money automatically downgrades all your problems to a 3, whether it's your grandma's Alzheimer's disease, your dad's inoperable cancer, or your kid's eating disorder.

(reply from suspended user)

Re: Classism in fandom

(Anonymous) - 2014-03-30 05:48 (UTC) - Expand

jfc. you can be 'rich' without being in the top 0.1%. the people you describe are so far beyond the realm of 'upper class' and into 'billionaire' status that most people who are considered 'upper class' have no hope of reaching the level you describe.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/03/usa_wealth_charts.jpg

the people in the 4% are making $250k a year or so. the people in the 0.1% are making over a million. just, jfc there is a difference and not all of the rich are a monolith just like the poor aren't a monolith

About the personal budget thing, unless you are super 0.1% rich you absolutely HAVE to do a budget of yourself and your family.

Case in point, my rich neighbors down the street had to move out after their husband died (he was the sole breadwinner) and no one else knew how to balance the books.

I think having a budget is a thing for almost everyone except the super rich.

This. I'd guess that everyone but people who light cigarettes with $100 bills budget. A lot of people got rich because they know how to budget, hell. You can't run a company, or have a high end professional job unless you know about budgeting.

(NAYRT) Stresses, worries, and unease? Okay. (I'm 15 and in the US, by the way.)

1. My mental issues may well keep me from getting through college (I can probably manage high school, though), my parents have no intention of supporting me for the rest of my life, and my dream job is very much a degree-required one.

2. Assuming I make it into college (not even through it, just into it and through a semester or two) I'm going to be paying off my student loans for decades after I graduate. My original plan was to join the military and get it covered that way, but as it turns out I'm medically disqualified. My current plan is to apply to as many scholarships as are humanly possible (being female, a decent essay writer, and planning to major in engineering has to count for something) and attend a state school in Kansas, both because it's a really good school in my major and because it's half the price of the better ones.

3. I'm drifting away from my friends and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Yes, we have good health insurance through Dad's job. Yes, we don't have to worry about bills and housing. Yes, we can afford things like new computers. Yes, we can afford to have a five-member nuclear family. But we still do budgets; my parents remember the days of Hamburger Helper being a luxury. We have an emergency fund to account for things like the plumbing giving out, and on occasion we do have to make sacrifices to deal with such problems; they're not major sacrifices like skipping meals, they're things like not going on that vacation we planned, but they do exist. We still read price tags and shop at Costco.

I know they're different problems. I know they're the sort of problems a lot of people would kill to have. But they are problems. We're rich, I'm not about to argue that, my father works for a tech company and my mother can stay home and homeschool us on his salary alone, but we are nowhere near the sort of rich you're talking about.

(reply from suspended user)

NAYRT, but I definitely see CostCo as...middle-class thrifty, if that makes sense? Because if you are lower class, then you're not going to have enough money for the membership fees or to buy in bulk, and if you are more central or upper middle class or any wealthier, then you really have no reason to buy in bulk in the first place. Which puts CostCo firmly in the realm of people in the middle class who want/need to save money in the long run, and can afford to burn a little extra money in the short run in order to do so.

Re: Classism in fandom

(Anonymous) - 2014-03-30 06:05 (UTC) - Expand

(reply from suspended user)

Re: Classism in fandom

nyxelestia - 2014-03-30 06:54 (UTC) - Expand

Being in the Avengers fandom, most of the depictions of Tony Stark as an extremely wealthy man make me roll my eyes.

Yes, he made Pepper CEO, so he's not dealing with a lot of the underlying little details of running a business that a CEO or owner normally would...but unless he just let company stock sit there in his portfolio and pull in money from the dividends, then he's definitely doing something for the company.

In fandom at large, this does actually get handled decently, mostly in either describing him as spending a lot of time on inventions for company off-screen and/or describing how Pepper takes care of the finnicky business decision issues for him in an unofficial capacity as well as the official one because he just trusts her that much.

But then, most of the fics that portray Tony as just making money without doing much are the fics where the Avengers never seem to do anything but lounge around the Avengers tower/mansion the majority of the time and occasionally go out and fight crime, so usually my irritation isn't localized to just Tony. This didn't even happen in the comics, and the movies have definitely taken several steps away from this perception of them, so it irritates the hell out of me when I see it in fic. -_-

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