What if I told you that everyone pretending celebrities are just like us, while they're out there accidentally buying $13,000 bottles of wine, is part of how we normalize outrageous income inequality? And it's related to voting for presidents you want to have a beer with?

I want more celebrities to tell us about the times waiters tricked them into spending the cost of a subcompact/a year at a state school/several months' rent. And that they just paid it, however begrudgingly. Because that's reality.

Preserving the fantasy where we're all essentially the same, but some of us have a little more than others, obscures the enormous amount of power the extremely rich actually have. And it makes bullshit "relatability" plus discretion the standards for who should hold that power.

In terms of your fave celebs, it doesn't matter. But we also want extremely powerful politicians to cosplay as middle class, not that bright, not "elite." In other words, we make it clear we prefer lies to the truth—then act shocked when we inevitably elect the best liars.

Normalize the extremely rich telling us what they paid for EVERYTHING. Normalize frequent reminders that no matter how hard we work for how long, we will never have that kind of power. Normalize never being allowed to believe for one second that some people deserve such wealth.

No one deserves it, just like no one deserves poverty. There is no way of being human that means you've earned such extravagance or such desperation. It's luck, it's opportunity, it's cruel systems designed to elevate or oppress people like you. We're not all in this together.

If we go apeshit on rich people for being honest about the money we know they have anyway, all we get is more powerful people lying about how much power they actually have. The end.