Oh to be young and rich, although I will skip the healthy side dose of arrogant little prick.

Wait, we are supposed to hate these kids who run around spending their parents’ money on blatant displays of wealth aren’t we? I will admit to having seen only brief snippets of the show, and in between trying to keep down my dinner and find the remote I vowed to never again show such scant regard for my mental well-being.

Someone who stuck it out was Rebecca Davis, and her TimesLive piece shows there might be more to these kids than we give them credit for:

The true horror of the show’s first episode was not its unambiguous celebration of wealth in one of the most unequal countries on earth. It was that the first rich kid they showcased, 21-year-old Sandton dude Nape, seemed like a genuinely nice, ordinary guy in a lot of ways.

OK, other than spending R15 000 on a pair of shoes and R60 000 on a watch. His parents must be terrible though, right?

His parents rocked up to buy him the timepiece, and they were also disappointingly hard to dislike. Like their son, they just seemed sort of ordinary and nice…

Is it churlish to criticise these scions of the South African elite? They’re not spending public money; their parents have presumably worked hard for it.

I can’t argue with that logic, everyone is free to spend their own money as they see fit. It’s not like they are taking tax-payers money to live their lavish lifestyles, who are we to judge?

But what about the message this kind of show sends to those who aspire to live like this?

…the show also encourages these children to inventory their material possessions in a way that feels hollow and grim. At the end, Nape said something heartfelt about how his real riches lay in his relationships, but it felt a bit empty after all the talk about sneakers and timepieces.

Timepieces, by the way, is what fancy people call watches.

I suppose you’re as welcome to spend your evenings watching this show as these kids are to spend their parents’ money, although I don’t imagine either will make you very popular with the general public.

[source:timeslive]