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Billionaires – they’re not just like us.

As much as we like to read about how they did normal people things in articles and interviews, these are mostly to make ourselves, and them, feel better about the obscene amounts of cash idling in their bank accounts.

No, something happens when you reach a certain level of wealth and status.

The planes become private, the apartments become penthouses, and the parties go to the next level.

Forbes looked into the “strange rituals of super-rich partying”, in an attempt to understand the extravagance injected into a night out when one has cash to blow.

While these parties usually take place under the guard of doormen, entrance fees, and exclusive locations, author Ashley Mears went undercover as a ‘girl’, which she details in her new book, Very Important People.

A “girl” in this instance is described as “young (typically sixteen to twenty-five years old), thin and tall (at least five feet nine without heels and over six feet with them). They are typically though not exclusively white.”

‘Girls’ are usually Instagram influencers or models, recruited by promoters to attract millionaires and billionaires. ‘Girl currency’ refers to the number of girls one has at one’s table. The more girls, the more status.

It’s all rather gross, but it gets worse. Let’s break it down.

Spending is a “spectator sport”

VIP areas in clubs are raised above the rest of the venue and serve a very specific purpose in this regard. Unless everyone can see you throwing around large sums of money, there’s really no point in doing so.

It is the same reason champagne houses produce oversized bottles with glow-in-the-dark labels and names like Nebuchadnezzar. These normally arrive to VIP tables with fireworks in them and held aloft by attractive girls.

This, friends, is referred to as a “bottle train”, with the whole ceremony designed to bestow recognition on the buyer.

The super-rich have been known to spend over $100 000, or even $1 million, at a single night club.

Behold, I have wealth.

Whales

If the buyer is a big spender, they’re known as ‘whales’, and when in the vicinity of another ‘whale’ will spend the night trying to outspend them. In clubs, owners will often seat two ‘whales’ in close proximity to one another in the hope that their egos will fuel a wealth war.

Mears notes that in one instance in 2012, “whole champagne bottles were lobbed between Drake and Chis Brown resulting in several injuries”.

Classy.

The rich do feel a bit bad about it, though…

They don’t feel bad enough about the whole thing to stop doing it. Rather, they’d like to party away from the proletariat in a private club, on a private yacht, or on a remote island.

The whales don’t want the world to know about their secret spending. “The men I interviewed were conflicted about such extravagance,” says Mears.

One told her they regretted it afterwards: “It’s retarded… I mean, do you know how many people you could feed or give water to in Africa.”

The rich are conflicted because on some level they are aware of what obscene excess looks like in a world of widening inequality.

Then there’s the pandemic.

Lockdown has widened inequality as poorer households lose jobs and rely on their savings. Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer, leading to pent up demand for parties, girls and bottle trains among those who have already missed a season of it.

So, that attempt at social consciousness is really more about optics than anything else.

It’s tough to empathise with the need to drop ridiculous amounts of money on a room full of girls, who according to Mears, find the whole thing a bit silly, and champagne that comes with a sparkler like something they’d bring you on your birthday at Spur.

But, the one percent are going to do what the one percent are going to do.

This is what we signed up for when we all got on board with capitalism.

[source:forbes]