Flex Culture: The Social Media Phenomenon of Showing off Your Wealth

 What is flexing?

In today's world, having wealth and fame often goes hand-in-hand with showing it off. On social media and YouTube, this is commonly referred to as "flexing."If you were to sit and count every post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok that you would call “show–offy,” the result would be astronomical.

Flexing seems to be a staple on social media these days. But is flexing simply a celebration of how good your life is, or is it deeper than that? 

Artists have flexed in their lyrics and music videos for a long time, talking about how much money they make, or how many cars they have. 

Although flexing most commonly refers to showing off material possessions and wealth, it can manifest in a number of ways. You may flex your social status or the number of people you’re friends with, how much you travel, your physique, or how successful or intelligent you are. After all, how many of us have Penn 20–something in our bios? These days, flexing is all over social media.

Wealth Flexing, the focus of this piece, is specifically flaunting your wealth. You may have encountered it in meme form: In early 2018, "weird flex but OK" was the only appropriate response to bizarre social media boasting. Sometimes the bragging methods were questionable, but the impulse to brag was never taken to task. Why? Over the last few years, flexing has become a social media genre of its own—and a popular one.

“Flexing on the ‘Gram” has become a trend, with celebrities such as the rapper Lil Pump flexing on Instagram to prove that they have made it to the top. When people critique him for his rapping skills, Lil Pump shows off his wealth and expensive clothing, using them as proof of his worthiness.

Examples of flexing

It is a self-evident truth that social media apps such as Twitter or Instagram have over time morphed into tools used by the masses to gain validation through likes.

The #richboycheck hashtag on TikTok, is where the apparently wealthy young “flex”, while others mercilessly mock them. On display are wads of cash, flashy cars, Rolexes and closets stacked with designer footwear. They photograph themselves in private jets and holidaying at exclusive resorts or private villas.

Other social media celebrities flex in the same way. With designer bags and luxury cars, riches are used as a reflection of success, and the outrageous Instagram posts can bring in thousands of likes and millions of followers. This is exemplified by Internet personality Jake Paul. His diss tracks are primarily focused on bragging about his wealth, cars, and million–dollar home. The idea being pushed is that it is his wealth that makes him interesting - that makes him more important than others on the app.

Youtube promulgates a similar lifestyle. YouTubers buying out entire stores, buying entire towns, walking through stores blindfolded and buying everything they touch, learning to drive in cars they really want you to know cost $250,000. Haul and "get ready with me" videos have upgraded to become videos that boast their cost in the title (£30,000 Dior Haul!) and the $10,000 outfit challenge. Spending their wealth extravagantly has always been something celebrities have done, but now letting people watch you spend extravagantly is almost enough to make you a celebrity.

Influencers like @joellefriend use the company, Sky Helicopters for their social media sites (Sky Helicopters

However, for those viewing these often vulgar displays of wealth, they can end up feeling desperately jealous, empty and inferior. Social psychologists call this inferiority phenomenon Instagram Envy.

Social media can make others’ lives seem really glamorous and exciting, but many influencers who seem to be living in luxury have also admitted to feeling empty. Through flexing comes a false sense that material things are what make us happy. But could this sense of emptiness also be because the wealth flex isn't entirely authentic?

It’s not surprising to hear that people will go to lengths for a chance at that lifestyle. So what does the modern wannabe do? It isn’t difficult to imagine the rationalisation behind the thinking. If everybody who is online broadcasts the best version of themselves, why not go a step further and look like the person you wish you were? Why not drop a few hundred quid and feel like a Kardashian or Kanye for half an hour? If you take a picture, the experience might convince someone else it's true too. 

For people who want to take a shortcut to a lifestyle of fame and fortune, the concept of “fake it ’til you make it” leads to heavy-handed Photoshopping at one end of the spectrum, the temporary rental of luxury goods, services and venues somewhere in the middle and—driven by insecurity, narcissism or gullibility—pyramid schemes and criminal fraud at the other.

ChristianAdamG

According to Youtuber ChristanAdamG, “The logic behind it, bro? This faking it until you make it thing? It’s a serious thing, bro. It works, bro, for some reason.”

This was his conclusion after a social experiment last spring. He tried faking wealth on Instagram by using Photoshop—putting himself in a private jet, driving a supercar, photographing himself standing near celebrities—and, at the end of a bizarre week, landed a couple of thousand new followers. His video documenting that experience has more than 5.6 million views.

There’s a cottage industry of how-to guides that share tips for looking rich on Instagram, for example, a video titled “10 Ways to Look Expensive on a Budget” (1.5 million views) from a YouTube account called the School of Affluence. Most of the advice doesn’t require you to be a gifted photo editor. Just to be bold. For example, visit open houses to look like you live in a swanky place. When rapper Lil Tay emerged as an internet star at the age of nine, she was branded as a Louis Vuitton-wearing L.A. rich kid. In truth, her mother was a Vancouver estate agent with access to a penthouse.

Some advice is off-the-wall—take a toilet seat and make it look like you’re sitting by an airplane window. But some of it makes sense. Want to seem like you can afford a Hermes bag? Try one on at the store and take a picture. Just don’t buy it. Want to seem like you dine at high-end restaurants? Post Yelp reviews, with a #richkidsofinstagram hashtag on your posts for good measure.

Trying to appear successful on social media could be a way for people to feel better about themselves. If you look like you’re doing it, you feel like you’re doing it. Or it could just be the rush of positive feelings that can come from likes or comments.

There's a line however, between the fakers who are doing it for likes and maybe a free holiday, and the ones who cross the line into actual fraud.

People can buy fake audiences for their accounts in the range of US$10-15 per 1,000 followers. A 2019 study from CHEQ AI and the University of Baltimore predicted that influencers who bought followers or engagements from bot farms would swindle advertisers out of US$1.5 billion this year.

Outing the Flexoffenders

Fellow internet users do a good job outing and shaming people who are fabricating their wealth. It's not surprising that a new movement of those wanting to expose the fakers or #FlexOffenders has emerged. In February, an Instagram account called @BallerBusters cropped up and began wreaking havoc on the flashy Instagram entrepreneur community. Instagram and TikTok comments are rife with accusations of fakery.

BallerBusters regularly calls out entrepreneurs for showing off fake watches and posing in rented private jets.

However, it's main target are the 'snake oil salesmen of the itenernet. Supposed entrepeneurs who revel in flashy living on Tok Tok and Instagram and then try to sell their lifestyles to desperate young people through phoney workshops and courses. They pay thousands of dollars or pounds for courses that don't deliver their promise.

The person who runs the @BallerBusters account said they had heard from hundreds of people who believe they have been scammed. 

These teenagers know that making money on the internet is possible, and often they have friends who have done it. But they end up paying for bad advice.

These supposed 'entrepeneurs' film themselves "flaunting private planes, fake watches, posing with all this stuff and creating a life for themselves on social media that’s not true,” the administrator behind @BallerBusters said.

All these spoils can be yours, they promise — for a price.

It’s a lot of rented cars, ride-share jet company photos making it look like they own the jet.

Victims pay for bogus entrepreneurs’ courses and mentorship programs, or to be added to an Instagram account’s “close friends” stories circle — a private group that receives exclusive content.

Often these scammers don’t even teach their own classes. They create a script or slide show and hand it off to subcontractors. 

Anna Sorokin a.k.a Anna Delvey

Flexing gone wrong

Perhaps the most famous case of #FlexOffending is that of Anna Sorokin a.k.a Anna Delvey. For a few years she lived the kind of lavish lifestyle Instagram was made to record.

Even more impressive than the designer clothes, high end hotels and glamorous nights out she portrayed, however, was the way she paid for it all: in short, she didn’t. Instead she conned banks, wrote bad cheques and eventually took money from her friends as the lies and debts caught up with her.

Eventually it becomes a police matter. Anna was convicted in New York last year of theft and grand larceny for manipulating banks, hotels, a jet operator, restaurants and individuals out of more than US$200,000 using a fake identity she created online. Under the identity of Anna Delvey, a German heiress hoping to launch a SoHo House-type lavish art club in various hot spots around the country, Sorokin conned her newfound friends out of thousands of dollars while always promising to pay them back. One such friend was Rachel Williams, a young employee at Vanity Fair, who was stuck with a $60,000 bill for a glamorous trip to Marrakesh, Morocco. When Sorokin went on the lam, Williams and others start going after her and eventually got the police involved. In 2019, Sorokin was convicted on multiple charges, including second-degree grand larceny and theft of services.Anna, who was in fact, a Russian immigrant posing as a German heiress, was sentenced to at least four years in prison.

During his opening statement, Sorokin’s lawyer Todd Spodek said there’s a bit of Anna in everyone. “Through her sheer ingenuity, she created the life that she wanted for herself,” he said. “Anna was not content with being a spectator, but wanted to be a participant. Anna didn’t wait for opportunities, Anna created opportunities. Now we can all relate to that.”

Spodek invoked Frank Sinatra and the dream of climbing to the top of the heap: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere!”

Anna claimed it wasn't about the money for her, but rather about power. This appears to be the case in the most outlandish cases. It is about money on the surface, but in many cases,  money is just the starting point and it becomes about something bigger and deeper and more complicated, whether it’s identity or class or fame or status. Being somebody that you’re not, has always captured the imagination.