We could handle Jeff Bezos as a nerd…

It’s one thing to get a divorce, it’s quite another to get involved with the wife of your good friend. That’s a bad look, but even worse is HIS look and his now wife’s look!

If there’s anyone who likes Lauren Sánchez, they must be related to her. Her image is that of a social climber who has employed plastic surgery to achieve an image that is far from normal, one could even say far from human!

Prior to his involvement with Sánchez, Bezos was seen as an entrepreneurial mastermind, building a behemoth out of whole cloth, starting as a bookstore and then becoming the everything store. And Amazon became indispensable. Of course there was backlash against some of its business practices, but it’s just like Apple…no one can hurt the monolith, it’s just too desirable.

However, unlike Walmart, Amazon has done absolutely nothing to improve its image. Walmart has done a good job over the last twenty years of demonstrating warmth and fuzziness, almost becoming your friend (after already having eviscerated downtowns across America, but people have a short memory). Amazon has done no such thing. There’s no humanizing image campaign, and this has only contributed to negative public perception. You don’t want to work for Amazon unless you have to. The company believes that if you just get your products sooner that you’ll overlook what it took for you to get them, i.e. the working conditions in the warehouse, the independent contractors delivering the products…

But at this point, few know that Amazon’s reins have been handed to Andy Jassy, who got the gig by creating AWS (Amazon Web Services), which generates the lion’s share of the company’s profits with a lean staff…a truly digital business. No, Jeff Bezos is still the face of Amazon, and he’s still the largest individual shareholder.

Now when I was growing up, if you were rich you didn’t advertise it. And many who’ve inherited wealth still don’t. But those who made it on their own… They grew up middle class, they believe they EARNED IT! And most are completely out of touch. Whether it be Sergey Brin lobbying against wealth taxes or Elon Musk and his white power posts… You went to school with nerds…they were socially awkward. At this late date they may be rich, even run the world, but those building blocks of social experience and personality, they’re still lacking them. And they’re constantly pontificating, and at this point their pro-business, rightward shift is out of touch with their customers.

Believe me, there is an affordability crisis. And even if you don’t accept that, you will acknowledge that there’s huge income inequality. And it’s no longer the era of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” which aired from 1984-1995, and they even stopped making MTV’s “Cribs.” Furthermore, the public now knows the entertainers are not that rich. If they were, why would they keep trying to sell us stuff with their brand extensions? And almost none of them are rich enough to own a private jet. But the techies?

But it gets even worse for Jeff Bezos. Because he’s appeared to lose his mind. He seems nearly brainless, having exchanged his values for Sánchez’s. Suddenly he’s working out, sporting muscles and wearing a cowboy hat? A cowboy hat is a hard image to pull off if you’re not literally on the range, as for working out…who exactly are you?

And now you’re spending your dough frivolously, on a $50 million wedding and a yacht and now you don’t look that different from the rest of the oligarchs and don’t you know the entire world is looking down on these people?

Not Bezos…

Never have the rich and powerful been more out of touch with the hoi polloi. It’s not only the tech titans, but the politicians. They’re thirty years behind when it comes to tech, some probably still have AOL e-mail addresses. And the commentator class isn’t much better, denigrating all things tech on a regular basis…decrying social media and bitching that no one calls anymore, they only text. How come there was a generation gap when they were growing up, between them and their parents, and there can’t be one now? We live in such a changed world and it’s not only Republicans who want to go back to a fantasy past that wasn’t so good to begin with, but the Democratic commentariat too. Do you remember having to write down directions to everywhere you were going? Not having the world at your fingertips? You can’t give up the bad without the good…

So there’s a bifurcation in society, between the old and young, and also the rich and the poor. And in both cases, the “winners” have contempt for the losers. The old and rich think they’re better than the rest of us, and we’re sick of them lording it over us, in many cases ignorantly.

This ain’t left wing poppycock. Just look at Trump’s approval ratings. People don’t want all that money spent on overseas wars, they want to be able to work at a job that pays the bills, but most of what’s on offer are underpaying service jobs, oftentimes without benefits.

And don’t confuse yesteryear to today when it comes to fashion. Yes, there were VH1 Fashion Awards from 1995-2002, but…that was the heady nineties and the hangover thereafter. Those were good times, people could focus on frivolous.

But then even fashion changed. Now it’s cheap and affordable to all. The prices of Chinese clothing are drastically low, you can buy it, wear it once and then discard it. And we can talk about the ecological costs of this, but today fashion is what you build from cheap items and then demonstrate not only live, but online. Haute couture? Who exactly is that for?

But this is the way it always works. No one pulls back, they drive the enterprise to the precipice and…

Do you remember when MacKenzie Scott defended her husband? Probably not, but today she’s seen as America’s number one philanthropist. She sees no need for people to have billions of dollars, she’s giving it away. She’s the anti-Brin. And she wants no publicity for it. No awards, no gala… She’s just doing the right thing. How could she get it so right and her ex-husband get it so wrong?

MacKenzie Scott didn’t lose track of her middle class values, she wasn’t convinced her riches made her better than the rest of us, she believes we’re all in it together, that we live in a society and need to take care of each other.

Now we’ve been down this road of philanthropy before, with the Sacklers. Whoever it was at the Met who decided it would be good to get in bed with the Bezos couple should be fired. They’ve been hanging with the rich and famous so long, believing it’s all about money, that they’ve lost touch with the regular public. As for Anna Wintour… The only people who think she’s an icon are those who are in her orbit. She is perceived to be the devil. And when even the richest women change their hairstyle, she does not, because she doesn’t have to, she’s another one who believes they’re bigger than us, the little people.

So, would you want to be aligned with all this?

Well, chances are you couldn’t afford a ticket and weren’t invited because of your celebrity status. But this verges on tone-deaf. They’d have been better off just selling tickets and having no gala. But NO! These rich f*ckers want to parade, need to parade, like the Bezos twins.

You want to win in today’s society? Align with the public if you’re an artist or selling something to the public. You want to appear a member of the crowd, not above it. Nobody forgets any faux pas anymore, because it’s right there blinking at us on the web.

You’ve got to be moral, making appropriate choices.

How come entertainers can’t see this? That by becoming mini-corporations they’re becoming the enemy. Hanging with the billionaires for the crumbs of their largesse. Even being seen extravagantly spending their own wealth. That’s bad for your image, assuming you even have one.

The Kardashians may be rich, but their TV show first aired back in 2007, nearly twenty years ago. They established the paradigm of mindless image, but if you think that dominates forever… They were the progenitors, what makes you think that lane is still open?

Changes in society are subtle and then overwhelming. Trends end and purveyors are left holding the bag. You can sell out an arena and then you can barely sell a ticket and it’s rarely predictable, somehow the audience knows and you do not.

The audience knows so much.

Come on, Tesla sales went down after Musk and DOGE…

You think you can lord it over the public with impunity?

You can’t.

Now is the time to evidence values, to focus on your credibility, your ability to say no, to leave some money on the table, to lead with your work as opposed to hype.

Don’t expect media to tell you this…talk with your friends, then you’ll know what is going on.

The people run this country, and the people are pissed.

Beware.