5 signs your rich friend is going broke

it's not as obvious as you might think

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell wrote about “the poorest of the rich,” and describes the upper class as those earning between $400-$2000 per year, noting that the people earning closer to $400 were the most obsessed with being perceived as upper class. He writes about the difference between their class perception/knowledge and their class reality: they knew how to ride and shoot but they could neither afford horses nor land to hunt on. Same thing with TikTok: it makes you feel rich to correct someone who misidentifies a Kelly for a Birkin even though you yourself could probably never afford anything from Hermès to begin with.

In an age of information abundance and luxury dupes it’s becoming more and more difficult to distinguish rich from poor. It used to be that the rich would have exclusive knowledge of Patek pricing models and the power dynamics of luxury sales associates. But today everyone knows these things. TikTok democratized luxury knowledge so that knowing the differ…