Oh god I have been following this story closely for mumble mumble. Have you listened to the Murdaugh Murders podcast? I have listened to a lot of podcasts and the host comes across as the most self-obsessed host out there, so I can’t recommend it in good faith, but I listen to it every week.
2 Likes
No! I had never even heard of the family before watching this video!!!
2 Likes
This video is everything 
so much cringe and love. The term “bosom friend” slays me. I remember thinking I wanted my first grade friend Charlotte to be my BEST best friend, like somehow more than just a friend, but not a sister, but also I really wanted to brush her hair because it was soooo pretty and looked so soft! And I thought maybe we could be roommates with my future husband (John, the cutest boy in my class) one day. lmao, bi.
6 Likes
I’ve been on a bit of a binge lately- has anyone else watched Killer Ratings on Netflix? It’s a multipart series about a totally bizarre case in Brazil and I just finished it.
If you want something less murder-y but still true crime/Catfish-y I also just watched Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist and it is WILD. Highly recommend.
2 Likes
I just started it (like, opening credits after the initial open) and am forcing myself not to just go Google crazy!
Edit ok I am at 6 minutes and 
already, I did not at all see it coming in that way! I’m totally into the production quality of this and have a feeling I’ll be glued to my screen for the next 2 hours 
Thanks for posting the recco 
I’ve been watching Junior BakeOff and needed something to prevent me from binging the whole thing today lol
ETA2 at 22ish minutes it took me a moment to realize the giant banner hanging at ND did not in fact say “GO TRIS”
2 Likes
Haha, awesome! From your description I can’t tell which one you’re watching but v glad you are into it!!! The desire to google is real. DO NOT GIVE IN. haha
ETA: I solved the mystery, ND=Notre Dame, so you’re watching the catfish one. It’s. So. Good. Enjoy!
2 Likes
One from Australia.
3 Likes
This was excellent! I love this substack in general.
@katscratch have you seen the LuLaRich doc? I know you like non-murder true crime now, haha, so I’m blowing up your @ girl!
1 Like
Ooooh I have not but ask me again in a few hours 
1 Like
Is anyone else obsessed with the college admissions scandal? I think it’s such a fascinating con in terms of how many people were involved but also what it says about American culture right now. It was interesting to hear so many college admins talk about the commodification of education, and how it’s a status symbol. I feel like, in my circles, education is one of the last unquestioned bastions of classism. Like it’s totally ok to brag about it, be very oriented towards it, judge others on the basis of it, insist on using certain titles that correlate with your education level, etc. in a way that you wouldn’t see with material goods or “family background” or other demographics type stuff.
I also thought it was super fascinating that these rich parents mostly didn’t want the kids to know they were bribing them into schools. It really shows the invisible privilege so many kids have and it makes class issues make a lot more sense. I feel like so many of the very wealthy people I’ve known are just, so blind to it, and also always rest on the, “but I worked really hard,” line. It makes a lot more sense to me now, after watching the movie about the scandal, because it’s like…oh, you actually think you did this yourself. Well…that’s slightly more understandable, lol.
Also when the admissions scandal first broke my initial thought was that if I were one of those kids I would be so insulted that my parents thought I couldn’t get into any good school, lol. The other thing that happens a lot in this documentary is stuff I heard a lot in high school (public school bur very rich town) was how it was getting harder and harder to get into schools, etc. But like…that’s really only with prestige schools, which as the doc points out has nothing to do with the actual quality of the education. I think that’s left out of the higher ed costs and debt conversation too, where people act like every school costs $40k a year…but like, community college is literally free in a lot of states, and a lot of states allow you to transfer to any 4 year state school also for free if you get above a certain GPA. And there are so so so many public 4 years that are inexpensive.
It’s interesting to me that people don’t want to see that what they’re engaging in is status/keeping up with the Joneses stuff when it’s education related.
Also, in my fancy public school we had PSAT classes that were worked into our school schedule. Like, as part of the normal day. Even with that, I knew a lot of kids who eventually went Ivy or baby ivy and who also had consultants like this, including separate consultants just for writing essays. I thought it was bizarre and didn’t do any of that because like…we were prepared enough ffs, lol, but in talking to others who did they believed it was something “everyone” did, just like how most people they knew had nannies and house cleaners who came once a week. So in their minds it wasn’t a hugely privileged almost cheat (which is 100% how I saw it at the time), it was something almost everyone did, normal.
It really shows the mechanics underpinning privilege IMO. Because we think of these ultra rich people as caricatures in some ways. But when you meet and mingle with them it’s all very softened, cloaked in euphemisms and self-deprecation and statements of inherent gratitude. I think it’s why I’m so passionate about talking about how I feel about being rich now because most people at my level do not believe they are rich, and I feel like as a fellow rich person I should be able to bring this stuff up without eliciting the “I’m being judged!” response because…I’m rich too (but the judged response still occurs a lot, even as I say "I am also this privileged, like you are). Bottom line is the rich saying they aren’t that rich IS PRIVILEGE. The wealthy have always been really good at denying how advantaged they actually are, and I think the college admissions scandal really shows that. Even celebrities and ultra wealthy people were worried that their kids couldn’t compete like as if they hadn’t had enough of a leg up, because other people still have more. I also see inter sectionalism played hard against wealth privilege- so like if I am talking about wealth privilege with someone who I also consider rich they will often pivot to, “but I’m insert identity” and start talking about ways in which they’re disadvantaged, which to me feels a lot like white women using sexism as a shield for other critiques of racism or homophobia or whatever.
I thought this was a great article on the topic:
" most Americans don’t think of wealth this way. Instead of considering the overall breadth and depth of their family’s life preserver, they look to what they feel they are able to save every year. Not what they make , but what they understand as extra ."
This ^ is so true in my experience. It’s all about how it feels not reality. And no one feels really rich, except like, billionaires…and some of them still don’t. I think it’s impossible for me to judge a Bezos or a Zuckerberg if I sit here so near the top of the pile and say “but other people have more, I don’t have a jet!” Like that’s how the infamous Walmart family justifies not giving more to charity, lol, they have to preserve what they have just in case it’s not enough because other people have more. So many rich people have this attitude and I don’t think it’s more immoral if the person has more money. It’s like, why can’t we have honest conversations about GREED and jealousy, and envy? I find it very important to unwinding my own privilege and understanding it better, but the resistance is massive.
6 Likes
[quote=“AllHat, post:70, topic:4338”]
Also when the admissions scandal first broke my initial thought was that if I were one of those kids I would be so insulted [/quote]
SAME.
Things I thought everyone did: take the SAT multiple times plus the ACT. In my case it did have a specific financial pay off, to get more money from a scholarship I had to have a total score above some number (and apparently they’ve changed the SAT score numbering since I took it so I don’t know if saying the number means anything now). But I don’t know how common that knowledge is among the families of high schoolers, not to mention who has the resources to pay the test fee (I literally have no idea how much it might cost and it didn’t occur to me that there might be a fee for the test until I was typing this sentence) or take off multiple days from work or take transit to get to the test site. I don’t remember if I did any SAT prep classes but those are definitely a thing that exists.
A note on classism - the tiny private high school I ended up graduating from bragged that every kid in my graduating class went on to “higher education” as part of their marketing materials. I mean, one classmate went to massage school after graduation but they were gonna count that dammit. I kind of get that as a marketing tool, I wonder how that translates to people bragging about their kids - is that a kind of marketing? You should hang out with me because my kid is going to XYZ fancy pants school?
Oh I also assumed a MUCH larger part of the student body were in sorority/fraternities than was actually the case at my college. That’s another way to make connections but also create a “keeping up with the Joneses” bubble.
More thoughts but gotta run.
4 Likes
Same here. I remember signing up for the PSAT when I started going to fancy private school Junior year, and my mom was like “what is that? you are only 15!”. People in our social circle did not take prep courses, or pre-standardized tests, or have help with writing essays. Most people didn’t go to college at all, or they went to our local commuter school. College prep wasn’t even a thing I think we knew…existed? Beyond showing up for the ACT once to try to qualify for our state scholarship program. I mean, I could check out the SAT prep book at the library if I wanted to do some studying, but tutors? SAT classes?
I wasn’t really aware enough to see the privilege of the people around me when I was in highschool, at least when it came to college admissions. I knew they were super wealthy, because of their clothes, cars, vacations, etc. But I never associated that with their ability to prep for college admissions, the colleges they were accepted to, etc. I knew that they would be able to attend nicer schools because their parents could pay for it, but I had no idea that their wealth could influence whether or not they were accepted, whether through a scandal like this one, or just by the fact that they could afford tons of tutoring, essay prep, or had lots of connections. Like when I started going to this school, it was a shock to me that we had to meet with an admissions counselor monthly. I honestly had never thought that deeply about college until I started junior year of highschool, and I remember my first meeting the woman was like “you are so behind, you haven’t done all of these things (tutoring, essay prep, campus visits” and I was just like…what? haha. Campus visits? But apparently this was a thing that all of the kids were doing, taking trips to the east coast for weeks to visit and tour campuses. They wrote essays every week, were preparing extracurriculars, volunteered, etc. Like these kids had been prepping to do this since they were tiny, and given all these resources along the way to make sure it happened. I wish I had recognized that more, because all I really felt in highschool was that I wasn’t measuring up. I thought “I’m not that smart, so that’s why I’m not going to Yale. Abby is smart, that’s why she is going to Yale.” But the reality was so much more nuanced than that.
The keeping up with the Joneses/status stuff around education did really surprise me though. I remember several of my classmates had parents who were either professors or admin at our local very well ranked private university. They got almost free admission to this $$$ school and almost none of them went because it was just our local school, and how would it look to attend that when they could go to XXX ivy league? I remember being soooo jealous that they even had the opportunity to attend the school, because it was way out of my price range. Additionally, LA has a pretty great program that covers in state tuition at a public university, or an equivalent amount for a private university. I went to school for free because I chose state school, and I wasn’t a 4.0 student either, like they want anyone and everyone to be able to go to school if they want to. I would say less than 10% of my graduating class chose to stay in state and take advantage of the free tuition. I’d say about 30-40 of my 100 person graduating class was accepted to and attended an Ivy League or top 10 school. I was actually ashamed to be attending our very good state university, because everyone around me was talking about Penn, Yale, Stanford, etc…
My school did something similar, and I actually ended up deciding to go to college right away vs. taking a gap year since I was so young, because I didn’t want to be embarrassed or disappoint my highschool admins by not going on to higher education. We had tons of celebrations and occasions where we had to talk about what college we were choosing, wear our college gear, etc and you couldn’t just say…well I’m not going. haha. It was very much understood that everyone needed to go.
6 Likes
My school also bragged bout 100% of grads going into a 4 year college, and the number going to ivy (like 30 in my class, I think?). I only knew it was a privilege thing because I had moved and still had lots of friends in my old state/town and had previously gone to a more normal school.
One major issue with this luxury education thing is that it’s trickling down to lower class people, as most rich person trends do. And it just kills me that kids without a lot of money or familial wealth are taking on far more debt than necessary to go to the fanciest school that accepts them. I wish there was more discussion among parents on what they actually want. Because if the goal is to ensure that their children stay wealthy and make a lot of money…school is 100% not the answer for that.
Yes, Harvard Business School and Wharton connections, I know, but there are a prolific number of wealthy people (all the ones in my family- and more of my relatives are wealthy than not) who go to very modest state schools, especially for undergrad. If you look at CEOs and super movers and shakers it’s like…that fancy brand name truly is not the factor. And on the flip side I know a ton of people who went to super elite schools and are still unable to support themselves without regular cash infusions or “gifts”.
The other thing I see is that this really hurts wealthy people which in turn hurts less wealthy people even more. I think the amount of anxiety that surrounds this way of living is absolutely absurd. It’s what creates adults who are making more than 98% of the country and who feel like failures. There is no celebrating any accomplishment because it’s never as good as what so-and-so did. This lack of perspective in so many cases becomes a total scarcity mindset, and scarcity is antithetical to generosity.
I also think scarcity breeds other fears. Because if you’re unstable, “barely making it” and less than everyone around you…that’s precarious. You are almost in danger. That makes other political things feel more frightening. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only people I know who are so terrified about what’s happening in the United States (a country so globally desirable to live in people still risk their lives to come here) that they are looking into emigrating to another country…are rich people. They think they won’t be able to make it here, so…who do they think will make it? If we can’t make it no one can! And things are not nearly so dire as to need to flee the country, I mean, really.
The other common thing I see is people separating themselves from the wealth of their families. So like, calling themselves a “poor professor” when they actually make about $130k combined with their spouses, and have family money on both sides. I also see it with lower income spouses who keep finances “separate”. They get all the benefit of talking about what they can’t afford, even as they reap all the benefits of having access to massive wealth. I’ve heard the argument that it’s “my family’s money, not mine!” but like…come on. That is so shady, lol, when you have benefitted and continue to benefit from all that “not yours” money. It’s a massive flotation device waiting for you whenever you want it, and it’s also not having the burden of supporting others because they can support themselves. It’s like there’s no understanding that if your family is wealthy…you are part of that, if your spouse makes a ton of money…you are also rich.
One indicator of poverty is lack of proximity to wealth. Poor people don’t know anyone with money. No one. Everyone they know is struggling. If most people you know are “comfortable” and lots of your relatives are straight up “rich”, uh…you are rich too. It’s also a convenient way to sidestep eventual inheritances, IMO. And that’s often expressed in rich circles as, “I don’t expect to get anything! I don’t plan with that in mind.” But like, that doesn’t make that money not exist, and you will most likely get it. So…
I’m glad to have a place to talk about this because I feel a lot of frustration that this isn’t something openly discussed in socially conscious circles. I think it’s so important for meaningfully changing the world for the better. And I truly don’t understand the level of resistance to accepting that yes, I am rich. It should be seen as joyful and a massive opportunity. Money is just a tool and it can be used for purposes good and bad, but if you pretend you can’t do anything because you don’t even have the tool, like…that’s so self-victim-y. Like how many people could live the way they actually want to right now (slower, maybe one person part-time or not working, less stressful, more balance) but are totally convinced they can’t because they need more. And how many families would improve, including children’s lives, if leaning into wealth was more socially acceptable, and discussed in terms of what we owe the world but also the massive amount of choices we have. So many wealthy people act like they’re practically indentured servants with no choice, and it’s like, not a very admirable attitude.
And @meerkat I think it is totally a bragging thing, and also the reverse. Like I heard other kids saying stuff like, “well she’s not that smart, so she went to Lehigh” or talk about how certain Ivies were easier to get into (Cornell, Brown, Penn) than others (Yale, Princeton, Harvard). I think for parents in an area like that, if your kid goes to a school that to most of the world is still prestigious but isn’t tier 1 or 2, the sense is kind of: what happened? Where did you go wrong? It’s like the parents jobs. And I always wondered if some of it was partly wanting your kids to only be around other rich kids, because that’s mostly what those schools are like. And then they too can marry someone rich and continue the cycle or wealthy. IDK if that’s true, but I’ve wondered that especially since in some of these communities the expectation is still that the woman stops working when kids come. So it’s like, all this pressure for an ivy education and then after her masters or doctorate, it’s time to start on kids and begin prepping them for preschool interviews which are a legit thing. If career isn’t the point is it all just a rich social club?
4 Likes
Oh definitely. I mean, college is great in the way it creates a “target rich environment” - most people there are around the same age/stage of life, have access to some money (which is used to pay tuition, books, room, food, etc ), and are actively working to better themselves in some way. The joke about M-R-S degrees is based in truth, though I think that’s less common than it used to be since women feel less pressure to be someone’s wife than decades ago.
But my mom really, really wanted me to join a sorority or co ed fraternity because of the connections I’d make. I ended up dating a guy who had some community college under his belt and no long term life plan and most of my friend group were working adults rather than degree seeking college students. My mom was, uh, not thrilled, lol.
3 Likes
That’s a great way of putting it. I guess I wonder how people square promoting all of that alongside wishes that their kids be down to earth, well-rounded, and not unaware. It seems incompatible. Or do they not think of it that way?
ETA: Also the reason I say “they” is because despite my family having a lot of wealth they are much more like, “do well in school” but they mean get As, Bs, and a C here or there. State schools are super celebrated, too, so I didn’t feel the pressure my classmates did. And I found it really hard to understand because so many of them were so much higher achieving than I was! But still stressed that they weren’t good enough 
lots of EDs too, and I think they are somewhat related.
1 Like
I agree with so much of what you wrote. As you said, proximity to wealth, or just to financial stability, is wealth/stability for you, even if it isn’t “yours.” Even when I was making less than $1k a month in my early 20s, I never considered myself poor because I knew that if the SHTF my parents could rescue me. We weren’t rich and they aren’t now, but I always had the knowledge of their financial stability and while they rarely helped me, knowing it still makes a difference IMO. For me it meant I took more risks with job hopping and trying fun jobs that paid less, because I knew if I really needed it, they’d be there for me, even if it was just to help me with rent for a month
I think this is a big part of it for sure. I think people want to say that it’s not just a rich social club, but ivy leagues are an extension of that. Many of my highschool classmates who went to Ivy schools met their husbands there, both went on to get advanced degrees, but usually have kids and the woman ends up staying home and never really using the education. The kids go to fancy daycare, and then right back to the same fancy private school for 12 years and the cycle continues.
I feel lucky that though I had a glimpse into that world in highschool, I went to a state school for college and was quickly plopped back into an environment with people who had lives growing up that were similar to mine. I’m sure the rich people were there, as we had a TON of frats/sororities that cost a lot of money to be in, but I wasn’t even remotely adjacent to those people. The M-R-S degree is still very alive and well in the South though, I think I only have one friend from college who isn’t married to the person that they dated in school. It’s pretty wild.
ETA: I was thinking about this,
and although I was hugely bummed to only get to go to a state school when I was graduating highschool…and it took about 1-2 years of being back in a more typical environment for me to realize how much being in the wealthy private school environment had shifted my thinking about life and what was “normal”. I felt like such a failure for my very normal grades, my very normal/good university, and normal extracurriculars. I had these insane expectations for myself based on the high achieving people around me in highschool, and nothing I did measured up. This (among other factors) lead to my ED, and exercise compulsions, because all of the girls around me in highschool were unachievably smart, athletic, wealthy, etc. I’m so glad that I wasn’t able to go to a fancy college, because I can’t imagine how much more pressure that would have been if I couldn’t measure up there.
6 Likes
Wow. This is all really interesting to learn. America is full of “we dont talk about Bruno” classism (sorry now I have the song in my head, Bruno is probably not relevant). I will have to ask my wealthier cousins about their experiences. In my highschool tutoring was mostly for kids who weren’t doing well, and a bit of extra exam prep but nothing like what is described here.
I had no idea that there were actual free options for higher education in the USA, we don’t even have that!
5 Likes
I know what you mean! I think it plays into how I describe myself as someone who wasn’t really a school person, which is true in that I didn’t just loooove academics. But I did go to a fancy private college and I also got offered free rides at more than one place. I thought of myself as not a school person because I had far from straight As and didn’t take every AP available and didn’t go very high in math. In reality, I had like a 3.4 or something? And was a competitive ballet dancer doing national dance competitions, I was in 2 choirs, freshman year I did the school musical too, I was one of 4 editors of the weekly school newspaper, and an editor at the school literary magazine, and I helped found my school’s photography club. I also performed a lot at coffee houses and helped organize those. And I got an almost perfect score on my verbal SATs, and a perfect score on my writing SAT (I don’t think this is a thing anymore). I did average on math SAT.
Never did I consider myself over achieving at all. I was like, the chill friend who didn’t care about school because I only did what I was interested in. But obviously compared to most high school experiences I was doing a lot of school stuff. I remember thinking it was weird when someone asked me if I was nervous doing only arts stuff because of how that would look on my resume when applying to colleges. It was definitely in the air that people chose extracurriculars based on how they would look.
I didn’t grasp how warped it was (and I was only there for 4 years!) until college because even though I did go to a private arty fancy pants school it was a lot less academically competitive than my high school. Like I was super surprised in my first year lit when a lot of kids talked about never having written a paper over like, 5 pages. I was over prepared to the point that I basically didn’t have to read anything the first two years because I’d read it all in high school.
Yes! There are a lot of books on how to get a debt free degree here. Some states have better programs than others, where you can go 100% free. But even ones that don’t have that still have a lot of options for inexpensive degrees. That’s what we did for my husband’s degree because we self-funded that. It was really affordable. And I know other people who have done it too. I have cousins who were a lot wiser than me and opted for cheaper schools, realizing it didn’t make a difference.
3 Likes
It is in the rich Northeast too!. I know a lot of people who married within the ivy system or similar, and then did exactly what you described, down to the woman not working. I remember the first high school person buying a home in the town we’d lived in. It was like $700k and we were in our late twenties but they were both wall street people. She described it as a modest fixer upper and was not being ironic, and probably really did feel that way because it was a lot cheaper than many other homes in the area. I also know a lot of two person worker couples where they are both really high profile types.
My cousin’s wife has always struck me as one of these women who is, if not unhappy that she stayed home, not totally fulfilled? I really wonder how much of the pressure cooker environment in places like that is (not to blame it all on women) these stay at home moms who are way over educated and under utilized*. To this day she mentions the schools she went to and the job she had pre-kids, and her youngest is a senior in high school. It’s like they are on this ultra overachiever track for 16+ years and then when they get pregnant they put allllll of that energy onto CHILDREARING. And it’s…a lot.
*The reason I say under utilized is because they don’t actually do much domestic work. So they’re stay at homes who don’t cook often, don’t clean, don’t change diapers unless they want to, don’t do laundry, don’t do lawn care, etc. That leaves a lot of time for obsessively working out (so common) and other physical upkeep (botox, etc.), “girls trips”, and helicopter parenting. And guess what skills their kids don’t learn? Anything to do with “adulting”. I honestly think it’s a massive factor in the amount of difficulty and anxiety related to being a functioning person. Because if you are used to doing nothing but studying and extracurriculars in your big gorgeous house, I think suddenly having to live in an apartment and do laundry and budget feels like abject poverty.
5 Likes
This is a bit of a tangent but I’ve also seen a lot of twenty-somethings who got a full parent-supported ride through college expecting that their first house will be equivalent to what their parents had when that kid was graduating high school and not considering that their parents had been working for decades by that point. That wasn’t necessarily how their parents lived when they were in their twenties.
5 Likes