Oooh Kimmy… you’s in trooooouble.
You got excited at 5:12 ⬇︎ and exclaimed:
“I have the best advice for women in business. Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days…”
😬
Of course the Internet did it’s thang and vomited passive-aggression everywhere. Rightfully. It’s an obscene, awe-inspiring ridiculous that a comment like that came from Kim (or any Kardashian).
They may work hard to grow their wealth, but their retire-if-they-want-to mountain of de-risking seed money came from a purple-unicorn, one-in-a-billion bit of grace… by basically existing and doing what comes 😏ally. Almost no one in the reality (including most rich people) stumble onto their income stream(s) that easily.
And hard work for the rich is very different than for most. The rich have the *ultimate* privilege of being able to enter whatever business they want, when and how they choose. Doing what you want while controlling context is a special kind of awesome – one the vast majority will never experience. It makes working hard easier, natural and invigorating… even when shit happens. And if too much shit happens, the rich can safely wash their hands of it and move on – another luxury the vast majority also don’t *really* have.
Despite all that, though, she ain’t wrong: we are dealing with a legit, multi-layered motivation problem.
(Layer 1) Some people are just lazy. They don’t have goals or seek any higher purpose other than fulfilling their base needs. Not awesome, but not the whole story…
(Layer 2) We’ve spent decades smugly shitting all over lower-ranking, lower-paying, blue-collar jobs… which is LOTS of them. Dismissive, wildly disrespectful judgments are often made of those who do them as less-than… failures. Who wants to work (and work hard) at a job they’ll be spurned or insulted for having… especially when they can collect unemployment instead? GO CLASSISM GO! 👊💩
(Layer 3) Media saturates us with the baller ideal of living the good life while winning easily (which makes it the most winning). Sure the hard work has to be done, but that’s for other, less-magical people. Those drones handle the boring details while real winners focus on sexy big-picture stuff and tasting the best of everything (a lá Kardashian social media). If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing it right… which means most people (even fancy educated ones) aren’t doing it right. Not a 👌 mass-motivator, and as the girls emphasize at the end, not how most of success actually works.
(Layer 4) For the Kardashian+-level rich, more work has huge potential benefits – freeing amounts of money, global reach, exotic travel, great PR, elite connections and more. But at most levels, hard(er) work doesn’t offer anything close to that. The best you get’s occasional raises or promotions, which usually come with more work and time demands. If there’s little-to-no chance of making independent-wealth money, harder work’s usually more cost than benefit – free time’s more valuable.
(Layer 5) A lot of people don’t seem to wanna work these days because they’ve already worked way, way too hard.
For many, work’s all-consuming. Whether blue-collars doing 10+-hour shifts, gig workers constantly side-hustling or white-collar “elites” racking up 50+-hour/at-all-hours weeks, billions are basically living to work, do errands and give their soul’s sloppy seconds to friends, family and passions.
Telling someone already working at their limit to work harder isn’t just wrong… it’s dangerous. It stokes hopelessness and desperation in people already trying their best, fueling things from breakdowns and great resignations to revolutions and national collapses.
So, yeah – issues.