Why Keeping Up With the Elites Is a Losing Game

Sometime around when I was probably 16 years old I was taught exactly what success looks like. I’m willing to bet money that you were too. The girls (or guys, whatever), the clothes, the cars, the white marble countertops and sunlight pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows. It looks like morning routines filmed in soft focus where you make yourself a cappuccino that would be the envy of real Italians. Success looks like captions about discipline on every social media post, hustle (or the appearance of it), manifestation or gratitude to God, and “doing the work.”

It looks drool-worthy for those of us who are still calculating how much we can spend on groceries without upsetting the savings account that gets smaller every month no matter how many shifts you pick up. You know, totally effortless if you just click here and subscribe to the right channel. Expensive things seem almost mundane with how often they’re flexed in your face at this point.

The uncomfortable truth that most people never say out loud though is that the people with real money don’t live on social media.

Trust me on this one. I’ve worked in luxury for well over a decade now, and can tell you I’ve seen wealth that is beyond imagining. I mean people who hire multiple bodyguards to walk around with them, and they aren’t celebrities that people would even notice. Here’s the thing I’ve learned the most: they don’t document their wins. True wealth don’t broadcast their strategies or explain how they made it.

…I mean, why would they? They don’t need to. They don’t need your money to add to their account as they teach you the “secret” to success. Why tell you exactly what they did and make their competition stronger? What we see online isn’t wealth and honestly never has been. It’s a performance someone is putting on for you, aspiration dressed up as achievement. It’s a theater production designed to keep the rest of us chasing silhouettes while the actual power moves quietly behind closed doors.

The elites aren’t scrolling for trends, they’re buying time, buying privacy, and buying distance from the systems we’re stuck trying to master.

By the time a “new opportunity” hits your feed, they’ve already entered, exited, and moved on. You’re late because you were never meant to see the front of the race.

Social Media Shows You the Echo of Money

Most of what gets labeled “elite lifestyle” online is created by people who are still trying to become elite.

Influencers renting Lamborghinis for photo shoots is a real thing and you can’t prove otherwise. Creators out there sometimes stage breakfast spreads they don’t actually eat. I’ve seen this first-hand, at a restaurant with a tasting menu where someone ordered it (at $218 per person), took photos and asked us to bring the next course. They didn’t take one single bite of the food and declined to have it wrapped when I offered.

Gurus selling courses about how they got rich don’t have enough money not to sell you that course. Think about it. If they did, they wouldn’t be bothered trying to con you out of your own money. Entrepreneurs monetizing motivation is one of the biggest scams online and I don’t know how anyone possibly believes it at this point. I’ve seen threads on Facebook “join my course to learn how I make $312,00/month with public speaking,” and I spend more time than I should reading the comments of people begging to know how to do that. If someone was making more than a quarter of a million dollars per month do you honestly think they would want to share that information with you?

Real money doesn’t require engagement metrics, this isn’t wealth. It’s proximity to wealth aesthetics which can be rented.

The richest people on the planet aren’t building personal brands on TikTok. They’re building holding companies and buying companies like TikTok. Look at Elon Musk. These people are out there acquiring land, moving capital through shell corporations and trusts and offshore accounts. They’re negotiating in rooms without cameras trying to remain hidden so others don’t catch onto their game.

Social media is where people perform success, but actual success operates quietly, and that distinction matters, because if you spend your life chasing the image of wealth, you’ll never touch the infrastructure of it.

Trends

By the time something becomes a trend, it’s already over. The hedge funds already positioned as corporations already pivoted and early investors already exited. The insiders already moved on. It’s like when avocado toast became a thing in a few restaurants then a year later it was in AppleBees and other chain restaurants. You’re the chain restaurant in this scenario in case you didn’t catch on.

What feels like being early to regular people is already late to people with power.

Trends don’t originate on Instagram, they originate in boardrooms, financial models, and private meetings. Social media delivers you the watered-down version to the masses once the profit has already been extracted. You think you’re discovering something new…you’re actually arriving at the gift shop after the museum closed.

So we go on and chase as we pivot our content, study virality, rewrite bios, optimize hashtags, and rebrand all of our accounts in the hope that now it’ll work. So here we are, watching everyone else and trying to reverse engineer their lives.

All while capital moves invisibly in the background.

Sadly for all of us, the algorithm is literally designed to occupy you without elevating you. Posting daily, refreshing analytics, comparing timelines, studying reach, obsessing over impressions, all of it is more time consuming than you’d care to admit. It feels productive and strategic, but it’s mostly emotional labor disguised as opportunity.

The system rewards visibility and engagement, not leverage. It keeps people exhausted, scrolling, and chasing relevance instead of building assets, skills, or any long-term systems they could use or leverage for themselves later.

You’re being farmed, and your attention is the product, while your hope is the fuel. While you’re trying to crack the code, someone else already owns the platform.

Real Wealth Is Quiet

People with money don’t need validation or to prove they’re winning to anyone else out there. They don’t need likes or need to explain themselves. They move slowly in the shadows and make decisions over dinners, not comment sections.

Silence is a luxury. When you realize that, you start to understand why so much online wealth feels loud, frantic, and performative. It’s trying to be seen.

We were taught to admire the finish line without ever being shown the starting conditions.

We compare our behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel. We internalize timelines that were never designed for us while measuring ourselves against people who inherited connections, capital, and safety nets long before they inherited ambition. Trying to “keep up” with elites is pointless because you’re watching actors while the directors stay offstage.

You’re chasing aesthetics while they’re acquiring assets.

The game is rigged because you’re not even playing the same game as them. Stop chasing illusions. Stop measuring your worth in likes and impressions. You’re never ever ever going to be on the same level as these elites if you’re actively trying to be. Starting trends is more powerful than following them will ever be. I’m not perfect myself, I often find myself falling into these traps for no reason whatsoever as well. I’m aware and working on it, and you should too!

Go out there and build something slowly, quietly, and imperfectly for yourself. That’s me with this blog. I write and write and write in the hopes that one day enough people will find my words and inspire when someone needs it the most.

Do your future self a favor and invest in skills that compound over time. Nurture projects that don’t rely on algorithms and prioritize ownership over optics. Create things that exist even if nobody claps, because one day someone might. Yes, it’s a gamble that no one will find my blog and read these words, but it lives out there endlessly. It’s a chance, which is more than others take.

Let go of the fantasy that someone else’s lifestyle is a roadmap. Stop chasing designer bags or that bottle of wine that costs more than a car or that Rolex that you’ll wear at a party every once in a while while living in an apartment with three other people. Most of what you’re seeing is just a shadow on the wall, so chasing after that elite lifestyle will never help you. Chasing shadows will leave you tired, broke, and convinced you’re behind, when in reality, you were pointed in the wrong direction. I don’t have this figured out either. I’m writing this while still trying to build something from scratch, but we can try together.

The elites don’t want you to keep up, they want you busy. Busy scrolling, comparing, or wasting your time on things that just don’t matter. A distracted population is easier to manage, especially when they get fired up and believe everything they see online. Emotional and busy is the best combination these elites could ever hope for.

Live in a way that doesn’t look impressive online or go viral. Patience, persistence, and building something slowly while nobody is watching is one of the most magical ways to live. That’s where real power starts, in ownership.

Start walking your own path instead of trying to keep up with what the world tells you. You’ll be much better off.

Why Keeping Up With the Elites Is a Losing Game

Social Media Shows You the Echo of Money

Trends

Real Wealth Is Quiet

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