Betty Sue makes $286,000 per month on Etsy. She started with nothing, and now she’s filthy rich.
Come on, man. The chances of that happening to the average person are close to zero. Stories like this give people unrealistic expectations.
Gotta keep the American dream alive.
Give people hope.
People with hope don’t revolt because they still have something to lose.
Wouldn’t want a class war brewing.
The irony is that far right IS actually people revolting
Well, they certainly are revolting, I’ll give you that.
More that they are generally revolting people.
The peasants are revolting… They certainly are!
-Monty Python
The chances of that happening to the average person are close to zero.
That’s the whole point. People don’t watch the news to hear “dog bites man” they watch it to hear “man bites dog”.
No one wants to watch a 2-3 hr long movie about someone’s regular Tuesday at the office they want to watch something that doesn’t happen everyday like an adventure, the perfect couple meeting, or the world ending.
Fair enough
People are more likely to accept an inherently flawed economic system if they thing they have any chance of “beating” it. Stories like this, although actually very rare, help reinforce that narrative.
I have had someone tell me that they’d rather live in an economic system “like we have in America” where people have a chance at rags to riches, than a system “like Germany, where the social safety net means the average person doesn’t have a chance at making it big.”
If anyone ever tells you wealthy people are intelligent, don’t believe them.
Yep, many also think they’re exceptional, and so they’ve convinced themselves they’ll be the exception.
Gotta keep that dream alive. Besides, why would I want to tax the rich when I’m this close to being rich myself! /s
Capitalist propaganda.
“Aspiration” to be more precise, it’s one of the ways capitalists convince large segments of the public that they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires, who just need to pull their bootstraps up hard enough, and they will make it, like the people in the programme did (conveniently they never address things like racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism, and other barriers that many people have to face just to survive, never mind thrive, and the fact that all of these barriers are artificial and created by people who benefit just as much from dividing society up and pitting us against each other, as they do from selling us rags-to-riches bullshit to get us to work harder to make them money).
I’ve never understood “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” which is impossible. No matter how hard you pull, you can’t, say, jump a fence. The rich are inadvertently telling poor people that becoming rich by working hard is impossible.
I think that’s the point, just like with “a few bad apples”, the original intent of the saying has been subverted to help those in power keep the rest of us down (if you just do this impossible thing, you’ll be just like us! Why don’t you just do that impossible thing already, you useless lazy bastard? And so on. It’s part cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel like they’re “self made”, part gaslighting convincing us we’re just not trying hard enough).
Its Capitalist Propaganda.
Because people will read them?
Nah everything is a conspiracy.
Its the US version of Arbeit macht frei
Work sets you free. Something like that.
Yes, reporting on a success of an individual is practically the same thing as openning the gas valve… Jesus F. Christ !
It’s the bullshit of hard work will result in success and money. The bullshit propaganda of ‘built out of their garbage’ its so easy anyone can do it, if only you work hard enough. And if you are not a successful independently wealthy individual you didn’t work hard enough and you are to blame, not the system that’s designed to keep large segments of society poor for the benefit of the rich.
It’s the bullshit of hard work will result in success and money.
That’s funny, because it’s not the liberal leaning folks who glorify the hard labor.
Neither do conservatives, they vilify labor
Communists and fascist are the conservatives on my side of the planet though. They both appeal on “the good old times, when the world was right”. Both equally glorify physical labor and fight against the intellectualism.
If they are conservative they are not communist
Sensationalism sells.
Work hard for your boss every day and you, too, can be rich! Bootstraps, people.
Something wrong with inspiring stories?
The chances of that happening to the average person
Pure lemmy right there. Hard work is useless and derided. Only chance determines success. What a miserable way to navigate life. Is there a word for “economic incel”?
Can I assume by that comment that you’re also a self-made millionaire?
No? Oh, why are you so lazy? After all, it just requires hard work. There are over a thousand self-made millionaires in my small town alone. The media call us a “statistical anomaly” but they just don’t see how easy it is if you just put down your 9-5 and get to work.
/s
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe that hard work can get you there but it is very, very uncommon. I work bloody hard, have a good paying job, no debt and investments but will only have enough for an ok retirement.
Friends with their own business who are more driven, work even harder and longer than I do and are absolutely better off, but they’ll never earn the level of money like this article suggests.
My issue is with the disingenuousness of the article. This sort of success requires a huge amount of work, a once in the lifetime (for most people) idea or market to kickstart and even then often still requires a bucket of 7-leaf clover levels of luck. But it’s sold by the media as others have detailed “if you just work harder…”
