23. They Care About Celebrities
You can tell a lot about someone’s socioeconomic status by how much they care about celebrity culture. Middle-class people tend to look up to rich and famous people, at least in part because they want to live vicariously through the people whose faces constantly show up in the magazine aisle at the grocery store. If their favorite celebrities are wearing a certain clothing trend or buying a certain health product, they will try to get on the train and start doing the same thing. One might think that instead of meeting their own needs and living their own lives, these people are just trying to imitate the people around them.
People who are already rich do not care as much about the lives of celebrities. To them, these are just other people who worked hard for their money and position in life. Those who have worked hard to earn their money and get to a high station in life did not do so by copying other people and trying to live vicariously through someone who has already attained wealth and prestige. They have no need or desire to follow celebrities because they have charted the course of their own lives and are perfectly happy just the way that they are.