Psychological tricks rich people use to look gener

🎀 Highlights

As a UX designer, you understand the power of subtle design choices in shaping user interactions. Apply the same principles to create illusions of generosity in your social circles!

"Spent" by Geoffrey Miller.

I get more social value from the scarf by being seen as more generous, without actually spending more money, so I can pretend to be rich while being a cheap asshole!

the cheaper the category of objects, the more expensive my particular gift will seem in comparison to other items in that category.

if you look at car ads these days, they don’t talk about the features of the car at all. Instead, it’s most about the lifestyle you can live or the “type of person you are” who buys a car like this.

This car ad doesn’t tell me anything about how many airbags it has, the towing capacity, or passenger comfort. It doesn’t even tell me how much it costs! This is shopping for “signalling”.

A F-150 truck is so large that you need a step-stool to get on, the tires are so enormous that they destroy your driveway, and the actual usable part, the truck bed, they had to make smaller or else it wouldn’t fit into a normal parking spot.

If you don’t have a lot of money, you can still buy gorgeous looking designer furniture that isn’t made out of real wood, but engineered wood, which is way cheaper to produce and still lets you feel like you live in a magazine.

Paradoxically, mass manufacturing means that it’s more expensive to make custom, handmade goods than something standardized for the mass market. This leads to our second form of signalling,

Precision Precision is about showing off how much labor, effort, and artisanship you put into the product.

Do you even remember what the difference is between an iPhone 15 and an iPhone 14? What did they add? A USB-C port? Apple didn’t even invent that?!

Just imagine all the rare earth metals being extracted from dozens of countries, put on container ships criss-crossing the oceans to be delivered into a Class 5 cleanroom so it can be assembled into a smartphone.

As a consumer, your hands are cleaann—we’ve taken all your environmental waste and just brushed it under the rug of all the factories distributed around the

As a consumer, your hands are cleaann—we’ve taken all your environmental waste and just brushed it under the rug of all the factories distributed around the world.

Coca-Cola isn’t more difficult to produce than your generic store-brand soda. But people still perceive Coca-Cola to be “better” than the generic version.

A brand is totally dematerialized—Harvard is not the buildings and libraries—every school has those.

Harvard exists only inside your brain!

But if I slap a brand on a product, that physical object suddenly becomes much more appealing.

But if I slap

If you care about waste, precision, or reputation, you’re more willing to overpay because you’re shopping for signalling, and not for utilitarian reasons.

as a shortcut, so you can just adopt the stereotype they’ve advertised without having to develop a personality yourself.

Even if you have no personality, and have never played basketball before, you can just charge a pair of Nike Air Jordans to your credit card, and you’ll seem sporty and athletic, and quickly and easily adopt a personality handed to you by a multinational corporation

If I say “I love your shoes, where did you get them?”, that’s an invitation for a whole world of conversation that you can open for me. If the only story you can answer with is “Oh I got it from Amazon”, that invites the least conversation, there’s nothing you’ve given me to jump off of to learn more about you.

But if you say: “I got these during the pandemic when I started running as a hobby. I didn’t end up enjoying it and stopped after the first few times but I met my roommate at the running club I joined!”

pandemic when I started running as a hobby. I didn’t end up enjoying it and stopped after the first few times but I met my roommate at the running club I joined!”

If you’re going shopping, just be honest with yourself that you’re doing it to show off, because we all do! We’re all humans, and we’re all trying to present some image about ourselves to the outside world.

I’m lazy at organizing my home, and I will never be able to take care of a cast iron pan. It’s just too much work to clean properly and season it all the time, so if I’m telling stories about how much I love cast iron pans, not only is this misleading, but the pan itself will just be a frustrating reminder of my failure to take care of it every time I see the pan getting sad and rusty in the sink.

people can struggle psychologically to budget and save money is that shopping fills a hole to compensate for your lack of personality.

So if you tell someone to stop shopping, it’s really painful—like telling you to sacrifice a part of your identity and give up this personality that you’ve purchased.

there are so many practical alternatives to show off your personality without paying full retail price.

1. Pay for active instead of passive experiences Even if you don’t go shopping for physical products, and you spend most of your money on paying for experiences, the idea of narrative value still applies.

travel. You can travel passively, like going to Spain to eat food or visit museums, or you can travel to develop your personality by meeting the local community, learning a new language, and building empathy for people from other cultures.

If you just want the pure hedonistic experience of going to a concert, or hiking in the mountains, then great!

But if you’re trying to show off, then instead of hiking to take a selfie of yourself in front of the same mountain that thousands of other people have also seen, you can consider building a narrative like “I enjoy hiking the White Mountains because being in nature is how I come up with creative ideas for my blog.”

Borrow it I host a lot of events, and I could move into a larger, fancier apartment downtown, but this would triple my housing costs. Even though I can afford it, realistically, I only need a large space about once a month or so, not every week, and certainly not every day.

Borrowing also helps give me an excuse to hang out with my friends more, as it makes it safe for them to feel like they can ask for a favor from me in return,

ask for favors from my friends to host parties that get especially large in their apartments instead.

Borrowing stuff from your friends lets you show off that you have deep enough friendships with people who trust you with their stuff,

Repair it One of my housemates saw an ad on Craigslist giving away a broken hot tub for free,

Now when he invites friends over, he has an awesome story to tell about his tight knit network of friends who were able to help him move a big,

I drive a 2014 Mustang—I love my car, but it’s pretty outdated compared to the latest most technologically advanced version from 2024. But I don’t actually need all the latest features. The only thing my 10-year-old car is missing is bluetooth. Instead of spending $40,000 to buy a new car from 2024, I can get a $10 bluetooth to AUX cord

drive a 2014 Mustang—I love my car, but it’s pretty outdated compared to the latest most technologically advanced version from 2024. But I don’t actually need all the latest features. The only thing my 10-year-old car is missing is bluetooth. Instead of spending $40,000 to buy a new car from 2024, I can get a $10 bluetooth to AUX cord adapter that automatically connects to my phone, and suddenly I have the only feature I actually need from the brand new car, while spending 99.9% less money.

I drive a 2014 Mustang—I love my car, but it’s pretty outdated compared to the latest most technologically advanced version from 2024. But I don’t actually need all the latest features. The only thing my 10-year-old car is missing is bluetooth. Instead of spending $40,000 to buy a new car from 2024, I can get a $10 bluetooth to AUX cord adapter that automatically connects to my phone, and suddenly I have the only feature I actually need from the brand new car, while spending 99.9% less money.

5. Get it used I’ll admit it, fast fashion is a lot of fun. But what’s not fun are all the sweatshops, child labour, and lead paint in the clothes

“hey, cool shirt Bill!” I can easily reply: “yo, thanks! I got it from a thrift shop 😊 you’re welcome to join me to go thrifting next time”;