Source : THE AGE NEWS
Last week, it was revealed that Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman, recently acquired some 8 million shares in a company owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Notably, Rinehart made it clear that her company’s investment in Space X – worth almost $US1.4 billion at the time of disclosure – wasn’t just about the money, it was about her friend being “an exceptional and brilliant person”.
With friends like these who needs the adoration of tax-paying plebs? Apparently, the super rich do. Now, in addition to expecting us to marvel at their ability to generate personal wealth greater than some national GDPs, the billionaire brat pack wants us to love them for their personalities, too.
Rinehart issued her glowing praise of Musk just as the aspiring space coloniser was weathering the latest online shitstorm of his own making.
In an interview with The Economist, Musk bragged that his audience of almost 250 million people on X, the social media company he owns, made him “a popular guy”.
But when he was challenged over his posts weighing in on international politics and asked about his forays into territory he knows little about, Musk spat the dummy.
“Maybe some people do loathe me, that’s probably true. I don’t care … They hate you [the media] far more than they hate me,” he told journalist Zanny Minton Beddoes.
“I think you’re the problem, the media. And speaking of loathing, you’re loathed far more than I am, and you don’t even seem to realise. You’re hated, do you even know that? You probably don’t.”
His defensiveness suggested that though Musk was aware his wealth gave him incredible power, it couldn’t make people like him.
Fellow Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is all too familiar with this dichotomy. The Meta co-founder has to live in an awkward reality where the majority of the world simultaneously wants to use his products while despising him as a human being, which perhaps explains why he’s so obsessed with creating alternative realities.
Zuckerberg, who has previously complained about a lack of masculine energy and aggression in the corporate world, recently expressed his frustration that people don’t understand that Meta’s AI glasses – which can record people without their consent – aren’t just for creeps and sex pests, they’re for everybody!
Lauren Sanchez-Bezos, a relatively recent addition to the 1 percenter club, is also plagued by the belief that the rest of the world has gotten it wrong.
Despite being married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a man whose company has a track record of underpaying and overworking its employees, Sanchez-Bezos seems genuinely puzzled that some people aren’t enamoured with her.
Her efforts to charm the hoi polloi include spending an estimated $US76 million ($107 million) on a multi-day wedding in Venice, hiring an “image architect” to help her land the role of co-chair of the Met Gala (and lead financial sponsor), writing a children’s book about a dyslexic fly, and taking what she called “a girl’s trip to space” with Katy Perry.
In a sprawling interview with The New York Times in April, Sanchez-Bezos addressed the backlash she faces, and the unfairness of the world not recognising her as a kind of “good personality” billionaire.
“I can never imagine writing something mean on somebody’s Instagram,” she said. “It would actually break my heart. I want positive: You look great. You’re amazing. I want to just give everyone flowers. Why wouldn’t you?”
How her heart responds to the fact that an increasing number of employees of her husband’s company are paid so little they have to substitute their full-time incomes with food stamps is unknown.
One person who would understand Sanchez-Bezos is Rinehart, who suffered a cultural shock in 2024 when award-winning Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira had the audacity to paint a portrait of the mining magnate she considered to be unflattering.
It didn’t matter that Namatjira’s work sat alongside 20 other portraits depicting high-profile Australians, or that art is inherently subjective. Rinehart and the various members of Australia’s swimming team who lobbied for its removal on her behalf found it to be a “disrespectful” interpretation of her appearance, and couldn’t understand why an art gallery would continue to display a work that didn’t align with how she sees herself.
It seems that in the uppermost echelons of money and power, it’s easy to get used to hearing the sound of your own voice at the expense of all others. Because for all of their collective business acumen, there’s clearly one critical skill the world’s richest individuals lack, and that’s knowing when to shut up.
Katy Hall is a regular columnist and senior editor.
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Katy Hall is deputy state topic editor. She was previously the deputy opinion editor for The Age.
