“Building a six-figure dog mansion was a behavior that was so obscene, it made it impossible for me to feel any sort of yearning for her life.”

Let’s imagine that Paris Hilton had spent the $325,000 on a small Matisse painting to hang in her bathroom. It probably wouldn’t have made the news, and the only people to make any money out of the deal would have been an art dealer and the other rich person who was the previous owner. If she had just invested it in stocks to make more money, there would have been zero public interest. When Paris built her doggie mansion, a lot of ordinary designers and tradesmen got that money, and it was a unique and probably a fun project to work on. I’m sure that a lot of dog lovers got a chuckle out of it too, as did the usual folks who use any excuse to hate on the rich, like they give a damn what anyone else thinks beyond buying whatever shit they are slinging.

Rather than worrying about what Paris Hilton and other complete strangers are doing with their time and money, shouldn’t we all be more concerned about the community of people that we actually know? Even though those people are not neccessarily very attractive, very interesting, or morally any better than celebrities, that’s who we’re supposed to care about, right? The advantage of investing yourself emotionally with others in your immediate community is that when they disappoint you, you can get right up in their face and tell them how f’ed up they are. Then you can have them hating you right back, and you won’t have to wail into the void with a Medium post.