 Hey folks sorry about the lack of uploads. Recently I have been working on an absolutely massive review of John Green's The Anthropocene Review and that's just my only YouTube focus right now. This video to that point was originally part of that review. I wrote, shot, and edited this and then decided it didn't actually fit but I'd already done all the work so I figured I should I should show it to all y'all because I think it's pretty good. Unfortunately the the the fun little thing that happens two-thirds of the way through has been spoiled by this video existing on its own as opposed to part of an anthology of sorts but you know I think you'll still enjoy it so please do that and I will see you all soon. There's something oddly impactful about using a metal credit card. It confers no tangible benefits over plastic and in fact is kind of a hassle to replace because you can't just put the thing in a shredder but when it comes time to whip it out and you feel that slight extra heft and rigidity in your hand the act of commerce suddenly has more for lack of a better term weight and maybe that's a good thing. Part of the reason credit cards can be so dangerous is how effortless it is to swipe tap or jam one piece of plastic into another. Every transaction feels the same and if it feels like nothing well you're just a little bit more likely to charge that thing you don't need and maybe don't even really want but whether that's a real phenomena it is obviously not why banks are moving towards premium materials rather it is about offering the illusion of status because once upon a time having a metal credit card did confer that. In 1999 American Express introduced the Centurion card colloquially known as the black card due to the coloring of its titanium plate. A previous black colored Amex card that was never publicly advertised was discontinued in the late 80s but in the decade that followed rumors abounded that maybe the card never went away and was still available to the most elite customers. That wasn't true until it was. There's plenty of speculation about what actually gets someone invited but its $10,000 initiation fee and $5,000 annual upkeep are for sure and the rumored spending requirements of between a quarter and half million dollars each year make the whole thing sound like a yacht if you have to ask you can't afford it and as with anything else that most people can afford it became a status symbol getting name dropped by the likes of Kanye West and Buster Rhymes. Imitators of course followed with companies releasing their own black cards capitalizing on the names cache at a fraction of the price and of course the build quality as well. Titanium is a lot less impressive now that the Amazon Prime Visa card is made of it too. I've held a real black card though a proper American Express Centurion and my first thought was you could probably kill someone with this not because it was heavy but because it was weirdly sharp. My second thought was I wonder if their private concierge would help you get off on those murder charges. I held it because a colleague wanted to flex his family's wealth and flashed it in the office. He's one of those guys whose primary personality trait is the fact that his parents are rich as fuck which makes it weird that he works in an office with the likes of me but whatever. Most of our interactions follow the same format. He walks over says something slightly suspect that I grown about and then makes a joke about being a rich white man and the fact that I while not rich am somehow still bougie enough for his sensibilities. Also he uses my Netflix password because no one loves free stuff more than rich people and I just don't care. I'm paying for it anyway I don't know two X's are on my Spotify family plan so and sure there's a part of me that wishes I had sheltered in place in his new Jersey mansion instead of my then 400 square foot apartment but that same part would have been just as happy in a whole lot of places that cost a whole lot less than even that apartment. It's all relative until it's not. Being in the presence of an actual billionaire is wild. It's only happened to me once more than 20 years ago when they weren't really in the public eye like they are now. You see a childhood friend of my mom's married into the Hearst family the Citizen Kane one and we went to visit one of their homes. The first thing I noticed was that their greenhouse was around the size of my parents people house but two moments from that day really burned into my mind both involving water. The first was sitting in a pool that looked down the football field that was their yard onto their private dock when it turned around I saw through an enormous bay window the personal chef cooking dinner with ingredients I had never heard of and if that's not some king shit I don't know what is that's a lie somewhere in this palatial estate was a fairly small unassuming room containing nothing but a ping-pong table. Now that was pretty cool on its own for a nine-year-old but after a few rounds they pushed the table out of the way pressed a little button in the wall and the fucking floor opened up revealing a wave pool. So if you're ever wondering what sort of dumb shit rich people spend their money on when they aren't paying people to build rocket-powered dicks it's indoor wave pools that they hide under ping-pong tables and I have spent basically my entire conscious life aware of that and also the fact that I will never be one of those people and that's fine. I was taught from an early age that wealth doesn't really mean anything having money is great and it makes a lot of things a lot easier but rich people aren't better than everyone else and much of the time they're worse. My parents dedicated themselves to helping the homeless and the mentally ill and children in the foster system and unfortunately jobs where you're helping people don't pay nearly as well as those where you're fucking them. If there was any sort of economic justice they would make a lot more than the men in suits who deny loans to the elderly but that ain't the world we live in and learning about the world from people who decided to do good for it makes the idea of riches at its expense fundamentally unpleasant and most riches are so bring back the guillotines right? John Green agrees with at least part of that. Five years ago a user on Quora asked why Green was worth only five million dollars presumably having found that number from some suspect celebrity net worth site. Many people responded most notably John Green and while he wasn't about to out his bank account on Quora his three-part answer is illuminating. One when we imagine that people's net worth is directly correlated with the value as a person or professional I think we give money too much power. Two in my admittedly limited experience the internet is not particularly good at telling you how much money someone has and three my family is incredibly lucky and privileged to have financial security but I'm not sure what money can do beyond providing financial security like I am not in need of a yacht I feel like owning a yacht would stress me out fair enough no it always comes back to yachts doesn't it and why not they are the quintessential rich boy toy or were until the billionaires decided they wanted to be astronauts not because they're expensive to buy which they certainly are but because they're hugely expensive to maintain to keep one up and running requires an additional 10 to 20 percent of the purchase price every single year it's where the saying that I used at the beginning of this comes from if you need to ask if you even need to think about the numbers that would be involved in making that work you can't afford it and really shouldn't try but that's clearly not the stress Green is talking about so he can apparently afford a yacht and you know what good for him capitalism comes up a few times in the Anthropocene reviewed by implication and name always negatively sometimes it's an offhand reference as in his digression on the great Gatsby in reviewing our capacity for wonder other times it's the whole damn point as with the grocery chain Piggly Wiggly or the board game Monopoly in all cases the paratextual success of the author makes the comments read like something of a victory lap punches thrown by a man who has won capitalism but also I hate that phrase I know that we're all about competition or whatever here but think about it when someone has won who lost because it sure as fuck wasn't capitalism and I think being a creative multi hyphenate is one of the less harmful ways to become rich but just as not everyone wins the economy the same way not everyone loses the same either living in Manhattan changes your relationship with money in profound ways most notably you lose context for the value of items the rest of the world suddenly becomes cheap a couple years ago a colleague came back from disney world and the first thing he said to me in utter disbelief was I thought the food prices at the park were reasonable and yeah burgers cost $15 and that probably doesn't include fries my rent in this one bedroom apartment is close to double the country's median mortgage payment and that is after a 22 percent reduction resulting from last year's pandemic led exodus from this neighborhood and I genuinely believe that I got a deal fucking Whole Foods is the affordable option when compared to your typical Manhattan grocer but despite all of that I got sticker shock the first time I walked into sacks Fifth Avenue I didn't really understand the hierarchy of department stores yet I was used to Macy's prices and thought maybe they'd be like slightly higher I wasn't ready for three figure t-shirts and four figure hoodies still I made a game of trying to cost and I was never correct or even close at some point I found myself staring at a jacket with an enormous tiger sewn into the back it was $5,000 I pulled it off the rack tried it on laughed very hard what I saw in the mirror I couldn't imagine wanting to own that let alone putting down five grand for the privilege but just as being in New York makes $15 burgers seem reasonable being around those astronomically expensive items made the occasional sale rack in the store seemed downright cheap and I don't know what drove it exactly but when I found a cool blue t-shirt from a brand I had never heard of called theory the markdown to $70 felt totally reasonable despite the fact that I had never spent more than like $30 on a t-shirt up to that point when I was younger I almost exclusively wore oversized black t-shirts with angry slogans alongside baggy cargo pants there was a t-shirt slash gay porn shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts called don't panic that was my go-to for screen printed remarks about how my hate was divided equally amongst everyone or that this was the part where I nodded to act like I was listening a few of them made it to college but over its course I calmed down a lot saw those shirts for what they were and with that revelation came a pretty dramatic change to my wardrobe my angry black shirts were replaced with solid unadorned colors my cargo pants became jeans and chinos after I switched from don't panic to banana republic I distinctly remember looking in the mirror and thinking that if my younger self could see what he would become he probably would have just ended things right there like he always wanted to and I thought good I was awful in the years since that fateful first foray into sacks my wardrobe has gotten pricier but even more homogenous shorts shirts the black suit that I bought because I wanted to look like cherry young from itsy in the one dance video all from theory of course I never bought any of it full price because it's a lot of money always the sale section or the outlet store where it's still not cheap but it's reasonable if you believe as I do that it's worth spending a little bit more for something a little bit nicer that will last a little bit longer this perhaps is why I am bougie enough for my black card carrying colleague so perhaps it was inevitable that when the time came for me to release merch for the channel I put everyone's money where my mouth is while fulfillment company printful has dozens of options for blanks upon which they can print number one at the week air review superfan willow's dope designs I was rather limited by the fact that actual people likely to buy merch for this channel live all over the world the week air review shirts have shipped to three continents thus far so global fulfillment was critical I chose three well reviewed options meaning that criteria at three different price points seven dollars thirteen dollars and seventeen dollars and had samples made I was hoping the middle ground would be the one a solid option that would feel good and allow me to charge a little bit less than the twenty five dollar standard that I think most merch hits rather than a little bit more it did not of the three I only enjoyed wearing the bella in canvas 3413 though another colleague who co-founded a streetwear brand that sells pretty cool stuff and so asked me to bring in the samples because obviously he's interested in that kind of thing thought that even the seven dollar one was a solid option which probably says something about both of us and that was that I'm obviously not going to attach my name to a piece of clothing that I wouldn't wear and we have established that I think I am too good for cheap things I don't love that every time someone buys a shirt I pay anywhere between 1695 and 1999 to have it printed but it's worth it and anyway merch was never supposed to be a big money maker for me none of this was three years on the week air review has a handful of revenue streams adding up to a few hundred dollars a month and that's great it's a few hundred dollars that I wouldn't have otherwise plus every once in a while it's more by the time my review of Bo Burnham's inside hit 100,000 views it had made around 400 dollars in ad revenue nothing to sneeze at but at the same time not nearly enough to even consider building a career on but if we extrapolate that in order of magnitude and say that a video hit a million views an absurd number that would almost single-handedly double my channel's current count for a thousand dollars for a video could be a game changer I might have to actually pay taxes on that instead of just putting it in an income expense report that my parents account and laugh sad in disregards a few months back I decided that I wanted to have one pair of like nice jeans so I went to Nordstrom to see what they had and of course I took the opportunity to look at some of the fancier items on display as well one item caught my eye a shirt on the Saint Laurent rack usually designer t-shirts don't interest me as I said I shifted hard to solid colors with an area logo in sight but the high-end tie dye just struck me I never felt drawn to a shirt quite like that and for the first time in my nearly 30 years on this planet I thought maybe it would be worth having a ritzy logo on my chest I'd like to design more without but you know it's pretty subtle as those things go I played my little game $300 I guessed already a preposterous amount to spend on a t-shirt but I wasn't ready for the reality $490 plus tax I shouldn't have been surprised of course Saint Laurent has one of those stores where literally the entire stock is clearly visible from the street socially distanced product placement that given the cost of rent in midtown so-ho etc guarantees eye-watering prices on every single item I left the store with a decent new pair of jeans but I kept thinking about that damn shirt and I made myself a promise if I got to a million views on a video I would buy myself a $500 t-shirt because why the fuck not and so I thought it would be funny to review the idea of this shirt and what it meant and said about me that I had made a hypothetical milestone celebration so stupidly superficial and then I thought of something even funnier actually buying it so I did let's try it on shall we I don't I don't really know what I was expecting if we're being entirely honest it's not like I thought the heavens would open and angels would come down in a chorus but I I really did think I would feel something positive I really do like this design a lot and the idea of going from never wearing a logo to putting fucking Saint Laurent in my chest it's it is funny to me like it's the sort of committing to the bit that I really strive for in my life and I guess this is also committing to a bit but it's a very different joke that I'm making and maybe if it was the original joke I would feel better if I had done this ridiculous thing to celebrate another ridiculous thing I would be happy the only thing I am right now is stressed wearing this is is is really stressing me out it's not like a irreparably stained a shirt before or done anything that would give me reason to think that I'm about to destroy this but honestly it's hot in here and I'm worried about the fact that after two minutes I'm sweating into it and that's a problem I can't I can't be worried about that if I want to wear this or anything like this and maybe it's obvious that a $500 t-shirt could never feel worth it to someone for whom $500 is a lot of money but it's it's it's not even that comfortable like it doesn't feel like any other shirt I've ever worn and that's interesting and whatever but the material is kind of flimsy feeling it's not nearly as pleasant to touch as you think and that's it's it's weird why obviously it's about the name on the front but I've always believed that there was more to it like I really did believe that it wasn't just the name but I'm looking at it and I can see that it's it's not that's that's all there is I I don't know why that makes me as sad as it does glad I kept the receipt perfect thank you so much for watching thank you particularly to my patrons my mom hammering marco cat saracada benjamin schiff anthony coal magnolia dentin elliott fowler greg lucina liam knipe cojo willow phil bates iron the sword timmo riley zimmerman and the folks who'd rather be read than said if you like this video that's great because this is sort of what the next review is going to be like but with a lot more of it if you didn't I this channeling for you fam uh but I hope to see you I hope to see you then