A practical guide to becoming a “New Rich” (and making everyone hate you in the process)

Advanced lessons in rudeness, incivility, and arrogance

Introduction

In a world where elegance and respect are overrated, today we teach you how to succeed while being rude, ostentatious, and completely devoid of common sense. If you're one of those who believe that money or "social status" gives you permission to trample on others, this manual is for you.

Lesson 1: The art of ostentation

We mustn't lose sight of the "Style" that should characterize someone of your class, you know: A Brand Nouveau Riche... or, a hard-working aspirationalist who wants to turn their limited income into an excellent debit bank account, for now. That style defines us, remember, and it shouldn't change at any time. The golden rules are: clothes with sparkles, fluorescent sneakers, chewing gum like a “Street Girl”, dark glasses even if you're indoors or at night, never, under any circumstances, take off your "Gang" cap in a restaurant. Remember, ostentation above all else.

A true “Nouveau Riche” never goes unnoticed. Make sure you mention the price of EVERYTHING you buy, especially if it's a knockoff. A watch? “It's Swiss, honey, but not everyone can tell.” A BMW? “Yes, it's a dealership, but I disguised it as a used Tsuru to throw it off the scent. You know, these are tough times!”

Instagram stories from the most expensive restaurant in town (even if you only ordered mineral water), what moment did you live in?

Lesson 2: Public Manners (or Lack of Them)

Remember, the rest of us are poor people here to be jealous of you, and jealous of the fierce kind. If no one moves to let you in, that's what elbows are for. It doesn't matter if it's a lady (damn, we're in the age of equality!), a child (why doesn't their mother notice you're the one who's going to pass?), an elderly person (what, are the nursing homes full yet?), or a woman in a state of weightlessness (what, was it your fault?).

If you drive your car, which sets you apart from the rest of us, what's the point of turn signals if you know where you're going? Others should guess. And handicapped parking is just a suggestion, not a law. Always remember that.

Another fundamental rule is to remember the rule of every “Nouveau Riche”: "I take it even if it's not my turn." This applies in traffic, in lines at the ATM, or at the supermarket, and also when talking to someone (the louder you talk, the more right you are).

Lesson 3: Treatment of waiters, employees and other “Invisible People”

You should never stop showing who you are. The rest of the poor ones must understand that YOU are more important than even the King of England himself, or at least the equivalent. All those who work for you must go out of their way to please you and understand that you are different and special, that you have worked hard to achieve your status. It means, it's not for nothing that you're one of those who spend three hours haggling over sackcloth at street markets. Your behavior toward the poor must teach lessons and make an impact. You must snap your fingers to call over the waiter, or the employee, or whatever servant appears in front of you. What, aren't you important? As an additional tip: if you demand to speak to the manager because the soup was "Too Hot," It'll give you extra points.

Key phrases when someone has a different opinion than you: “What do you know?” or “Did I ask you?”

Lesson 4: The Law of “Me First”

Every self-respecting and self-respecting “Nouveau Riche” should never forget to make their class clear and demonstrate it as much as possible. The basic rules of the lifestyle should be made clear, such as keeping trash on your side of the street, blasting music at 3 AM, making too much noise with the motorcycle you paid for in installments, and bringing pets off leashes... Enjoy! The neighborhood is your backyard.

If the police give you a warning, remember: it's always someone else's fault. Good manners? That's for the poor.

Remember, to make it clear what class you belong to, you must always keep these details in mind: buy a $500 bottle at the club and leave it half-finished, just so they can see it! And also remember that by following these steps, you'll be remembered for all the bad things... but, hey, at least they're talking about you!

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There are two warm-up questions to take on the Final Master's Exam in Incivility :

1.- How many times a day do you shout in traffic: “Move over, asshole!”?

2.- From 1 to 10, how often do you say “Do you know who I am?”

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Evaluation Exam:

FINAL EXAM: "ARE YOU A “NOUVEAU RICHE” OR AN ASPIRATIONIST?"

Instructions: Mark the options that apply to your life with a ✓. At the end, add up your points and find out your "Oh, man, you're so bad!" level .

Section 1: Table Manners (or Lack of Them)

How do you order a cut of meat in a fine restaurant?

a) "Medium ground, please."
b) "So fresh it almost says Mooh !"
c) "Like for tacos!"

When you finish your meal, what do you do?

a) You say thank you and leave a tip.
b) You check the bill 3 times and complain about the bread you didn't order.
c) You take the cutlery "just in case."

If you don't like the food, what is your reaction?

a) You eat it without complaining.
b) You return it and demand to speak to the chef to "teach him how to cook."
c) You post a review on Google: "They poison people here. 1 star."

Section 2: Public Life (The Art of Being Hated)

In traffic, your philosophy is:

a) Respect the signs.
b) "I take the plunge because I'm in a hurry (and my time is worth more)."
c) Using the sidewalk as an express lane while yelling, "THEY ARE NOT MOVING!"

When parking, do you prefer to:

a) Find a permitted location.
b) The disabled parking space ("It only takes 5 minutes").
c) Anywhere, but with flashing lights (the "hazzies" are your divine safe conduct).
 
At the cinema, how do you enjoy the film?
 
a) Silently, like normal people.
b) Narrating the plot out loud: "Don't go there, dude, it's the villain's mom!"
c) Answering calls and putting the phone on speakerphone: "CAN'T YOU SEE  I'M AT THE CINEMA?"

 
Section 3: Social Relations (The Gift of Elegant Rudeness)
 
When someone disagrees with you, you respond:
 
a) "I understand your point."
b) "What do you know, poor thing?"
c) "Oh, forgive me, Mrs. Buckingham!" (with a mocking tone).
 
When dealing with waiters or employees, your motto is:
 
a) "Please" and "Thank you."
b) "And my soda? I ordered it 20 seconds ago!"
c) Snap your fingers and point with your eyes (the universal language of "Move on!").
 
On social media, your favorite content is:
 
a) Travel photos or memes.
b) Selfies with the BMW steering wheel (and the logo clearly visible).
c) Record yourself throwing garbage in the street with the hashtag #IAmFree .
 
Section 4: Bonus (Just in case something was missing)
 
What would you wear to a fancy dinner?
 
a) A decent wine.
b) Your bank deposit certificate (framed).
c) Your turn your speaker and play RAP for them “get excited."
 
Your most used phrase on WhatsApp is:
 
a) "Hello, how are you?"
b) "Send me location."
c) "What are you wearing? Send me a photo..."
 
RESULTS (Add your ✓):
 
0-3 points: How boring! You even seem educated.
 
4-7 points: You're on the right track, but you still need to shout more in public.
 
8-11 points: Congratulations! You're a "MasterClass Nouveau Riche" Your HP printer certificate is in the mail.
 
12+ points: SOCIETY ALERT! Even Al Capone would say, "No way, calm down."
 
Notes: If this test gave you more than 8 points, please don't follow us on social media. We already have enough traffic. And if you identified with this article, please don't share it: there are already many of us who support you.
 
Contribution of
 
Messy Blues
 
(But don’t tell anyone!!)

Empty Brains, The New Generation

The current lack of creativity

Many years ago, 1980's, I was lucky enough to see Deep Purple (August 1985, Los Angeles, CA) with its most respectable lineup led by Ian Gillan who of course was also graced by the legendary Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord , Ian Paice and Roger Glover. I guess it'll go down in history as a stroke of luck for me because that lineup is unrepeatable. Some very good new songs, and some old ones that were almost faithful to the originals, and a strange version of " Smoke." on the Water ”. As a musician, I can understand many reasons of why a group of the stature of Deep Purple didn't do a live transcription of their albums, but at that concert they changed the musical concept of that song. My addiction to retro, you know. I was expecting something similar to their version from "Made in Japan" album but I saw Blackmore modifying his own guitar solo, the one that had inspired so many guitarists, this time using a "Slide" and Ian Gillan doing a voice game with the audience: “Smooooooke” on the wateeeer... a fire in the sky”, for not to have an “Encore” after that song, or at least I don’t remember them having one. Years later, I read an interview with Blackmore and he was asked why his guitar solos sounded different every time he played one of his songs live, to which Blackmore replied: “The art is in finding the note, not in copying it”, referring to the lack of creativity that results from maintaining a musical work as a mere transcription, especially where the space of a solo, for any instrument, is destined for spontaneous creativity. In other words, Blackmore was talking about creating, reinventing and improving versus the idea of always reusing the same resource, over and over again.

Ritchie Blackmore has never been known for his stability within a band, not even his own (Rainbow), but it's true that he's always been a musician who searches and moves forward, never taking his steps back. And this brings me back to today and, regardless of how old I may be, I don't find much creativity in today's Mainstream. I see that today there is music of poor quality, pretentious shows, plastic art arising from vector software, irrelevant Stand-ups, abuses of all kinds with Artificial Intelligence (important: I'm not criticizing AI, I'm criticizing those who DON’T know how to use it and those who abuse it), and a constant over-exploitation of blockbuster franchises. Today the Disney company is lining its pockets with the royalties from something that was a good idea in 1978: "Star Wars” and turned it into a franchise in which the innocence of an adventurer Luke Skywalker fighting an evildoer called, at that time, Lord Darth Vader; it later became the first galactic Soap Opera in which everyone appears, including Diego Luna , and the beginnings of the story were more modern than the middle part of the adventure.

Those great times when the most fantastic thing about cinema was the Sunday popcorn matinee with your school friends, watching "The Lone Ranger” with his faithful “Tonto”, and you went with your best shirt, stinking of “Avon” lotion, your shoes “polished” and your hair all stuck with “Gel”. Maybe the Lone Ranger was a bad franchise or even worse, but every week there was a different adventure. Although I don’t think I went every Sunday and, when I went, the movies were also about the Silver Masked Man, El Santo.

But, returning from that journey into nostalgia, I must accept that "commercial" isn't always synonymous of “bad”, but it's true that capitalism tends to homogenize art. My point: There's little creativity these days, and neither art nor literature presents new proposals that, as in the past, change the course of history. I emphasize "Art and Literature" for one reason: the analysis of science, which will later make an unexpected turning point in this article. So, returning to the original idea, the commercialism implicit in daily life tends to dilute the essence of culture as a vehicle for thought, something that modernity seems to be downplaying.

We have, for example, that many films made in the last century such as “The Exorcist”, “Star Wars” (1978), “West Side Story” (1961), “Frankenstein” (1925), among many others; have not been surpassed. Today there is a culture of “Re- Making”, “Prequeling”, “Sequeling” and “Rebooting” to exploit many works of art made previously (and which do not exactly benefit from it) but there are no new proposals. Films like Star Wars or Avengers (from Marvel), in their original context, broke the mold, but today many of their sequels/spinoffs are gratuitous exercises in nostalgia with "Trademark". And the same thing happens with the constant attempts to reinvent Batman and Superman based on that silly Superman of Ilya Saldkin (1978) and Tim Burton's the pretty bastard Batman (1979). And what can we say about Spider-Man? That character had been a childhood favorite for many, and in the 1980s, he had a painful attempt at being brought to the home screen (TV). However, in 2002, Sam Raimi created the first official superhero film, an idea that was recycled several times in less than twenty years. Harry Potter went from being a charming literary saga to a forced expanded universe (Fantastic Beasts), where money dictates creativity.

Horror movies? Perhaps the bitterest part of this topic. In the 1930s, “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” created more fear reactions and psychological tension than the constant abuse of abusive “Gore” effects and senseless murders in today's horror films, with their convoluted attempts at second-rate fear. “The Exorcist” is probably the film of the genre that has deserved more profanations than any other, since a terrible work in “The Exorcist II; The Herectic” to “The Exorcist: Believer ”, going through bad jokes like “The Exorcist III” (a failure by its own author: William Peter Blatty), “Exorcist: The Beginning” and “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist”. In short, all of them exploiting the success that William Friedkin had in 1973. I brought this up precisely to highlight the lack of current creativity. It's true that the "Vintage" trend has its charms, but come on, looking for a 1969 Volkswagen Sedan isn't the same as making hundreds of new films about themes that defined an era years ago. Of course, the current creative mediocrity also applies to other cultural industries like Korean K-pop or Japanese Anime, which have repetitive formulas. Where did the talent to create go?

Speaking about Frida Kahlo. Her painting "The Broken Column" or "The Two Fridas" are powerful in the context of reality and their message to women, but her image today is more of a symbol of resistance packaged for consumption (from interactive museums, to Barbie dolls). Would she have wanted that? It's hard to know, and I personally don't think Frida approved of her conversion to consumerism (she was a communist). Furthermore, in the current context, art loses its essence when it becomes a commodity. But let's return to Ritchie Blackmore's quote mentioned above. It captures the core of the criticism: the essential difference between creative pursuit (risk and originality) and safe repetition (the stolen formula and the copy). And so, under that magnifying glass, many franchises and canonized figures fall into the latter. Blackmore brings up an opinion of mine about "Tribute Bands" those dedicated to reviving the glories of great groups like Queen, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, The Beatles, The Who and Deep Purple themselves, among many others. Blackmore, as a musician, knows that playing "Smoke on the Water" is not art playing it a thousand times over: the art was in composing it in 1973. Today, many franchises are like bands that only play covers of themselves and many other musicians join the profit sharing without having had even the slightest bit of talent. Where is the "Sought Note" today? Even as a "rebellion", true art is in challenging, not in repeating, and today's most commercial artists reveal their creative shortcomings by revisiting past successes.

In the 1970s, groups like Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer took music to symphonic, conceptual and technically challenging terrain, because they had Innovation (Fusion of rock with jazz, classical and folklore -Example: "Close to the Edge" by Yes-) and Financial Risk (albums like "The Dark Side of the Moon" or Rush's "2112" were sonic and philosophical experiments, not calculated commercial products). Today: Bands like Porcupine Tree or Opeth maintain that spirit, but the genre is no longer Mainstream. Why does it matter? Because it was a time when art in popular music took itself seriously, unafraid of being pretentious. And let's not leave out a genius in every sense of the expression: Jean-Michel Jarre and his creation of the “New Age: The Sound of the Future”. With his albums "Oxygène" and "Équinoxe" Jarre was a pioneer in bringing synthesizers to the general public, creating cosmic atmospheres and presenting at the time Innovation (Use of technology -like the ARP 2600 synthesizer- to create soundscapes), Legacy (It influenced generations of electronics, from Vangelis to Daft Punk) and Counterpoint (Today's “New Age” may sound "cheesy and even boring", but at the time it was revolutionary).

Being objective and leaving aside my grandiloquent approaches, I can also mention a Mexican musician, Alex Lora, who is probably not exactly a Mozart and in fact some of his famous songs are a (I want to believe unintentional) plagiarism (like “Metro Balderas” with rhythms and chords taken from Chuck Berry’s songs and lyrics by Rodrigo González, and the song "La gente dice" which is a clear plagiarism of the song "Linda Lu" by Ray Sharpe). Lora was authentic in his day and his style, but Mexican urban rock later fell into clichés that tried to repeat the formula invented by the leader of “El Tri”. Something that again shows a total lack of creativity. It is not an accusation towards Lora but towards his too many imitators, even though plagiarism is still villainy. In contrast, we have current creators who are less pretentious and quite creative who could overcome the line I am pointing out, such as “Black Country, New Road” or the experimental jazz of Matana Roberts. “Pound-for-a-chickpeas” in a modern world full of intellectual shortcomings.

In music we have survivors from the 1980s who still mark paths even though they might have their dark sides, like Metallica, who combined thrash rawness with complex structures ("Master of Puppets") but they diluted a lot after their famous "Black Album". Yngwie Malmsteen possesses dazzling technique, but for some people, Yngwie lacks emotion and they believe he’s just "shredding" without substance. The much-cited Ritchie Blackmore, whose mastery has been highlighted since "Highway Star" with Deep Purple to the folk of “Blackmore's” Night”, is always looking for something new (although it hasn't always worked out for him). In cinema, we have true revelations like Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Ari Aster (Midsommar) or Brandon Cronenberg (Infinity Pool), which plays with the grotesque and the unpredictable. Or the new Mexican cinema with Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros), Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también) and Guillermo del Toro (El laberinto del fauno); who romanticized the ugly, the marginal, and the fantastic with a unique voice, drawing on elements rarely used in cinema before them.

One thing I could say about all those mentioned in the previous paragraph is that they all have something in common: "Authenticity" (they don't follow formulas, they create them); "Technique at the service of the idea" (they're not just "skillful", they have something to say), and "Risk" (they've had failures, but that's part of the art).

Is Artificial Intelligence a danger?

I don't know, personally I don't think so. Curiously, I've read many expressions criticizing the advent of Artificial Intelligence, and I bring up the topic because it is precisely AI that has shown that today there is a lack of talent, but also judgment and common sense. Going back in time, we discover that people are the ones who don't know how to use technological advances. Several examples are the birth of photography in the 19th century, when many people feared that the process stole their "Souls" and for that reason, they remained imprinted on paper. As we know, commercial photography did not gain acceptance until shortly after the first half of that century. Not far back was that episode of the first screening of a Lumiere Brothers film, "The Arrival of a Train at Ciotat Station"  when the audience fled the theater thinking there was actually a train entering the venue. What can I say about the invention of the telephone? This is not an exaggeration. I personally witnessed many people afraid of the telephone (in the 1970s!) and the irrational fear that people had of microwave ovens in the 1970s and 1980s, attributing the device's high radiation levels that caused illness.

All of the above were relatively normal situations, as was the case with prehistory and lightning; but people's irresponsibility was demonstrated with the use of the internet. Suddenly, everyone could create an amateur website and chat with other people using a computer, which received much condemnation from people unfamiliar with technology. Thus, there were also many irresponsible people who used the medium for less-than-ideal purposes. Then we have the use of smartphones, which turned people into functional zombies trapped inside the device, completely forgetting real life. Thus, an advance that is supposed to contribute to the development of technology, such as Artificial Intelligence, is currently condemned out of ignorance and exploited by opportunists who offer apps that convert photos, create virtual kisses, and even situations that could destroy a person, not to mention the ability to create music without needing a rock band... or any style.

The problem isn't Artificial Intelligence, it's the lack of class, ethics, and talent to use technology as a tool rather than turning it into a sole resource, which brings us back to the main topic: the lack of talent that dominates today.

Just for reflection

Messy Blues