"I pull up at the club, VIP.  Gas tank on E but all drinks on me"

I have about 1700 Facebook “friends,” most of whom I wouldn’t recognize in the checkout line at the grocery store.  They are not really my friends, they are 18-25 year old, typically urban, patrons of the nightclub where I work, and I am privy to the minutiae of their daily lives because my job requires me to use social media to “promote” business.  Their status updates come fast and furious, and because of their apparent need to update the world on EVERYTHING they do and think – minute by minute – I have virtual, real time access to a day in their lives. 

                Let’s look at a typical Friday, when a mid morning status update might be “about to hit the mall to cop a fly outfit for the club tonight.”  The club where I work, because of its size and popularity among urban young adults, is likely the club of which they speak.  Intrigued, I check back a few hours later and the same person may say “hit the Facebook inbox if you need me, the cell phone is cut off.”  Cut off.  As in they didn’t fork over the fifty dollar pay as you go fee in enough time to keep the text messages rolling.  Interesting.  Fast forward several hours.  The same person who likely paid two hundred dollars for an outfit they will wear once is walking around the club in said disposable outfit carrying a three hundred percent inflated bottle of Moet champagne at one hundred fifty dollars a bottle.  It doesn’t stop there. These cell-phone-is-not-as-important-as-Moet people are rarely alone, most “roll” in groups of three or more.  To commemorate their night out, this group absolutely has to have photographic evidence of the money they spent on the booze and the cool clothes.  They go to the club’s photographer and have an instant photo taken for ten dollars.  But wait…there are five of them but only one photo, what to do?  That’s easy enough, four more copies at ten dollars each.  Let’s stop for a moment to do the math.  Two hundred dollar outfit + one hundred fifty dollar bottle of champagne + fifty dollars worth of photographs.  That’s four hundred dollars, with only the photos as a tangible keepsake of the night.  Going back to that cell phone that was cut off for non-payment, they could have easily paid three, if not four, months’ worth of bills and rented a movie for their Friday night entertainment.  But it’s not about the entertainment.  It’s about being seen by their peers as valuable because of the money they appear to possess.  Sociologists call this bad money management “false consciousness”; I call it plain bad money management.

                False consciousness can most easily be explained as ignoring your current circumstances while adopting a lifestyle not your own in order to gain perceived value from those around you.

                It’s one thing for me to marvel at, even make fun of, this bizarre behavior, but that doesn’t get to the root cause.  More important than what they are doing is why they are doing it.  I blame urban popular culture.  I don’t think I have heard a mainstream hip hop song in the past three years that didn’t have some reference to this excessive spending behavior.  The rap stars are singing about what they do.  They spend a lot of money on stuff.  That stuff includes nice club clothes and overpriced champagne.  What it also includes is – ready? –  cell phone bills.  These young adults I see in the club are so wrapped up in emulating the image portrayed by the spending habits of these rap stars that they overlook a fundamental  difference between themselves and these rappers, namely that the rappers have the means to “ball” when they go to the club.  I’m looking forward to a time when our patrons can come in and have fun within their means, rather than try to outdo each other with the “I bought TWO bottles of Moet, and you only got one, HAHA” attitudes.  Another time, I think I might look at why this behavior causes fights and how those fights can be avoided.