With the imminent arrival of summer, the screens of our mobile phones prepare for the ritual of each year: an incessant avalanche of photographs of celebrities and billionaires exhibiting their opulence. In the coming weeks we will consume thousands of images of celebrities sunbathing on the decks of their megayachts, we will discuss the details of exclusive getaways – surely the honeymoon of Dua Lipa and Callum Turner, newlyweds – and we will witness a level of luxury that is simply unattainable. What changes this season is what those images no longer generate: indifference.
This visual hyper-exposition of wealth is no longer harmless gossip magazine entertainment. As an opinion column by The Confidentialincessantly seeing what the rich brag about on the Internet has become “the greatest engine of resentment that humanity has known.” And behind this dazzling showcase, the data reveal an unprecedented social fracture. While ordinary citizens juggle paying the rent or the shopping basket, the wealth of billionaires reached an all-time high of $18.3 trillion in 2025, as revealed by the latest global report Oxfam Intermón.
Anatomy of resentment: what happens when you look at that photo
To understand why a photograph of a billionaire drinking champagne on a yacht today generates so much hostility—and not just passing envy—you have to turn to psychology. A study published in the scientific journal Cyberpsychology empirically demonstrates that continuous visual exposure to symbols of wealth on social networks pushes users to make constant and involuntary comparisons. The mechanism is precise: Every image of a private jet or superyacht deck triggers what researchers call “relative deprivation.” It’s not that we feel like we’re missing something in the abstract; It is that, by seeing what others exhibit, we feel much more intensely and concretely what we lack. The screen turns statistical inequality into a personal wound.
But this is not new. The rich have always existed, and so has envy. The relevant question is another: what has changed in the last decade for resentment to have increased in such a specific and global way? The answer lies not in inequality itself—which has been growing for decades—but in the dose of exposure, which is unprecedented in human history.
For centuries, human beings compared themselves to those close to them: the neighbor, the co-worker, the cousin who did better. It was a limited and tolerable horizon of comparison. Social networks destroyed that limit definitively. Today the telephone confronts you with 0.001% of the world’s wealth dozens of times a day, involuntarily, while you have breakfast, on the bus or before going to sleep. Psychologists call this “continuous upward social comparison”: You no longer compare yourself with your real environment, but with the global elite, on a loop and without rest. Relative deprivation is not new. What is historically unprecedented is the frequency with which they rub it in your face.
This accumulated frustration, image by image and day by day, is reconfiguring our own identity. In a world where the cost of living suffocates the middle classes, essayist Mark Edmundson argues in the pages of The New York Timesyes that hate has acquired a new social function: it has become a quick way to define who we are. “I hate, therefore I am.” Loathing the elite gives many people purpose in the midst of modern precariousness. What is disturbing is not the phrase, but that it is sociologically accurate.
The algorithm, perfect accomplice
Social media is not a neutral mirror of reality: it is a machine designed to amplify exactly this type of content. As explained Psychology Today, Posts that use moral or emotional language act as a powerful magnet for hate speech and viralization. The more outrageous an image, the more it is shared; The more it is shared, the more the algorithm recommends it. The result is increasingly aggressive ideological bubbles, fed in a loop.
This mechanism is not accidental. The algorithms of platforms like TikTok and Instagram are designed to maximize screen time prioritizing content that generates strong emotional reactions, regardless of whether those reactions are positive or negative. A yacht in Ibiza published by an heir generates more interaction than any neutral content: first impact, then anger, then debate, then virality. The system does not create resentment, but it turns it into fuel and returns it amplified.
Interestingly, this dynamic is causing the truly rich to start hiding. The consulting firm Bain & Company, cited by financial magazine Fortunewarns of the rise of the “shame of luxury” (luxury shame): faced with the increase in social tension and collective anger, many elites are choosing to hide their logos and status symbols for fear of public rejection. The yacht is still there; What changes is that it is no longer published.
Capitalizing on fury
The most immediate danger of this resentment is not the hate itself, but where it is directed. The anger generated by seeing a private jet on Instagram could be channeled into demands for tax justice. Too often, however, it ends up being hijacked by political actors who reorient it towards other objectives. A report from Washington Post documents how far-right influencers deliberately exploit the economic hopelessness of young people: they take the rage of a suffocated generation and divert it not towards billionaires, but towards scapegoats.
Class resentment turns into identity conflict. While the working classes fight among themselves, the ultra-rich consolidate their power. According to the report of Oxfama billionaire is today 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than an ordinary citizen. Yachts are not just a symbol of wealth. They are also a declaration of impunity.
Perhaps the most accurate diagnosis comes from someone who knows the upper echelons well and is not afraid to say so. In an interview with Guardianacclaimed novelist Yann Martel—author of Life of Pi and self-confessed millionaire—confessed his position with unusual crudeness: “I hate the rich people of this world, of which I am a part (…). Our world is being destroyed by greed and wealth.” The paradox is perfect and intentional: a rich man who hates the rich to ask that they be impoverished. That the most radical diagnosis comes from within the club is, in itself, a sign of the times we live in.
The summer hyperexposure of wealth on our screens has ceased to be frivolous and has uncovered a deep structural crisis. Today each photo of a yacht is a spark in a tank that has been filling for years. The question is no longer whether this resentment will grow—it will grow, fed algorithm by algorithm—but whether we will manage to channel it toward fiscal and social justice before it burns the very ship of our democracy.
Image | Unsplash
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