Ask McFartnuggets: “Why Do People Care What Celebrities’ Net Worths Are?”

Now that people don't wear
monocles it's harder to tell
who's really rich.

Dear McFartnuggets: 

Whenever you do a search for a celebrity on Google one of autofill guesses is usually “(Celebrity’s name net worth) like “Alec Baldwin net worth” and underneath there’s “Alec Baldwin twitter” and “Alec Baldwin imdb”. What I want to know is why so many people are apparently searching for this? Who really cares what a celebrity’s net worth is? And why specifically their net worth? Is only knowing their annual income not good enough for people? Are people really sitting at home saying to themselves “Okay that’s how much Carrot Top makes, but I want to know how much he has once debts and liabilities are considered!” This might be important to people if celebrities were companies and the people searching this information were prospective shareholders, but that’s not the case so why the hell are people so interested in the net worth am I missing something here? -- Anna from Dallas, Texas

Dear Anna:

Net worth is just a term that people like to use to try and assign value to a person’s life. It takes into account long term assets which is why people probably search for that information over just salaries in order to find out how much money a celebrity has. Why people care about how much money a celebrity has is a completely different mystery. The public finds wealthy people interesting because they get to live exciting lifestyles. When people are interesting, others want to know more about them and one of the most revealing things in today’s society is how much money you’re worth. No one cares about knowing a hobo’s net worth, they just assume it’s zero and walk away. But when it comes to a celebrity, they’ll chase them around with a camera and google their financial assets all night long. It’s just a sad thing that occurs in our society.

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