The 1% has bought its own internet.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/19/internet-rich-people-web-populism


Jess Zimmerman theguardian.com, Friday 19 September 2014

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The rich have better dating sites, like The League, an invite-only dating app for “successful” people that’s basically snobby Tinder. The rich have better Facebook; the new social network Netropolitan costs $6,000 to sign up plus $3,000 a year, and is specifically geared towards “people with more money than time”. (Or, I might add, sense.) According to Scientific American, the rich get luxury ads and credit and loan offers that the rest of us never see. To be fair, though, I couldn’t read the second page of that article because it would have cost me $6; increasingly, the rich have more access to better news and writing as publications go subscription-based. There’s even a tech startup, lauded this month by Silicon Valley, that will let you rent a butler. That’s right: rich people have Ask Jeeves with ACTUAL JEEVES.

Netropolitan, which was just announced this week, seems like a particularly egregious example. It’s not even clear what, functionally, this new social network has over Facebook, other than allowing members to converse about “everything from fine wines to classic cars to vacation destination recommendations” (all illegal on regular Facebook, of course). The site has moderators, but stipulates that they are not concierges: “Our Member Service Associates will not book you a charter jet, or find you tickets to a sold-out Broadway show. They exist solely to help members technically navigate and find their way around the social club.” So the primary perk of Netropolitan appears to be that it has people who can help you figure out how to use Netropolitan.

But it also offers a significant intangible benefit: the guarantee that you’ll never accidentally encounter a poor. Netropolitan’s founder, the astoundingly dirty-named composer James Touchi-Peters (no shame in that, James!), cites his motivation as wanting “an environment where you could talk about the finer things in life without backlash.” Who wants to hear “#FirstWorldProblems” every time you complain about spilling fine wine on the upholstery of your classic car on the way to a vacation destination, am I right? The rich are willing to pay a lot just to know they have a separate internet from you. And the internet is willing to afford them every luxury.

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