I Hate Success Porn

And the people who make it.

I used to read the business section a lot. I’d keep up regularly with the markets, read about the emergence of Bitcoin and whether gold would still be relevant, and a host of other topics about making money. And, several times a week, I would read an article about some self-made millionaire who retired in their 30s thanks to their can-do spirit.

They would share their secrets with everyone, of course. Mr. Money Mustache came up a lot in my reading, and I even checked out his blog a few times. He constantly shared how he got to be so successful and was able to “retire” early. Of course, he still maintained his blog, which was a bit of a job in itself, but by and large, he can enjoy his “retirement.”

The FIRE movement — that’s shorthand for Financial Independence/Retire Early, for those who don’t know — is very popular for a lot of Millennials and younger folks. The idea is simple: save some absurd amount of your income by cutting expenses to the bone and living on ramen and rice for ten or fifteen years, then retire with your investment returns.

There is always a catch, of course. The majority of the articles I’ve read talk about people who paid down $100,000 in debt in a few years by cutting their expenses inevitably include a bit about how the person or couple in question has a six-figure income. I mean yeah, if I had a six-figure income, I could pay down a bunch of debt too simply by having fewer expenses to begin with.

Nobody likes to talk about that, though. FIRE is something that is billed as “for everyone and anyone,” but it really isn’t. Inequity and four decades of depressed income for the lower and middle classes have kept a lot of people from achieving a sustainable living situation, never mind actual success. Ultimately, as with anything, not everyone can manage it.

Success porn is everywhere, though, and a lot of us fall victim to it. Even here, lots of people make their money by hustling success. Tim Denning, to his credit or not, probably makes a solid living selling the “secret” to success. I try not to read his articles too much, since they all get pretty samey after a bit, but the guy has a boatload of followers, so what the heck do I know?

Alas, my feed is often clogged with these sorts of articles on the regular. Four of my top 20 articles this morning were by Tim Denning. That’s a solid 20% of the recommended articles on my feed. My daily email had another one. I’m not even following the guy.

(While writing this, I had to check to see if I had followed him at any point, so I took the opportunity to mute him so I don’t have to see his articles anymore. Problem solved?)

I’ve written about this to some degree before. The people who are the most popular are generally (but not always) better marketers than they are writers. I’m pretty sure Mr. Money Mustache can sustain his retirement because of his wildly popular blog, which according to Wikipedia (which cites a New Yorker profile from a few years ago) makes him $400,000 a year.

It helps that he and his wife were software engineers in the late 90s and early 2000s and had a combined income of $134,000 on average, a mortgage-free house, and $25,000 in annual expenses. Assuming it’s kept up with inflation, that’s around $38,500 these days, which is around what I spend on less than half their salary. I know if I brought in an extra $80 grand or so, I could probably manage to retire in ten years of working as well.

Success porn has been around for such a long time that it is its own genre at this point. All sorts of books, from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” to “The Four-Hour Work Week,” are regularly cited as sources for how to succeed at life and business. What they really do is make their authors successful based on the millions of book sales and speaking tours while the people who read them, generally speaking, never get terribly far.

Yes, I think “success porn” is a pretty apt description. We look at it to feel good, to get a rise, to achieve some sense of joy or happiness or fulfillment in ourselves. Look at what I could be if I only applied myself and followed this guy’s ten steps to success! we think to ourselves as we toil in the day jobs we will likely never escape. Anyone can be successful if they put their minds to it! we say to ourselves as we are held back by our disabilities, our circumstances, our demographics, or simply the ZIP code where we grew up.

So many successful people are charismatic and outgoing, had a leg up thanks to their parents and family circumstances, or were simply lucky. Yes, you can manufacture your own luck, but it’s easier if you have family connections or the social know-how that can help you manufacture that luck. If your parents went to Harvard, you almost automatically have a pre-built network to draw from.

And yet, these people have the audacity to sell you their “secret sauce” to success, often knowing full well that not everyone — heck, not even most people — can replicate it. They’re selling you the idea that you could be successful too if only you worked hard enough and made the smart decisions, and they’re getting rich from it.

But, like all porn, it’s mostly hollow. You look at it, you get that rush of endorphins and self-gratification, and then, when you’re done, you go back to feeling that same empty, hollow feeling that you always did. Some people get hooked on it, too, buying books, webinars, seminars, and eventually spending tens of thousands of dollars to go see Tony Robbins do his thing. Of those, some find success, but many don’t.

And, as with anything, most people who look at success porn never do anything of note with it. You can find article after article about random people who made it big with gumption and grit, but there are tens of millions of people living in poverty who will never get to that point through no fault of their own. A four-hour workweek is a pipe dream for someone who has to decide whether to pay their rent or buy food for the next two weeks.

Everyone wants to be like the porn star — lots of success and all the sex and money they could ever want. However, we can’t all get there. Most people don’t have the endowments, charisma, or stamina that porn stars of all types have, so we simply aspire to be what they are and slowly get bitter about it.

So, next time you feel bad about not being a millionaire and retired at 35, maybe lay off the success porn for a bit and look at what a typical person is like. You’ll probably feel better in the long run.

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