Please Stop Calling Every Super Rich, Womanizing Bro You Like a Genius

They’re not

I’m just going to say it.

Dan Bilzerian is not a genius.

In fact, I didn’t even know who he was until I stumbled across some articles and tweets describing him as one, praising the toxic lifestyle he promotes on Instagram and his ability to market it. Then I learned about his 33 million Instagram followers, and his lifelong dedication to eviscerating anything a decent person tries to care about.

Like what?

Well, it’s the usual. He does stuff like fly around the world on a private jet, collecting women and sports cars. He became famous for reinvigorating playboy mode, which had faded for a bunch of very good reasons — including the fact that it establishes a horrible set of gender expectations for men that have made so many of them miserable. He’s rich because his father was a literal Wall Street criminal.

Oh, and he plays poker.

There’s a lot of debate about how much of his wealth he actually earned, but I think we can safely say that however he got it, calling it all genius is a tad generous, and that’s the whole problem.

We do this all the time.

The more I learned about him, the more it became clear that men consider him a genius, not because he’s made any discoveries or even plays the guitar really well, but solely based on his dedication to resurrecting dead male stereotypes. No, he’s not a genius.

He’s a cliché.

Let’s talk about geniuses.

It’s become trendy for dudes to describe other dudes they like as a genius, for doing decidedly nongenius things.

Apparently Joe Rogan is a genius. Jordan Peterson is a genius. The author of that book all the dudes like, he’s a genius. That Youtuber, genius. The lead singer of that metal band, also a genius. Elon Musk is one of the most misunderstood geniuses of all time. As a side note, neurodivergent people like me are just sick to death of normies attributing his endless disregard for human beings to his autism.

You know who’s a genius?

Stephen Hawking. He discovered Hawking radiation, and it’s what allowed us to study black holes. That’s not his only contribution to science, just his biggest one. Then there’s Rosalind Franklin, who proved the double helix structure of DNA.

And then you have Katherine Johnson, the black mathematician whose calculations made the moon landing possible.

She’s a genius.

There were two others, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. They were called “computers in skirts.” For their work, they put up with endless sexism and racism, and their contributions went unacknowledged until Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures.

In fact, I would put Margot Lee Shetterly higher on the list of potential geniuses than I would someone like Dan Bilzerian, who has done absolutely nothing for society besides pollute the sky with jet fuel and send women back in time 50 years. But please, tell me how he’s a genius for driving around in sports cars and taking selfies.

I’m all ears.

We’ve ruined the word genius.

You know who’s not a genius?

Almost everyone else.

Society loves to call celebrity men geniuses, because patriarchy requires us all to constantly worship their inherent intelligence. To be clear, this isn’t all men. This is about a particular kind of man, who has to live a particular kind of way, despite all of the horrible consequences. It’s about how vast stretches of society continue to prop up this kind of man, and allow him to get away with all kinds of horrible things, while attacking anyone who tries to question his dominance or relevance in the 21st century. In reality, it doesn’t take any brains or skill to market what you see on Instagram. You don’t need to spend years in school or hours in a lab to figure out that people like beaches and girls in bathing suits and James Bond. You just have to be willing to exploit everyone’s most toxic, destructive desires.

A scientist can be a genius. An artist or choreographer can be a genius. An engineer can be a genius.

Instead of promoting learning and curiosity, though, Americans in particular seem inclined to promote all the opposite traits. We promote denial and wishful thinking, selfishness and toxic positivity. We call men geniuses for inventing devices that shorten our attention spans and disconnect us from each other. We slap that word onto anyone who can make a few million bucks, and we don’t care how they do it.

Or why.

We treat real geniuses like crap.

A lot of real geniuses out there have one thing in common:

They got screwed over.

Men spent half a century taking credit for Rosalind Franklin’s work on DNA. The NASA mathematicians who calculated their most ambitious missions got no praise or recognition for decades. Then there’s Alan Turing, whose work deciphering codes helped win WWII, not to mention his role as a founder of computer science and artificial intelligence. As thanks, the British government forced him to take hormone treatment to “cure” his homosexuality, what’s now called chemical castration. It ruined his life, and he died two years later, days before his 42nd birthday.

So…

Geniuses don’t spend their lives sipping champagne on yachts and bragging about the women they’ve screwed. They don’t worship money. They think about something beyond themselves.

They contribute.

Most of them actually aren’t rewarded for their genius, not in their lifetimes. We call them geniuses well after the fact, as a way of honoring the sacrifices they made when they were alive. The entire point of the Nobel Prize is to try and make sure at least some of the world’s geniuses get some credit for their insanely valuable work.

A lot of Americans don’t get that.

We live by this phrase:

If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?

That’s how things work in the western world now. We’ve drawn a false equivalence between wealth and intelligence, beauty, and moral superiority. The internet is just filled with articles explaining to us why rich people are smarter, more productive, more insightful, kinder, wiser, and more grateful than the rest of us.

It’s so awful.

Men like Dan Bilzerian embody traits and characteristics so far removed from true intelligence that the idea of calling them a genius makes me either want to laugh or throw up, depending on the day. The same goes for men like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and so many others who’ve simply stood on the shoulders of actual scientists and engineers, hoarding profits and recognition for themselves.

Yes, it’s a problem.

The genius myth hurts everyone.

Let’s get one thing straight:

Men like Elon Musk and Dan Bilzerian aren’t harmless. They’re killing our future, in pursuit of their mad profits. When you think about it, Elon Musk really isn’t that different from dear old Dan. They’re just different brands of the same toxic masculinity.

They send the same message: Do whatever you want. Treat women however you want. Size matters for everything, including your bank account, and if you can’t be like them, you’re worthless, even if they don’t say that out loud, because that would alienate fans.

It saturates them, though.

Let’s stop and think about what happens when you actively celebrate the mindsets and attitudes that directly contribute to our problems, which range from environmental destruction to the kind of sexism that keeps women from getting promotions and raises, or regarded as equals during meetings, or listened to when they talk about abuse.

Yes, it is Dan’s fault.

It’s easy to exonerate the Dan Bilzerians and Kylie Jenners of the world, because there’s not photos of them literally tossing buckets of coal onto kids at the beach, but that’s what they’re doing. And while Kyle Jenner gets her fair share of public shaming, men like Elon and Danny B. have a massive army of public defenders who call them geniuses.

Why?

Every single post by Dan Bilzerian is a slap in the face to all the hard work done by the kind, decent people of earth.

He’s telling us through photos:

“I don’t care about the wildfires and heat waves. I don’t care if the crops fail. My happiness in this moment matters more than your future, and your child’s future. I will always be able to live like this, while everyone else suffers. I’m not going to bother changing anything for anyone.

I don’t care if I’m encouraging sexism, materialism, consumerism, or telling men it’s okay to treat women like disposable photo props. I like doing these things because they make me feel good.

That’s what it means to be a man, to have extreme wealth and command over a steady supply of beach babes.

My life is an endless stream of superficial bliss with no point, financed by Wall Street greed, and I love it.

You should be more like me.

I’m great.”

It’s the same message from so many other influential public figures, including most of the world’s billionaires. It goes back to what we call structural violence, doing things that make everyone else’s life a living hell, without getting blood directly on your hands.

It’s mass murder with a smile.

When someone describes all this behavior as “genius,” they’re revealing their own deep moral failings, as well as their ignorance of the broader web of meaning that bonds humanity. They’re also actively encouraging others to go out and emulate them.

Not every super bro with money is a genius.

Please stop calling them that.