Fenomena Public Figure Suka Pamer Gaya Hidup Mewah

The Phenomenon of Public Figures Showing Off Their Luxury Lifestyle

The phenomenon of showing off wealth to public by artists, celebrities, YouTubers and other public figures in Indonesia has been rife in recent years. Many public figures compete with each other in the television media and cyberspace to show the amount of wealth they have in order to be labeled as "sultans" by Indonesian netizens. In 2019, for example, there was a trend where artists publish their account balances, until 2020 to 2021 more and more public figures still like to show off their luxurious lifestyles both on their social media accounts such as on Instagram and Tik Tok as well as on their youtube channel. These artists are willing to dismantle almost all of their personal lives, especially regarding the assets they have, both from homes, vehicles, jewelry, stocks and so on. Of course, this behavior will have a negative impact on the viewers or their followers who every day see the posts of the luxurious life that they display on their social media accounts.

We can interpret the words public figure as a figure known to the public or many people. The figure itself in the kbbi.web.id dictionary means a role that is the center of attention. Some people will also think of them as an example or a role model for them, whatever their idols do can be emulated by their fans. This makes public figures should be more careful in providing content to the public. If they only care about personal gain without seeing the impact on the audience, then these celebrities can become bad examples for society. Their fans may think of imitating their idol's luxurious lifestyle, as a result fans will do whatever it takes to make it happen, even to commit crimes and other reckless acts. As cited the wowkeren.com page, an Instagram famous named Melanie Subono once posted the annoyance she felt on her Instagram account in response to the trend of artists showing off wealth. She argued that the behavior of showing off property actually made the artist indirectly create criminals, robbers and even corruptors, because as a result of this trend all people want to quickly become rich people (wowKeren, 2019).

The second impact of this behavior is made people who are in economic distress angry. According to the central statistics agency on the bps.go.id page in September 2020 the number of poor people in Indonesia is 27.55 million people (Badan, 2021). We can estimate that this year, this number could increase because the covid virus outbreak that attacked also had an impact on the decline of the economy of a country. However, it is a shame that public figures whose lives are still abundant in wealth and more than enough still like to show their wastefulness in front of the public even though they know that we are currently experiencing economic difficulties. There is no benefit that people get from the content they create, instead people are angry and disappointed to see their spend hundreds of millions to billions of moneys even though there are still many people out there who find it hard to work hard just to collect tens of thousands of rupiah. These public figures tend not to care about the negative comments of netizens, because in fact, on the other hand, there are still many people who like the content of celebrities' wealth contests. Quoted on the tasikmalaya.pikiran-rakyat.com page, Deddy Corbuzier also admitted that his artist friends actually upload content like that for the reason that many are watching (Putra, 2021). Therefore, they take advantage of this moment to get a lot of viewers so that their income will increase, even though the viewers themselves cannot benefit anything from the content.

The last impact of this phenomenon is that there is a large barrier between the rich and the poor people. People who are obsessed with being rich like their idols tend to act like, for example, they don't want to be friends with poor people or the middle to lower class. To show that they are at a higher level than other people so they show it from their circle of friends which contains with people with an abundant economy or with a fashionable style like a celebrity, while people from the middle to lower class are marginalized. A communication expert Ade Armando also commented on this phenomenon on the CokroTV youtube channel. He made comments regarding Atta and Aurel going on their honeymoon to Bali by private plane, he commented that why the couple had a private plane vacation? Why not use an ordinary plane? Do they want to look special and different from other people because of the assets they have? (CokroTV, 2021). Also, there are actually many artists who like to travel by private jet.

Public figures have the right to buy whatever they want because we all know that they have the ability to make their wishes come true. However, that does not mean that this habit is always shown to the public without knowing what the impact and benefit will be if they spread it. They tend to like showing the amount of assets because they know that this content is in high demand, so the artists use it for personal gain. Even though this content can have an impact on the resentment of the middle to lower class society, fans who will justify any means in order to imitate their idols and the increasingly visible differences in social acceptance for the rich and the poor.

 

REFERENCES

"Arti Kata Figur" Retrieved on April 15, 2021 from: https://kbbi.web.id/figur

Badan Pusat Statistik. (2021). Presentase Penduduk Miskin September 2020 naik menjadi 10.19 persen. Retrieved on April 16, 2021