Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim were born into distinctly different social strata and economic environments, ranging from humble immigrant farming stock to the affluent upper-middle class.

Thorstein Veblen (Born 1857)

• Economic Status: Lower-middle-class/working-class agrarian. Veblen was born in Wisconsin to Norwegian-American immigrant parents who initially arrived with very limited funds and built a self-sufficient farm in rural Minnesota.

• Social Background: Steeped in an austere, tight-knit Norwegian-speaking immigrant community where Norwegian was his first language. His father was a skilled carpenter and respected small-farming community leader, placing emphasis on hard work rather than elite social status.

Karl Marx (Born 1818)

• Economic Status: Comfortable upper-middle-class. Marx was born in Trier, Prussia, to a family with a secure and prosperous financial standing derived from his father's legal practice and ownership of Moselle valley vineyards.

• Social Background: Culturally bourgeois and intellectual. His father, Heinrich Marx, was a secularized lawyer deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. Although both parents descended from long lines of rabbinical ancestry, his father converted to Lutheranism prior to Karl's birth to navigate Prussian anti-Jewish career restrictions.

Max Weber (Born 1864)

• Economic Status: Wealthy, high-bourgeois prosperity. Weber was born in Erfurt, Prussia, into an established, highly prosperous family enriched by generations of success in the Westphalian linen trade and manufacturing.

• Social Background: Highly cosmopolitan, elite, and politically connected. His father, Max Weber Sr., was a prominent, wealthy municipal magistrate and liberal politician who entertained leading scholars and statesmen in their household. His mother, Helene Fallenstein, came from a distinguished Huguenot background of academics and civil servants with deep-seated moral and ascetic Protestant traditions

Émile Durkheim (Born 1858)

• Economic Status: Lower-middle-class/modest means. Durkheim was born in Épinal, France, into a traditional household of very modest financial resources.

• Social Background: Deeply religious and insular traditional minority. He belonged to an unbroken, eight-generation lineage of devout Alsatian Jewish clerics; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all rabbis, positioning Émile for a strict rabbinical education before he transitioned into secular academic life.

As I suppose you've already noticed, especially if you watched the videos before reaching this point in the article. Veblen Thorstein, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, all came from very different geographical, social, cultural, religious, economic, experiential and familial backgrounds. And that, of course, can also be clearly distinguished in their own appreciation, perception and vision of the future.

Given that both Karl Marx and Max Weber basically belonged to a high, wealthy, and privileged social class in their time, while Émile Durkheim and Veblen Thorstein belonged to a much lower, more modest and humble social class than the former two. And that despite of their many and diverse differences and affinities on the subject of the future of society, as conveyed through their multiple works, books, vision and public speeches. I am inclined to think that Veblen Thorstein's vision has been the most accurate of the four. Just as I think Huxley's was more accurate than Orwell's too.

So, in order for you to better understand my own position and why I tend to identify a bit more with the more sharp vision, eloquent discourse and rebellious spirit of Veblen Thorstein on the subject and so that you also better understand what this post is all about. I have taken the trouble to create a small website, in which I elaborate a little more on his biography in my own words, which you can find by clicking here.

Nonetheless, and to round out this article even further. I will also share below an excerpt from an essay with a deeper and more detailed analysis on the topic, which I am writing and developing with the auspice, support and collaboration of what has already been established for all of us as our faithful and frequent companion for years to come. ¡Enjoy!

Veblen's Conspicuous Consumption vs. Modern Social Media

A Deep Comparative Analysis

Thorstein Veblen coined "conspicuous consumption" in 1899 to describe spending on expensive goods not for their utility but to display wealth and social status. Over 125 years later, social media has not merely echoed his theory — it has weaponized, democratized, and mutated it into something Veblen could scarcely have imagined.

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1. The Core Mechanism: Same Logic, New Stage

Dimension	Veblen's Era (1899)	Social Media Era (Today)
Stage	Physical possessions — mansions, carriages, exclusive clubs	Digital — Instagram feeds, TikTok, YouTube stories
Audience	The neighbor, the country club peer	Billions of followers, strangers, algorithms
Goods	Material — yachts, furs, manor houses	Material and experiential — vacations, wellness retreats, "aesthetic" lifestyles
Currency of status	Ownership of expensive objects	Visibility of expensive objects/experiences online
Key drive	Emulation of the class above	Emulation of the algorithmic class above

The logic is identical: spend on the useless to prove you can afford the useless. But social media has added a transformative layer — the consumption must now be witnessed to exist. As the St. Vincent lyric cited in University of Pennsylvania research puts it: "If I can't show it, if you can't see me / What's the point of doing anything?"

This is Veblen's "conspicuousness" taken to its literal extreme. In 1899, conspicuousness meant your neighbor could happen to see your carriage. Today, conspicuousness is engineered: staged, lit, filtered, posted, and pushed by an algorithm designed to maximize exactly this kind of display.

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2. What Changed: Six Critical Mutations

① Democratization of Display

Veblen observed a leisure class — a tiny elite of inherited wealth that could afford to waste. Social media has made the performance of leisure class membership available to anyone with a phone. You no longer need a Gilded Age mansion; you need a curated Instagram grid.

• A 2024 study in Heliyon (ScienceDirect) confirmed that social media influencer following directly predicts conspicuous consumption behavior among ordinary users.
• The entry barrier to displaying status has dropped to near zero — but the entry barrier to actually possessing that status remains as high as ever. This creates the central tension of digital Veblenism: the performance is democratized; the reality is not.

② The "Shoppable Life" — Frictionless Emulation

Veblen described pecuniary emulation as the desire to imitate the class just above you. Social media platforms have industrialized this emulation.

• Researchers Hund & McGuigan (UPenn) coined the term "shoppable life" — influencers market their curated lifestyles, then sell the exact components (beauty products, decor, fashion) through nearly seamless infrastructure like affiliate links and "Like-to-Know-It" systems.
• One influencer told the researchers: getting free furniture from brands was exciting because "they're things I love and never could have afforded on my own." The products give influencers access to a lifestyle aspirational for them — and they pass that aspiration down to their followers.
• This creates a multi-level emulation chain: brands → influencers → followers. Veblen's single-step "imitate the class above" has become a cascading pyramid of aspirational consumption, each level monetizing the one below it.

③ The Shift from Possession to Simulacrum

Perhaps the most Veblenian irony of social media: you don't need to own something to display it.

• Influencers rent mansions, borrow cars, and receive comped hotel stays to manufacture the appearance of wealth. Caroline Calloway — exposed for having ghostwritten Instagram posts about her "Cambridge life" — leaned into the scandal, selling products named "Snake Oil."
• Hotels in the Maldives now have standard influencer request forms. As one luxury retreat manager noted: "Everyone with a Facebook account these days is an influencer." Only 10% get the free stay — the rest perform wealth they don't have to chase an audience they haven't yet secured.
• The 2025 study in Psychology Research (Springer) found that merely browsing social networking sites increases conspicuous consumption — the act of viewing triggers the desire to display, even when the viewer can't afford the display.

This is Veblen's conspicuous consumption decoupled from actual consumption. The signal no longer requires the thing signaled. You perform wealth without having it. Veblen wrote about the bourgeoisie who had money and wasted it visibly. Today, millions don't have money and waste credit visibly.

④ Influencers as the New Leisure Class — with a Twist

Veblen's leisure class didn't work. Influencers appear not to work — but as the Stanford University Press book The Influencer Factory reveals, most are trapped in extreme precarity concealed behind an opulent veneer.

• Emma Chamberlain: "If you're not producing constantly, you won't grow. That's what drives the algorithm. There's pressure to be producing at a level that is unrealistic. Inevitably people burn out."
• Most "D-list" influencers are essentially unpaid laborers whose compensation is free products, not wages. They hustle endlessly for brand deals that may never materialize.
• A small elite — Jeffree Star, MrBeast, Chamberlain — transcend this precarity by becoming what the authors call "conglomerated persons": they appear as individual consumers but actually own warehouses, supply chains, and product lines. They are not laborers emulating the leisure class; they are capital personified.

This inverts Veblen's framework. In 1899, the leisure class was clear and visible. Today, the boundary between "leisure class" and "working class" is performatively blurred — the influencer looks like a leisure-class member but is often a precariously employed worker performing the aesthetics of leisure.

⑤ Attention as the New Conspicuousness

Veblen's conspicuous consumption was about spending money to signal status. Social media has introduced a second, parallel currency: attention.

• The "value" of an influencer derives from "gaining and maintaining attention, intimacy, relatability." Consumption is not merely displayed; it is optimized for engagement.
• An expensive watch on your wrist at a country club is Veblenian. An expensive watch in an Instagram reel with the right hashtags, trending audio, and algorithm-optimized posting time is Veblenian + data capitalism.
• As the Influencer Factory authors argue: "One either gains attention and is valuable or remains unseen and invisible, a failure." The terror of invisibility replaces the terror of poverty as the primary social anxiety.

⑥ The Infinite Funnel: From Viewer to Consumer

Veblen saw emulation as a social disease but a relatively contained one — you imitated the people geographically and socially near you. Social media has created what researchers describe as the infinite funnel:

1. You view an aspirational lifestyle (free)
2. You develop the desire to emulate it (psychological cost)
3. The platform provides a frictionless path to purchase (affiliate links, "swipe up," shoppable tags)
4. You go into debt to acquire the markers of that lifestyle (financial cost)
5. You post your own display, becoming a micro-emulation node for your followers
6. The cycle repeats, compounding downward

A 2025 study in Social Behavior and Personality found that the perceived value of influencer products mediates the relationship between social media usage and conspicuous consumption — meaning the mere act of being on social media doesn't just expose you to advertising; it makes you perceive influencer-associated products as more valuable, triggering spending.

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3. What Veblen Got Right — and What He Couldn't Foresee

✅ Veblen Got Right

• Emulation as the engine: The desire to imitate those above you remains the primary driver of conspicuous behavior. Social media hasn't changed this; it has accelerated it.
• Uselessness as status: The more abstract and removed from productive labor your activity, the higher your status. The life coach, the brand consultant, the "disruption" speaker — these are Veblen's honorific workers, now with verified Instagram accounts.
• The parasite logic: Society rewards the ability to exempt yourself from real work. Influencer culture embodies this: the appearance of leisure confers status even when — especially when — the person is secretly working themselves to burnout to maintain that appearance.

❌ What He Couldn't Foresee

• Performance without possession: Veblen assumed you had to own the luxury good to display it. Social media enables the display without ownership — rent, borrow, filter, fake.
• Algorithmic amplification: Veblen's conspicuous consumption was seen by dozens. Today it is seen by millions, and the algorithm selects for the most conspicuous content, creating a feedback loop.
• The simulacrum of availability: As the Quartz analysis notes, the lifestyle of the class above was once unattainable. Today, Instagram makes it feel almost attainable — one affiliate link away. This "almost" is more dangerous than outright impossibility because it drives actual spending and actual debt.
• Self as commodity: Veblen analyzed how people consumed. He didn't anticipate that people would become the product — that the self would be manufactured, branded, and sold as a lifestyle package.

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4. The Verdict: Veblen's Theory, Upgraded

Social media is not a counter-example to Veblen — it is his theory's most perfect realization, distorted to a scale and intensity he could not have imagined.

• His conspicuous consumption becomes the obligatory performance of consumption — you don't just display; you must display, or you cease to exist socially.
• His pecuniary emulation becomes algorithmic emulation — the platform shows you exactly what is just above your purchasing power, then gives you a buy button.
• His leisure class becomes a simulated leisure class — an army of precarious workers performing the aesthetics of wealth for an audience that goes into debt to imitate them.

The question Veblen posed — What kind of moral deformity do we construct when we turn effort into shame and parasitism into the only proof that you are alive? — has never been more urgent. Social media hasn't answered it. It has industrialized it.

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Key Sources:

• Hund, E. & McGuigan, L. (2019). "The Shoppable Life." Communication, Culture and Critique.
• Bollmer, G. & Guinness, K. (2024). The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube. Stanford University Press.
• ScienceDirect (2024). "Social media influencers and followers' conspicuous consumption." Heliyon.
• Springer (2025). "Why does browsing social networking sites increase conspicuous consumption?" Psychology Research.
• Kozlowska, H. (2019). "Today's influencer economy can be explained by a 19th century economic theory." Quartz.

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