White Lotus is Rich People Hate-Porn for Rich People

And I still love watching it

Before you yell at me, I love HBO’s White Lotus. I think it’s a great show, purely on the basis of character development and storytelling. I view it the same way I would view any compelling murder-mystery-meets-comedy-meets-drama.

What I can’t do, however, is view it as any kind of meaningful satire of class and privilege. I know they’re trying to make me do that. I will not take the bait. This is my fun murder-mystery-comedy-drama where I can watch saucy storylines about the hot guy from Essex secretly being a gay sex worker for his “uncle.” But I refuse to engage with the class-conscious antics.

For a long time, media like White Lotus, Big Little Lies (and the amazing movie The Triangle of Sadness) have fallen into this category for me. I know what they’re trying to do, and they’re not subtle about it. They want me to view rich people—or even just vaguely upper middle class people—with a degree of knowing disdain. Not full-on “eat the rich,” but they want me to smugly smirk and laugh at these gilded, out-of-touch assholes.

But in comparison to who? Me? Other everyday salt of the Earth Americans who pay for an HBO subscription and enjoy the films of Ruben Östlund? This genre of media is made by rich people, for rich people, for the purpose of feeling smug and superior to Bad rich people—or perhaps performatively self flagellating. It’s the class equivalent of a workshop called “Abolish White Women’s Weaponizing Tears,” hosted by White women and attended by White women, all of whom sit around either hating on themselves, or people exactly like them, for an approving audience of other White women.