Usually, when Saint Hoax gets around to mocking something (consistently obsessing over American shit instead of giving us a glimpse into their own more oppressive Syrian and Lebanese-originating realms), you know it’s reached—or is about to reach—a certain “cultural peak” in terms of being a topic of conversation. That meme-ing moment came from the account on August 1st, after the barrage of reports on celebrity jet usage that began with Kylie Jenner’s so-called “flex” on Instagram in mid-July as she posed in between two private planes with Travis Scott and captioned it, “You wanna take mine or yours?” Apart from the fact that both parties have quickly recovered from the Astroworld slaughter, which itself serves to prove a point that celebrities don’t give a goddamn about the fans that bankroll them, it also served as a major trigger during a period of palpable economic decline for the rest of America—nay, the world.
And while this, like “North’s Friesian horses” and a trip to a private island in Tahiti during the early heights of the pandemic, feels like another prime instance of needing to shake the masses and say, “What the fuck took you so long to notice that rich people (read: celebrities) are cunts who don’t care about the planet you live on because they know they can defect elsewhere when the time comes?,” at least even the most devout of fans are starting to wake up to the reality that their “gods” are very paper-thin indeed. Propped up (in the private plane-filled air) by the money that those who support them offer… all in a vicious cycle of what this society has long billed as “aspirational.” And that’s part of the issue at the core of why, even after the media cast a glaring spotlight on the likes of Kylie Jenner (actually, she cast this spotlight on herself), Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Drake and Alex Rodriguez about their excessive (even by celebrity standards) CO2 emissions, nothing will actually change about their behavior. Because it’s the very sort of comportment we’ve all been taught to believe is some kind of “apex” for “success” a.k.a. wealth. What’s more, that all their “hard work” to achieve such wealth should be rewarded with these types of decadent concessions. And, until (if ever) a new measure of success is ingrained within our society, such trappings of affluence will always serve as a means to “impress,” or at least emphasize one’s powerful position in our world.
But for the moment, we can pretend this “moral outrage” regarding what we’ve long known about celebrities (they “live large”) will invoke some kind of reckoning (it won’t). Part of that “reckoning” being the reminder of a certain Twitter account’s existence. One called @CelebJets that quickly came to the forefront as another source for fueling (no pun intended) contempt directed at Kylie Jenner—who stoked the trend of celebrity vitriol now being bestowed upon Swift—and her short trips between places like Van Nuys and Camarillo. In effect, what would be a forty-minute drive becomes a seventeen-minute flight (Jenner has also taken flights as brief as nine minutes). And sure, Jenner can use the, “But the traffic…” “excuse” as she giggles “innocently,” but it doesn’t change the fact that simply driving (itself already a major culprit in terms of decimating the Earth) would have been the decent thing to do. The humane thing to do for those who she still wants to be around later to purchase her products and continue to support her lavish lifestyle—itself yet another aspect of climate change as capitalism proves each and every day that it is not a sustainable way of existence, least of all with this many people participating in it (and yeah, Adam Smith came up with this bullshit during a period when a population of over seven billion likely never seemed fathomable).
While many were quick to point out that “tarring and feathering”—a.k.a. posting some “hostile” memes for a brief news cycle—celebrities is but a smokescreen for the reality that corporations are the key offender of climate crime, in an era when celebrities have actually become the corporation (Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, et al.), what is really the distinction anymore? For it’s all in the spirit of fortifying the celebrity-industrial complex that will reinforce the notion that everyone who is a “brand” with a “built-in audience” can sell something (usually makeup and skin care products). Especially if they greenwash it enough so that consumers can feel “good” about what they’re purchasing. As though the item itself doesn’t ephemerally do that—hence, the need for consumers to “inject” themselves with more products once the “high” of the last one they bought is gone.
And maybe that’s how trips are for celebrities. They’re only as “high” (literally and metaphorically) as their last short-haul flight. Weighing in on the upswing in private jet use not just from celebrities but the “business elite” (this includes, vom, Elon Musk, as big an offender as anyone in the fame echelons), a team lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation, Nikita Pavlenko commented, “The frequent use of aviation is the domain of the world’s wealthy, with just one percent of the global population responsible for half of the emissions associated with flying. There are plenty of alternatives to private jets and wanting to avoid traveling with the hoi polloi isn’t a good enough reason for excessive pollution.” Said, perhaps, like someone who has never known the joys of avoiding the hoi polloi. Pavlenko added, “These short flights have emissions that are small in relative terms but per person they are staggering. Aviation emissions are growing exponentially year over year and private jet pollution is growing more than general aviation.”
That said, when we also look at the nature of how much “easier” it’s actually become to get famous (thanks to modern mediums touting “viral” fame instead of “pounding the pavement” fame), therefore get to an income bracket that allows for private travel, maybe we can only rue the day when Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Despite the advent of the private jet “taking off” in 1963, Warhol couldn’t have known that the destruction of the planet via the “fame monster” would be a caveat of that aphorism.
Worse still, the “defenses” these celebrities or their reps have provided are, of course, even more incriminating than simply saying nothing. In Drake’s estimation, for example, he shouldn’t be faulted because, “This is just them moving planes to whatever airport they are being stored at for anyone who was interested in the logistics… nobody takes that flight.” So yes, let’s make it sound even more profligate instead of adopting a mea culpa stance for being the kind of person to flout commercial travel at all costs. And in Taylor’s “defense,” her “friends” were the ones taking most of the flights (perhaps just another case of illuminating the parasitic nature of friendship). Whatever excuses celebrities might offer up as a means to save their hides from cancellation by the Third Estate, the one being who isn’t going to hear any of it in the end is a burning Mother Earth. But again, the celebrity cabal will be flying off in an entirely different kind of “private jet” by that time, as they watch it all go up into flames from afar while drifting into outer space. “Bye fans, thanks for the cash while it was relevant.”
