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A guy and his friends shared their travel plans. The results perfectly explain the wealth gap.

What on Jeff Bezos's green earth did we just watch?

TikTok/@tcruznc

Sometimes you see something so mind-boggling you have to take a minute to digest what just happened in your brain. Be prepared to take that moment while watching these videos.

Real estate investor and TikTok user Tom Cruz shared two videos explaining the spreadsheets he and his friends use to plan vacations and it's...well...something. Watch the first one:

So "Broke Bobby" makes $125,000 a year. There's that.

How about the fact that his guy has more than zero friends who budget $80,000 for a 3-day getaway? Y'all. I wouldn't know how to spend $80,000 in three days if you paid me to. Especially if we're talking about a trip with friends where we're all splitting the cost. Like what does this even look like? Are they flying in private jets that burn dollar bills as fuel? Are they bathing in hot tubs full of cocaine? I genuinely don't get it.


To be crystal clear here, the top 5 friends on the Forbes list are willing to spend more than double what the guy at the bottom of the Welfare 10 list makes per year on a 3-day guy's trip. I don't know what to do with this information.


But that's not even the full spreadsheet. It might make sense if this guy was just rich, had always been rich, only knew rich people, and therefore having multiple millionnaire friends was his normal. Surely that's some people's reality who were born into the 1%.

That's not the case here, though, because Cruz also has a Welfare 10 list. He says this group of friends who make less than $100K a year call themselves that, and perhaps that's true. (If I were a part of this group, I might call myself a welfare case too because everything's relative and some of these dudes spend more in an hour of vacation than I spend on my mortgage each month.)

It's like we can see our society's wealth gap all laid out nice and neatly in a spreadsheet, only these people aren't even the uber-wealthy and uber-poor. This is just the range of this one guy's friends.

I have nothing against people who build success and wealth for themselves, and even $5 million per year is hardly obscenely wealthy by billionaire standards. But Cruz says he's known most of his "welfare" friends since college, which presumably means most of those guys have college degrees and are making pittance in comparison with the Forbes list. One could claim the guy making $5 million a year just works harder, but does he really work 100 times harder than the guy making $50,000? Doubt it.

Money makes money, and after a certain threshold of wealth or income, it's actually quite easy to get and stay rich without actually "earning" more money, assuming you're reasonably wise and responsible. So maybe the guys who are willing to shell out $125,000 for a week-long trip should offer to pay the travel expenses of the friends they "hang out with regardless of income" who don't even make that in a year, since that's probably just the interest they're making on their wealth anyway.

But what do I know? This is like an entirely different world to me and probably 99+% of Americans, as evidenced by some of the responses.

Naturally, there will be a range of incomes in any group of people, but 1) most of us don't actually know how much our friends make, and 2) even fewer of us make spreadsheets with that information in order to rank our friends and figure out who can go on which vacations.

People are just endlessly fascinating. That's all I've got.


This article originally appeared on 08.20.21

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culture
Health

A helpful chart to explain the difference between support and 'toxic positivity'

Can positivity be “toxic”?

via Sitwithit / Instagram

Validation and Hope vs. Toxic Positivity

A Helpful Chart to Explain the Difference Between Support and 'Toxic Positivity" was originally published on The Mighty.

There's no denying that positivity can be powerful. I know when I'm struggling with anxiety and negative thoughts, if I can hold onto an ounce of hope — that I'll make it through, that I'm not defined by my thoughts, that I'm not as bad as my brain is making me out to be — I can cope a little better.

The positivity we hold within ourselves, when we can manage it, makes it a little easier to get by.

That being said, perhaps counterintuitively, positivity isn't always the best way to help others. You can't make someone be positive. You can't sprinkle positivity dust on them and make their problems go away. And honestly, when people are seeking help and support, they're usually not looking for straight-up, inspirational poster positivity. More often, they're looking for validation that their negative feelings are OK.

I've always kind of known this but didn't think about it in a tangible way until I saw a graphic made by Whitney Hawkins Goodman, LMFT, owner of The Collaborative Counseling Center. She runs the Instagram account @sitwithwhit, and after she posted an image explaining "Toxic Positivity," I started seeing it all over social media.

friendship, mental health, validation

The full graphic showing the difference between the positivity and the not so positive.

via Sitwithit / Instagram

The graphic shows the difference between supporting someone with validation and hope, and trying to support them with "toxic positivity." According to Whitney, it's the difference between, "This is hard… I believe in you," and, "Just be happy!" If you could never pinpoint why simple "inspiring" quotes didn't sit well with you, this could be the explanation.

It reminds me of a popular animated video about empathy, which uses the words of Brené Brown. If sympathy is shouting down at someone while they're stuck in a hole, empathy is getting into the hole with them. If "toxic positivity" is telling someone to just "look at the bright side," support is putting yourself in someone's shoes, and accepting their feelings for what they are.

Of course, when we throw around phrases like, "Think positive," or, "Stop being so negative," we're probably coming from a good place. You're spreading these messages because you want people to be happier, damn it! So what's wrong with reminding people to be positive?

The hard-to-face truth is, supporting people isn't about being "positive." In fact, when you force positivity down someone's throat, it can actually have the opposite effect. "Toxic positivity" can make people feel unsafe expressing their negativity, and negativity thrives in isolation. It can make people think there's something wrong with them for not simply "choosing" happiness, and shame is negativity's enabling best friend.

When we're supporting someone who's hurting, we need to leave room for positivity to grow. And you don't yell at a flower to "just" grow — you water it. In this case, you water it with listening, with validation, and with unconditional support. It's OK to experience negative emotions, and with support, we can help people who are stuck in negativity find their own way out. Simply telling them to "be positive" doesn't cut it.

Thanks to Whitney for making this informative graphic! You can follow her on Instagram here.


This article originally appeared on 2.12.19

From Your Site Articles
relationships
Joy

New mom missed her best friend's wedding, but delivered an epic toast anyway

May we all have a best friend like Ally Lothman.

Courtesy of Woodell Productions

This speech had all the things, and the Maid of Honor wasn't even there

May we all have a best friend like Ally Lothman.

Lothman had just given birth to her first child (according to Today.com) and was unable to make it to the wedding of her lifelong best friend Michelle Levenson. But Lothman’s Maid of Honor duties were still gloriously fulfilled.

A now-viral video, posted to TikTok by wedding photography and videography company Woodell Productions, shows that even though Lothman couldn’t celebrate in person, her FaceTimed wedding toast managed to bring everyone at the reception—along with everyone who watched online—to tears.

"You didn’t think a little bit of childbirth was going to keep me from giving the maid-of-honor speech at my best friend's wedding, did you?" Lothman begins. Already a pretty epic start.

She continued by sharing one of her favorite memories with the bride.

“There were endless memories to choose from. We would be here all night if I wrote about them all ... but I'll never forget my first evening in Cortona, Italy,” she said.

Lothman seamlessly painted a picture of their adventure together.

"In true Michelle fashion, she had whisked me up and down the incredibly steep winding roads that Tuscan city was perched upon. She had planned my first day to a tee. She showed me an ancient mummy preserved in a church — and I think that may have been the day I was hit by the car and then promptly asked out on a date by the Italian man inside the car."

"If I remember correctly,” Lothman continued, “it was that late summer sunset that we spent alone in the kind of bar bistro you would see in a life insurance commercial. We drank dry white wine and I remember we were moved to tears together for how beautiful it was."

Lothman then recalled, whether it was due to the ambiance or the alcohol, that the two friends “had a moment, like the culmination of a lifetime of friendship had brought us to this one special place in time, 5,000 miles from where we grew up."

But wait, it gets better.

Lothman remarked that their “deep, insightful understanding” of each other made them more than friends. "This was our sisterhood. In fact, I believe it was at this moment that we decided we needed to become sister wives."

It was at this point that Lothman addressed Levenson’s new husband. And perhaps Lothman’s new husband as well.

"So Matt, I hope you understand: Michelle and I made a pact in 2014 that we would find husbands someday but it would always be sister wives first," she quipped. "I'm pretty sure this means we all have to live together now — I'll be bringing a baby so I hope that's OK."

This is just the nuts and bolts of it. In truth, the video is full of other gems, including but not limited to a 10 ft long charcuterie board and “the world's spiciest Bloody Mary.”

Watch:

@woodellproductions Ally couldnt be at her best friends wedding because she just gave birth, so instead she dropped the greatest toast ever and made everyone sob over facetime #georgiaweddingvideographer #atlantaweddingvideographer #2024wedding #2025wedding #weddingvows #weddingtoast #maidofhonorspeech ♬ original sound - Woodell Films

The video has amassed over 2.5 million views, with tons of people sharing how impressed they were with Lothman’s flair for words.

“‘Maybe it was the way the golden light reflected off the landscape and bathed us in its holiness’ like are you KIDDING me? This is incredible,” one person commented.

“This was the most beautiful MOH speech I’ve ever heard,” wrote another.

But even more than that, people were inspired by how Lothman showed up for her friend.

“The epitome of ‘if they wanted to they would.’”

From Your Site Articles
video
Joy

Two awesome strangers brought gifts for a newborn baby after receiving a misdirected text

A text directed to the wrong person brought two families together in a very heartwarming way.

via Deorick Williams/Facebook

Mark and Lindsey Lashley welcome their child with new friends.


What happens when the proudest moment of a parent's life is also the strangest?

Just ask Mark and Lindsey Lashley from Georgia.

On March 19, they welcomed their first child Cason, a healthy baby boy, into the world. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Then Cason's grandmother decided to send a text to family members about her newest bundle of joy. Again, nothing unusual there either.

But when that text went to a stranger named Dennis Williams, and he decided to join in on the celebration, things became even more interesting. Check out the exchange below.

friendship, kindness, family, inspirational, comedy, babies

The group text that started it all.

Photo from Deorick Williams's Facebook page.

And just like that, the Williams brothers arrived at the hospital with gifts and well-wishes for the new mom and dad.

The following note from the Lashley family was posted on Williams' Facebook page praising the brothers' kindness and generosity for providing a small token to a family they didn't even know a few hours beforehand.

The best sentiment from the Lashleys:

"If we all only had this kind of heart.”

This hilarious and heartwarming story is going viral for all the right reasons.

Plenty of stats and polls point to a depressing truth: Our world is becoming more and more divided by racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural lines.

But it's easy to forget just how far we've come:

Two random black dudes showed up in the hospital room of a white family to provide gifts and love to their newborn baby, and the Internet universally loved it. That, in itself, is an epic feat.

These families will be connected forever due to a random act of kindness that warmed the hearts of millions.

Not to mention, when baby Cason grows up, his parents will have one amazing birth story to share with him.

But first, let's share this great story with everyone who needs a smile.


This article was originally published on 3.22.16


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