#richtok: Photo confirms shocking TikTok trend that’s emerging

A very normal-looking pair of rubber thongs have taken TikTok by storm due to their exorbitant four-digit price tag.

COMMENT

It’s nearly a century since F. Scott Fitzgerald slopped bootlegged gin on his trusty Remington and tapped out one of his most famous lines, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

And 99 years on since Fitzgerald wrote that after a busy morning getting cigarette ash on Zelda’s furs and binning his bar IOUs, the rich are riching harder than ever and don’t give a fig who knows.

We are in the midst of what feels like a real tonal and vibe shift around ultra high net worth sorts.

Take one of the hottest pairs of shoes in the world right now, which have all but sold out across the internet and of which one LA boutique owner told the Wall Street Journal, “We wish we could have more.”

The thongs cost over $1200 in Aussie dollars. Picture: Supplied

They are The Row’s Dune Classic Sandal, which luxury site Moda Operandi describes as a “refined classic casual” which might conjure up the image of something produced by a storied Florentine studio that has been cobbling since the Medicis were getting their slippers there.

They are $1266 a pair.

They are rubber thongs.

At the time of writing, Net-A-Porter has only one pair left in one, single size.

If ever there was an item that truly encapsulated where we are now as a society and world - where finding normal eggs supplies on shelves is a matter of chooky’s teeth and you need two high six figure incomes to buy the sort of mingily wee property that real estate agents will try and repackage as ‘bijou’ - then these shoes are it.

Would you pay over $1200 for these? Picture: Supplied

The glaring disparity between the experiences of the hoi and polloi, or at least the middle bit of society, and those at the financial extreme peak has never been more painfully obvious.

In Australia, the costs of things like bread, cereal and cheese have all jumped by more than 20 percent, according to The Australian, and yet you can’t get your hands on a $1200 pair of plastic thongs for love nor a working black Amex card.

The NAB reported last month that, in Australia, consumer stress is at an 18 month high, meanwhile, earlier this year Oxfam predicted the world will have five trillionaires by 2035.

The organisation’s Takers Not Makers report, out in January, found that, globally, billionaire wealth grew three times faster in 2024 and 2023.

Last year, the wealth of each of the 10 richest blokes in the world grew by almost $154 million per day, on average. (If ever there was a stat that really called for the heavy use of italics, this is it. Double underlined.)

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock then that the uber wealthy have started doing their thing in full public view over on TikTok, where there are now 85,000 videos tagged #richtok. Last month society newsletter Airmail crowned Californian Becca Bloom, real name Rebecca Ma, “the Queen of #richtok”.

Ma only posted her first video earlier this year - some very average cat content of her Scottish Fold Oscar lolling around on a lot of heavy, monied wooden furniture - but she has accrued 65.4 million in only four months. So big has Bloom gotten that there are now accounts dedicated to identifying the clothes, jewellery and eye wateringly expensive objets her posts feature.

They are even 'low in stock'. Picture: Net-a-porter

Her most watched video shows her plating her breakfast which starts with her selecting silver chopsticks from a $3300 Christofle silver ‘egg’. “I like to add a little caviar for seasoning purposes,” Bloom explains while glooping spoonfuls of the inky black stuff on her plate. It’s been watched 32.3 million times.

The 25-year-old Bloom would make for an easy target if there was not something so soothing, if not wonderfully sedating, about watching her videos, like ASMR. (This story would have been filed 20 minutes earlier had I not fallen headfirst into her feed and found myself mesmerically transfixed by watching her do things like try on her $680,000 Van Cleef & Arpels wedding necklace.)

Don’t be fooled - things like #richtok and $1200 thongs represent what feels like a significant vibe shift about wealth. It’s not about showing off but nor is anyone getting about in Uniqlo t-shirts and pretending to be just like the masses.

Serving up some inspiration. Picture: @beccaxbloom/TikTok

Unlike the Succession-esque skulking of quiet luxury or the horrifically gauche exhibitionism of the rich kids of Instagram days; it is not about greed-is-good valorising or a covert sheepishness. It is neither shouty nor ashamed. It just is.

Case in point, this month The Wall Street Journal reported on the price of haircuts, including one New York salon where a trim and blow dry costs $1,944 as if this is nothing to write home about. Or take the fact that retailer LL Bean and cult brand Tibi collaborated to release a $733 plain cotton tote bag.

The $733 tote bag. Picture: Tibi

Of course it has sold out. Why wouldn’t you want the world to know you can drop the better part of a grand on something you carry drippy cartons of milk home in?

Bloom’s popularity and the advent of $1200 thongs reflect a world in which those with unthinkable fortunes are no longer a freakish species to be gawped at but a mainstream part of our culture, part of the public furniture of the moment.

It feels like in 2025, what has shifted is that an adoption of matter-of-fact visibility without tipping over into the Trumpian conspicuous consumption of the 80s; of wealth detached from moralising condemnation and from finger-pointing or crass awe.

There are at least 13 billionaires in the Trump administration. The most eagerly anticipated celebrity wedding of the year is of very rich thumb Jeff Bezos and his rocket-flying bride-to-be Lauren Sanchez.

A decade after F. Scott wrote his famous lines, Ernest Hemingway was at a lunch with the critic Mary Colum. Hemingway said, “I am getting to know the rich”. To which Colum shot back, “The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money”.

And now, some very bright red thongs.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as #richtok: Photo confirms shocking TikTok trend that’s emerging