The Medium is the Money
Nearly everything has a price: viral tweets get paid by the view, celebrity engagements have odds posted before the proposal, the Nobel Prize committee has insiders trading on the winner.
In The Philosophy of Money (1900), Georg Simmel wrote that money flattens everything into a single quantity and trains us to compare fundamentally incomparable things. How many hours of labor equal a painting? How many apples equals a pair of shoes? Money provides a blunt numerical answer, neutering qualitative differences like the skill of the painter, the taste of the apple, and the craftsmanship of the shoemaker to stripped-down quantitative units of value.
He wrote this a century *before* smartphones and the financialization of everything. Today, there is a market for nearly every moment: viral tweets get paid by the view, celebrity proposals have odds posted before the question is popped, the Super Bowl has bets placed on the color of Gatorade dumped on the winning coach, the Nobel Prize committee has insiders trading on the winner.
The medium or process of our time is money. Money is reshaping patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is the medium through which we think, speak, and belong.
It is reflected in the language we use:
“Secure the bag”
“Know your worth”
“Buy the dip”
“Time is money”
“Invest in yourself”
“Bullish”
“Double down”
“Let it ride”
“All in on the underdog”
“What does Polymarket have him at”
The cardinal sin used to be selling out. God forbid your favorite band did a McDonald’s commercial. Today, the operating maxim is secure the bag. Sell out as soon as possible because you may not have the opportunity tomorrow. The American Dream is to get rich *quick*.
Internet celebrity Nadeshot previously complained about how promoting gambling was bad. But when asked if he’d take a hundred million dollars to do it, he said:
I ain’t turning down a hundred million dollars bro… I would sell my soul for a hundred million. I won’t sleep. I will be your workhorse. You want me to pump blue chews? Crypto gambling? I will do it all. Fuck them kids.
These words, while exaggerated, are a reflection of how our society thinks about money. The biggest icons of our time, including Drake, Kevin Hart, Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Jennifer Lopez, and Celine Dion have all promoted gambling, and their fans aren’t revolting against it. Money is both the means to the end and the end itself; it is acceptable and rational to secure the bag.