Flexing is defined as showing off either obscene amounts of money (or just money in general) on the internet in order to gain adoration (or "clout" as it is called) among either your peers or just random people that you don’t know. Flexing can also include talking about something that you did that you feel is noteworthy enough to garner envy or make people angry. In the black community, this has increasingly been the act of self-snitching. It's something that I truly do not understand and I really think is a mental issue that is plaguing our community and destroying it from the inside. Let's begin.
Flexing your money is perplexing for a number of reasons. For normal people, it's just not a wise thing to do. Letting everyone know that you have a lot of money just sends a bat signal to would be robbers and stickup men that you have a lot of cash either on you or where you live. Not to mention it also will bring attention to the Law, which has their own legal implications (more on that later). My theory is that because people that are rich and famous in the community flex, the adoration that they aim towards that celebrity also simultaneously inspires them to want the same adoration from their peers to get from the flex, which inspires them to do the same among their peers.
With famous people in the black community, in particular, Hip-Hop, it makes me scratch my head even more. It's like the fact that they are financially stable for the rest of your life is simply not enough for most, that they must constantly reaffirm the fact that they are rich and let all of the normal folk that they are really rich. I find it ironic because a lot of these people likely spent most of their lives looking at those above them wishing they were in that position and now that they are, they flaunt their riches. The thing is, that the people who truly have wealth do not talk about it or show it. There's no need because the amount of money is so great that it's just an everyday thing. It’s no longer "flexing", its opulence. And with that opulence comes a level of normalcy and privilege that is not afforded to most people in our community because they know that they are not THAT rich. We are not even viewed any different from a normal middle-class black person, but just a consumer with a bigger wallet to spend and give to them. Kanye West said it best: Even if you in a Benz you're still a nigga, in a coupe.
Self-snitching annoys me the most because it shows that all the money in the world doesn’t buy you common sense. It is already bad enough that as an ethnicity, we are seen for stigmatized for having a propensity to commit crimes, but to then brag about those crimes or to incriminate yourself, intentional or otherwise, is the ultimate facepalm. At least when you flex what you have, the worst you can expect out of it is envy that may cause you harm in the future. When you self-snitch on yourself, there are legal implications that can and will be used against you. Meek Mill comes to my mind immediately due to his legal issues due to his minor infraction of violating his probation due to riding dirt bikes illegally in New York City and having it recorded. While the infraction itself is relatively minor (Dirt bikes are illegal in NYC, but is not enforced regularly), the fact that he was in a position to be recorded is unacceptable. The fact that he has also been given many chances to stay out of jail makes this particularly egregious. Was having a couple people give some likes on a video worth being possibly sent to jail for years? Of course not. But in the heat of the moment, that type of logic is suspended in the quest for adoration. And this is someone in the community that is rich and famous. Think about all the people not in Meek Mill position that do not get the chances that he gets. They're getting the book thrown at them immediately and with no mercy.
These two issues are issues that no one other than the people in the community observes and cares about even a little, therefore it can be nothing else but destructive. There are many strides being made to bring parity in the black community compared to other minorities, and when we waste our time on trivial things like gaining envy and adoration of others, there is less time being spent on uplifting everyone. I can make this style of post for a lot of other problems that plague the black community, but I feel as if these two issues are holding us back more than anyone else because they are the catalysts for most if not all of the issues we experience now. If we spent the time flaunting what we have on actually trying to help each other out, we would be able to reach parity in terms of the privilege that other people enjoy in this county. Until then, we are only reinforcing the negative stereotypes that keep us taking 2 steps forward, and 4 steps back.