Fort Worth, TX: Life is hard for children struggling in wealthy, upper-class families. The choice of brand new cars for their sixteenth birthdays is overbearing. Eating fresh produce everyday becomes boring, especially when an executive chef is in your kitchen to cook it. Everyone always wants to come over to hang out in your house just because you renovated your greenhouse into a full-sized bowling alley. Not all people enjoy the taste of silver spoons.
It has now been learned that being a spoiled rich kid also comes with the genetic disposition to become afflicted with a harrowing condition known as affluenza. The latest report of a child suffering from this horrifying disease was Ethan Couch, a rich kid who, while drunk and on Valium, slammed his pick-up truck into an SUV that was broken down on the road, killing the SUV’s driver, 3 people that were trying to help get the SUV back on the road, and paralyzed on of Couch’s passengers while critically injuring another.
In the study of economic behavior in the book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, affluenza is described as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” While the term “being a greedy fucker out of touch with reality” was initially thought of before “affluenza,” the term was deemed too long whereas “affluenza” rolled off the tongue much easier, and was not as insulting to those with the horrible condition.
Unfortunately the affluenza condition is spreading, as more and more children born into the economic boom where parents recklessly gave their children everything except for a smack on the ass if they did something wrong are becoming teenagers. It is the teen years where mere temper tantrums brought on by not wanting to clean up spilt milk can turn into vehicular manslaughter brought on by a parent buying their child an iPhone 5s in plated silver rather than dipped in gold and encrusted in diamonds.
“People think it’s so easy to be a rich kid,” stated Raymond Jettinger. “But living with affluenza for all these years, a disease I just found out about yesterday, is a scary and painful ordeal. To not be responsible for your actions because you’re rich and out of touch with reality and get to do and say whatever you want is something I would never wish on my worst enemy.”
Now armed with the knowledge that they are genetically disposed to be reckless, snotty rich kids, it is the hope that these children from affluent families can find peace in their plight against affluenza.