Back on March 17, before stay-at-home orders and endless days of social distancing became the norm, Toronto-based musician Drake posted a picture of his indoor basketball court to his Instagram Story. He had been spotted hanging out with Kevin Durant a week prior, and Durant was one of four Brooklyn Nets players to test positive for the coronavirus.
"My life for the next however long," a self-quarantined Drake seemed to sullenly caption the shot from inside his soon-to-be revealed $7 million mansion, which was profiled in Architectural Digest less than a month later (the shoot was finalized before quarantine). In the music video for his latest Billboard no. 1 hit "Toosie Slide," Drake slid around his excessively lavish "pleasure dome."
"I have a tough time with diminishing other peoples' experiences of what's happening to them, but when I saw his music video I was like 'Wow, this is great, you're rubbing this giant mansion in all of our faces,'" Robin Mazumder told Insider. Mazumder holds a Master's degree in occupational therapy and is a cognitive neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo studying how urban design and cities affect "how we feel and function."
He believes that social distancing measures, despite being imperative from a public health standpoint, are disproportionately punishing those in poverty who may not have easy access to the kinds of indoor and outdoor spaces conducive to mental health and wellbeing during quarantine.
The class differences in access to private space are starkly on display, thanks to social media posts from wealthy individuals and celebrities staying at home. Despite the coronavirus pandemic making us "all equal," as elected officials and A-listers alike have insisted, it actually seems to showcase how privileged wealthy elites are, even when trapped inside their multimillion-dollar mansions with enviable backyards.
"I've seen first-hand what kind of conditions people live in and how especially important it is for most people to access the outdoors, especially at a time like this, let alone just in general," Mazumder, who worked in a clinical mental health capacity for five years, said.
"What I've been seeing on social media and what I've been seeing from many politicians is this kind of authoritarian approach to reprimanding people, and I think that, while I can't make any assumptions, I do wonder how much they're empathizing with people who may not be in their own circumstances financially."
When wealthy people complain about quarantine from inside their luxurious homes, it feeds a growing anti-celebrity sentiment
Mazumder isn't the only person bothered by the discrepancy between rich celebrities complaining at home and people confined to inner-city apartments, or even Midwest suburbia. Danny Pellegrino, a writer and pop culture podcast host based in downtown Los Angeles, was inspired to tweet about his outdoor space envy after scrolling through Instagram and seeing people complaining while posting from their yards.
"I don't mean to complain, I know people have it way worse, but I just get a little jealous of people who have yards right now," Pellegrino told Insider. "I'm in an apartment building and my apartment is a great space, but I don't have any yard space. I don't have a bit of grass. I can get outside of my building and there are some small pieces of grass and shared community space, but if you go to one of those you're surrounded by people who have to walk their dog."
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When he watched the Gal Gadot-led celebrity cover of John Lennon's "Imagine," Pellegrino felt, like many others, that celebrities should be donating some of their money instead of crooning at their front camera from inside their spacious homes. The anti-celebrity sentiment has been felt all over the internet during the pandemic.
Amanda Hess wrote in The New York Times that celebrity culture is burning, and that "the dream of class mobility dissipates when society locks down, the economy stalls, the death count mounts and everyone's future is frozen inside their own crowded apartment or palatial mansion. The difference between the two has never been more obvious."
When Jennifer Lopez tweeted a video of her 12-year-old son Max hoverboarding around her lime green backyard, serving Alex Rodriguez a can of Perrier, many of the replies compared her opulent mansion to the house in "Parasite," the 2020 Best Picture thriller that told a modern tale of greed, privilege, and the class divide.
"I love J. Lo and A-Rod, I love them, but they post 'Stay in your house' – which is the right message to share – but then we also see a paparazzi shot of them getting access to a full gym, where they're able to go inside," Pellegrino said, referencing photos taken of Lopez and Rodriguez that appear to show them leaving their private Miami gym on April 1.
"I think it's tough in a small apartment or studio or wherever you live when you see celebrities, they're just being like that on social media, it's frustrating," he added. "I just think oftentimes, some celebrities are out of touch with what the average person goes through."
Another person who tweeted about the celebrity disconnect was 19-year-old Trishna Rikhy, a New York University student studying journalism and art history who uses her "@ULTRAGLOSS" Twitter handle to regularly craft viral tweets with hundreds of thousands of likes. She suggested, in jest, that a celebrity complaining about quarantine trade places with her where she's staying right now, at her parents' Washington, DC home.
