Bobby Misner, Drinking Water

                                            People

It is said that you can tell a man by his shoes. Bobby Misner, 23, is wearing a pair of scuffed $545 Yves Saint Laurent trainers with words such as “rich misfits”, “St Tropez” and euro currency signs scrawled over them.

“They come wrecked,” he explains. “And then I draw all over them.”

The Peacock Feather, Antonio Mancini (1852-1930)

Photo Credit: The Henry Barber Trust
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham [CC BY-NC-ND]

If you were to judge Misner by his shoes alone, you might conclude that he is just another absurdly entitled out-of-touch rich kid who defines himself by his money – or rather his father’s money. In November last year he released a YouTube video, Life of a Billionaire’s Son, showing off his father’s private jet, superyacht and mansions, and it went viral. To date it has had nearly five million views.

…I ask him why he feels the need to display his wealth on social media. He looks at me as if to check whether this can really be a serious question.

“Because I want to get views,” he explains patiently. Being a YouTuber, he says, “is the number one job. If you go into a school and ask kids what they want to be, they [say] ‘a YouTuber’. I have a niche. People watch me because I can show them stuff no one else can show them. Rich kids see me as an icon.

…Anybody who claims that money isn’t important, Misner says, is deluded. “Think about it,” he says on a video. “If you don’t have money, you’re not going to be able to pop bottles with 6ft models on a jet on your way to the south of France to then party with all of them on your 60m superyacht, now are you? Hmn? Didn’t think so. Nope.”

What do his parents think of all this? “My mum doesn’t really understand what’s going on and my dad is probably relieved that I am doing something with my life.”

…And he [Misner] is about to drop a fashion brand under his label Rich Misfits – a T-shirt will retail for $300 to $600. “I want it to be really expensive because I don’t want you to have it unless you belong,” he explains.

…If his objective is to annoy people he has unarguably succeeded. The online vitriol – and the views – continue. I ask him if any comments bother him. “They’re funny as hell,” he replies. Then he hesitates and shows a chink in his armour. “There is one thing that gets me. I don’t like it when people say I’m irrelevant.”

(Helena de Bertodano, The Times, 2019)

                Please can I have one of your T-shirts? I really want to belong.

Drinking Water

More intense than skateboarding, more addictive than selfies and as inexplicable as anything that has grabbed the collective consciousness in recent years, the latest cult is weird, compulsive and, er, entirely legal.

It is drinking water.

Boy Drinking, Cornelis Picolet (1626-1679)

Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

A small group of committed aquaphiles has taken to social media to post short films of themselves drinking bottles of water. And that’s it. There is nothing particularly interesting about the films, which tend to be quite short – less than a minute – and often filmed in the same location. As a spectator sport, competitive water-drinking is on a par with wet paint-watching for the thrills it offers.

…One of the most prominent figures is Aaron, [15] a bespectacled teenager from the Midlands who has been a serious figure in the water-drinking world for the number of YouTube videos he has posted.

“Currently, I record six videos a day,” said Aaron, who declined to give his second name. “In each video I drink 750ml of water. I record on my phone and I upload them to YouTube. Currently I have the second most videos and I upload the most.”

So far, he has 5,776 videos under the sobriquet of Aaron Drinks Water.

(The Times, 2019)

          Sorry Aaron, I won’t be watching.