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I think people get quite upset about those who get ahead via unorthodox means too.
Bonnie Blue is spreading her legs and makes around 800,000 pounds a month, in the UK of all places. UK Warehouse Worker earns 26,000 annually, UK Chief Information Security Officer earns 130,000-170,000 pounds. She's not even that hot, wtf is going on? Maybe it's all lies and money-laundering but the point is that people believe it to be true. You are working hard and getting paid a miserly wage while someone else is doing fuck all and getting huge amounts of money.
Same with the guy who bought bitcoin early, I think this is why crypto is so widely hated online, people got rich in an 'unorthodox' way compared to hard work and high skill. Plus, crypto bros come off as low-status. Same with landlords, there's considerable bitterness towards boomers who bought a house that then 10xed while they were also getting decent yields off it. People see a boomer and think 'I am much more deserving but much poorer, the economy is terrible.' Same with 'billionaires' or 'tech-bros' in aspects of the popular imagination.
Of course it's always been this way. In the time of the Stuarts kings would give huge payments to their friends, the navy might be starved for shot while some sexy duchess was dripping with gems and titles. Good old fashioned sinecures and fraud is as old as civilization. But with social media this is rubbed in people's noses by algorithms deliberately trying to rage-bait them. There are people whose whole lifestyle is funded by rage-baiting and attention-grabbing for being obnoxious lowlifes. They are pushing everyone else down in social-economic hierarchy.
The economy feels fake and gay, in other words. To a large extent it is more fake and gay than before (SF venture capital especially) but even more so, it feels that way. Imagine being socially-bamboozled into taking on huge amounts of debt, studying and jumping through hoops to get a degree only to find it's mostly worthless. Now have fun interviewing with dozens of companies and jumping through endless hoops to get a meaningless job. HR makes a complete mess of things while you work, tiktok shows you the luxurious lifestyle of your unworthy betters... Very depressing.
I think a lot of people were taught growing up that society is run by a set of rules and if you follow those, if you are a good person in that sense, then you will be rewarded and life will work out. The realization that the rules are not what you were taught, if any hard rules at all even exist, is crushing. Especially if you believe that Bonnie Blue is not contributing much to society at all, even compared to the warehouse worker.
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Wait until you find out how much top entertainers in other disciplines make. Actors, models, sports stars... I get when this complaint is applied to how much the ordinary woman can make selling her body versus what an ordinary man would receive in return, but why cite someone who's literally at the top of their game? Yes, the genetic and mental abilities that let her perform in this narrow, highly competitive environment are unfair-- but it's unfair that Shaq is 7'1", too. And I would doubt that the work required to operate at her level is anything less than hard. No, not 3000x as hard as your average UK wagie... but not easy, either.
TBH I don't really disagree with the general thrust of your post... people are entitled to complain about the unfairness of life being shoved in their faces. But it bothers me when people prioritize their complaints by salience instead of by justice. The most unfair way to succeed is to adversely aquire the success of others; the second most unfair way to succeed is to be born into it. Everything else is downstream of criminals and old money, but people still spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about social media thots.
I think not all entertainment is created equal for this purpose, forms of entertainment in which talent is more legible usually face less of this kind of criticism. There is a sense in which Shaq has less input than Bonnie Blue for his success, but nobody has any doubt that he's one of the best to ever do it. As you go further down the chain here (actors, adult performers, influencers), the "unfairness" becomes more salient.
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