Forget stealth wealth and quiet luxury—now Gen Z nepo babies are bragging about their generational wealth on TikTok
- In an era when billionaires are becoming increasingly flashy, so too are their children. Welcome to “Holy Airball”. TikTok’s latest trend has Gen Z nepo babies flaunting what their wealthy family do for a living—from Reese Witherspoon’s daughter to an Airbnb mogul’s kid.
The days of stealth wealth and quiet luxury are well and truly over. Instead, the wealthiest kids on the block are proudly boasting about what their billionaire parents did to get rich.
The latest TikTok videos all follow the same formula: A person shares a statement, the next slide is a misconception often leveled at them, and follow-up slides reveal the more impressive truth. Or rather, the “holy airball” moment—a basketball term for when someone takes a shot and misses the basket.
Take Reese Witherspoon’s daughter, Ava. The 25-year-old just posted about the movie that made her mum famous.
“I told him my mum’s a lawyer, and he said, ‘Oh what firm does she work at?’” she wrote. Then she cut to a behind-the-scenes photo of her and her Oscar-winning mum on the set of Legally Blonde, where Witherspoon plays a lawyer and wrote “Holy-fricking air ball”.
The video’s now received 2 million views and counting.
The offspring of Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese and rapper Akon also jumped on the chance to shout out about their family legacies.
And it’s not just celebrity’s kids that are getting in on the action: Kids of successful executives and founders are humble bragging their parents corporate gigs too, including the daughter of the My Super Sweet 16 show creator, an Airbnb mogul’s daughter, an Anthropologie candle designer’s kid, the heir to the A list drumming company, Zildjian and more.
But there’s a catch: Many TikTok accounts are capitalizing off their welll-known last names, but some aren’t legitimately linked to the famous brands. The supposed “heirs” of the Buc-ee’s convenience store, Marriott and Folgers have come out of the woodwork.
TikTok accounts for both Greyson Abercrombie and Gracie Abercrombie have separately claimed their parents own Abercrombie. However, whether or not they’re related to the brand’s brainchild, the founder, David Abercrombie, sold the company in 1907. An Abigail McDonald, similarly jokingly claimed her family owns McDonald’s.
Bad news Gen Z: You may inherit $0
Gen Zers bragging about their parents’ wealth may be better off forging their own path to one day brag about. That’s because despite expecting to come into an $84 trillion wealth transfer in the coming decades, actually, a rising number of ultra-wealthy retirees are opting to take their wealth to the grave.
It’s not that the generation has just forgotten about their young loved ones. Research from financial services company Northwestern Mutual shows that 60% do have a will in place—but their children and grandchildren are more likely to find funeral instructions in it than cash or the deed to their family home.
In fact, over half of the boomers are explicitly planning not to leave an inheritance behind. And just one-fifth of baby boomers expect to leave anything behind.
It comes as a growing cohort of people are trying to die with zero—essentially, enjoy all their wealth while they are alive and die with $0 in their bank account. Sting famously told his six kids he plans to spend his millions instead of leaving it to them.
Celebrity chef Gordan Ramsay has echoed that he’s “definitely” not leaving his fortune to his six children; the most they will get out of him is a 25% deposit towards a flat—which is similar to many middle class Gen Z and millennial home owners today.
Likewise, Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, said the billions she inherited from her husband won’t be passed on to the three children they shared. Jobs, estimated to have been worth approximately $7 billion when he died in 2011.
His wife told the New York Times: “If I live long enough, it ends with me.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com