First of all, you're welcome. I had to jump through some serious douche hoops to earn this organization's trust and I even put my precious gmail at risk to get a firsthand look. But I did it all for you. My loves.

So you know how MySpace has that weird part in the profile where you can say how much you make in a year? And since kids and bands don't have real jobs everyone ironically puts "Over $200,000," right? Some guy took that one metric really seriously and decided to make that the sole basis for his very own social circle jerk known as

This place has it all, motherfuckers. Networking, little desserts, front desk bells, more networking... fuck. These are all things I want. I know you're jealous but I'm gonna be blunt: You need $3 million to join this elite team.

See.

Oh, I applied for free all right. But not as regular Patrick Fitzgerald Hosmer. I'm a Master of Internet Disguise so I breezed right past the virtual velvet rope as my rich-as-fuck alter ego, John Money.

You think John Money the Billionaire is scared of an online form? Btch Plz.

Seeing the word Billion in a drop-down menu is really weird. Drop-downs are so middle-class.

But it wasn't that easy. Affluence.org had a few tricks up its French-cuffed sleeves. They started off easy with the bio stuff and then they dropped these on me to see if I was for real.

Thank you, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Thank you, Streetboners.

Thank you, my actual Bourgeois taste.

And that was basically it. I passed the test and now I have all this at my disposal:

Wait, what? Who wrote this, MySpace? Do they think rich people don't read? "Receive access to the hottest new trends?" Like what, Digimons or some shit? Headbands? We're top of the food chain, baby, I make the trends. I e-mail you and say, "Pod Racing. Tai Chi. Vampire Baseball. Make that bitch a trend." Fax it around the world. I am John Money.

The Wallstreet Journal wrote this about Affluence.org:

The problem with Diamond Lounge, A Small World and other "elite" social-networking sites is that they tout themselves as high end but can't verify people's wealth or income. Inevitably, the online riff-raff spoil the party of the elites.

Riff-Raff, Street Rats. Sultans Only!

TechCrunch had this to say:

Affluence is the latest company to take a crack at building a community site exclusively for the rich and famous among us instead of the petty riff-raff that make up the bulk of internet users.

JESUS. It's like all the non-millionaires became thieving vagrants just loitering about. Listen, I share my stolen bread loaves with little kids, asshole. Oh wait, no I don't. I'm John Money, Goldmeister.

In Robert Frank's interview with Affluence founder Scott Mitchell, this was said:

Robert Frank: How can you really determine someone's income or net worth?

Scott Mitchell: We have algorithms developed where we go out to public-record providers like Axiom, Equifax and others. We'll enter the first and last name of the applicant, their birthdates and state they live in. We'll get records back on what they might be worth and what the applicant has said they are worth in marketing surveys.



RF: But people lie on those marketing surveys all the time. Are there other backstops?

SM: Sure. Equifax can give us things like income-generating assets, checks on liens and litigation and tell us how much their home is worth. Using those records we come up with a "confidence coefficient," which tells us how likely it is that your net worth matches your application. We also use a service called Intelius that tells us how much your home may be worth given your neighborhood or what you paid for it.

Thank goodness John Money is an actual guy with real estate in his name (??). Liars.

Wanna see my Affluence.org Wall? They call it a "Mantle." It's totes cutesies, guys.

RF: How did you get the idea to start the site?

SM: When I sold my internet business (Tunes.Com) for $180 million in 2000, I had what you might call sudden wealth syndrome. Despite our wealth, my wife and I thought Olive Garden was Italian cuisine's panacea. We thought Apple vacations was how you book travel. We didn't have friends who could recommend travel to the French Riviera. It took me years to build up that network. So the site was created to give people a network of other wealthy people who are facing the same unique decisions and challenges every day.

One Million Strong for Sudden Wealth Syndrome. If you wanna live like I'm living, all you gotta do is tell these clowns what your home is worth. If you're too good for that, well, sorry buster. The view's mighty fine from over here, though!

Being rich on the Internet is extremely pointless.