2024-02-07T22:34:48Z
A flex is an overt, often gaudy display of status. That status can assume many forms but a flex usually demonstrates wealth. Flashing a Rolex or pulling up in a sports car may be textbook flexes but they also reveal something significant about the flexer: This consumerized variety of status is fungible, unlike the tokens that suddenly conferred it upon so many in recent years. Flexes proliferate in asset bubbles but are correspondingly diluted by inflation: A given flex derives its power from the relative positions of the message’s sender and receiver, and is thus weaker when a rising tide is lifting all ships. We must remember, too, the adage that money talks and wealth whispers. Needing to flex one’s wealth or even wanting to is, in a sense, an anti-flex, a signal that money is the only kind of status possessed. The ultimate flex is the kind you don’t have to buy.
Flex