Social Media is Classist - why people favour the wealthy and shame the poor online

Social media is a breeding ground for poor-shaming working-class mockery, and I’ve been collecting evidence for the past 4 months to prove that. What we are seeing is the re-invention of the harmful working-class stereotypes present in early 2000s/10s media regurgitated in our algorithms right now. We can look at how deeply intertwined identity and consumption habits to begin understanding why social media creates a hierarchy of lifestyles that shames those as the bottom and analyse the key theme of ‘distinction’ driving a lot of the hate and ‘humour’.  I’ve pulled examples from my ongoing to prove just how social media fuels and reinvents the mockery of the working class. Email: [email protected] – whatzaralovesTikTok – whatzaraloves6YouTube: WhatzaralovesPodcast: Taboo on the Bus  Kyey references: Books:Chavs by Owen Jones Journals:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.1814https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437231185966https://napier-repository.worktribe.com/output/3176889  Articles:https://www.vice.com/en/article/chav-caricature-comeback-tiktok-2020/https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2021/09/02/how-the-medias-selective-idealisation-of-the-working-class-perpetuates-inequality/https://consequence.net/2025/12/ricky-gervais-working-classes-mock-mortality/