One of the easiest things in the world is to mistake an outcome for a story. A beautiful home. A thriving business. A failed marriage. A child in an expensive school. A forty-year-old with no savings. Someone who seems to have it all. Someone who appears to have fallen behind. We see the destination and instinctively begin filling in the journey. Hardworking. Lazy. Disciplined. Irresponsible. Lucky. Entitled. Deserving. Wasteful. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about human beings is not that we judge one another. It is how quickly we become certain that our judgment is correct. Because every life has invisible expenses. Not just financial ones. The kind that never appear on a bank statement or a résumé. Some are chosen. Some are imposed. Some are wise. Some are costly mistakes. Most are a complicated mixture of both. One person reaches middle age with very little savings because they spent years paying school fees for younger siblings. Another because they repeatedly made poor financi...
Spend a few minutes on Kenyan Reddit and you may walk away with the impression that every Kenyan earns upwards of KES 200,000, invests like a Wall Street trader, and casually thinks in U.S. dollars. Even when the topic is as grounded as rent in Kariobangi or the price of a phone, the responses often come wrapped in financial flexes. Dollars are quoted in a shilling economy, salaries inflated, and investments exaggerated. At first, it seems amusing, but the more you read, the more unsettling it becomes. If this is the digital space that Google increasingly serves us when we search for Kenyan solutions, what does it mean when exaggeration becomes the dominant voice of Kenyan reality online? The Performance of Wealth Kenyan Reddit thrives on a kind of performance. To admit to struggle, ordinary earnings, or living a simple life often attracts derision. For men especially, there is relentless pressure to appear financially successful. To be broke, or even to suggest that relationships m...