How massive is Jeff Bezos's wealth? A viral TikTok tried to measure it in grains of rice.
Reuters/Lindsey Wasson
A viral TikTok video reimagines the wealth of Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, in grains of rice.
Humphrey Yang, the creator of the video, found that if each grain represents $100,000, Bezos's pile of money would weigh 58 pounds.
According to Forbes, Bezos is worth $113 billion. The bottom half of Americans, by contrast, have a combined negative net worth.
In the time it takes you to watch this TikTok video, Jeff Bezos, the richest person alive, will make more than $160,000.
On Thursday, social media personality Humphrey Yang took up the challenge of counting the Amazon CEO's net worth in grains of rice. The video went viral, capitalizing on a moment in America where the phrase "class warfare" is in news headlines and the bottom 50% of the country has a combined negative net worth.
If a single grain of rice represents $100,000, Bezos's pile of money weighs 58 pounds, according to Yang, who estimated the tech founder's net worth at $122 billion. (Forbes currently estimates his net worth at $113 billion, but it's fluctuated — on February 8, Forbes reported he has $126 billion.)
"In my last video I counted 10,000 grains of rice…, and that was to show you the scale of a billion dollars," Yang said in the clip. "Well, a lot of you guys asked me, 'Well, how much does Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have in terms of rice?"
So he bought a scale, made the calculations, and got enough rice for the experiment. (He says no rice was harmed in the making of the video: "I have five families that are going to take this rice, so it's totally not wasteful."
@humphreytalks Rice. Part 2: Jeff Bezos net worth. ##rice ##billion ##billions ##amazon ##jeffbezos ##money ##personalfinance ##xyzcba
♬ original sound - humphreytalks
The clip went viral on Twitter, where many users were stunned into incredulity — and not because Yang stuck his keyboard into a pile of rice to demonstrate its size.
"Gross," said one person. "Not you or your analogies, the disproportionate wealth."
—Stacey 🇨🇦 (@AnaDHami) February 28, 2020
"omg... i hate everything now," said another.
—Smoovies (@StephenAymond) February 28, 2020
As one user noted, "eat the rich" — a slogan used to decry massive inequality — and "eat the rice" are just one letter apart.
—Tricia Rae Pendergrast (@traependergrast) February 28, 2020
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