Behold the One Per cent Fortnite house, a mansion some gaming YouTubers bought and proceeded to turn into a vaguely fun-looking giant home office. It’s both a reminder that even when you’ve “made it” as an influencer the grind never stops, and also that most people have no idea how to decorate a home like a grown adult/functioning human being.
A video tour of the home went up on Sunday to help announce the formation of a new influencer company called One Per cent, made up of well known personalities who were formerly part of the Luminosity Gaming esports organisation. In it, people with millions of YouTuber subscribers such as Randumb, Kiwiz, and Formula show off the “multi-million dollar property” they bought with “our own cash” while occasionally hawking limited-edition One Percenter merchandise like hoodies and t-shirts. The video begins with a shot outside the property, with fancy cars in the driveway. It’s like they were trying to recreate the opulence of self help grifter Tai Lopez showing off the cars he earned by reading books but ran out of time when it came to decorating the rest of the mansion.
“Right when you walk in we got this beautiful 160 bottle wine display, however none of us drink wine,” Formula says near the beginning of the tour, before telling potential sponsors they can pay to have their products placed in the towering glass case instead. Whoever sold them the house also apparently told them that a mini-grand piano in the middle of the living room had once been played by Frank Sinatra, who was not known for playing piano.
Photo prints of lux brands like Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Dior also adorn the walls, either as gaudy holdovers from whoever owned the house previously or a thinly veiled attempt to signal wealth and status by framing ads from Vanity Fair like a baby Andy Warhol raised on #millionairemindset Instagram accounts.
Maybe saddest of all are the YouTubers’ bedrooms, not necessarily because they’re lined with Funko Pops and truly bizarre movie posters like one for 2015’s Focus starring Will Smith, but because of how tiny and barren they look. They’re only slightly more furnished than the guys’ empty apartments meme and mostly designed so that the people who just dropped a bunch of money on a mansion never have to leave one 19 sq km patch of it. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life: we’ve got our own snack bar, boys,” Formula says while pointing to a cabinet stocked with mason jars full of Sour Patch Worms and other assorted candy. What is it with gamers getting rich and buying tons of candy?
Young social media stars cohabitating in a mansion to combine their powers and reach the next level of fame is all the rage right now, but tours like the One Per cent Fortnite House infomercial are also clearly part of an attempt to leverage peoples’ existing wealth into continued financial success. Who doesn’t want to join their favourite video game streamer as they continue climbing to the big time? Of course, the whole mirage works a bit better when the lives of the rich and famous you’re subscribing to don’t look like they were rented from a Target catalogue.
Leave a Reply