Everything Is Bad, So Jeff Bezos Had a Space-Themed Birthday Party!

On Wednesday, CBS News reported that a contingent of California’s thousands of homeless and displaced had been driven to live in dangerous caves along a Modesto river bank. Days earlier, a few hundred miles south, Jeff Bezos—who made $7.9 million an hour in 2023—celebrated his sixtieth lap around the sun in a way only a billionaire can: a lavish party populated by other billionaires in Beverly Hills.

According to a Page Six exclusive, Bezos brought in his birthday alongside an amalgam of Hollywood elites and cartoonishly evil business titans, including Jay Z and Beyoncé, half of the Kardashian clan, Ciara and Russell Wilson, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Oprah Winfrey, and Disney CEO, Bob Iger. So, basically, a room full of folks who could solve most of the world’s problems with a check if they wanted to but…don’t!

While there was no official theme for the fête (with the exception of “people I’d have to be paid to party with”) multiple attendees appeared to dress in accordance with Bezos’ ambitions of colonizing space. Paris Hilton, for instance, wore a silver gown embroidered with sparkly stars, while Katy Perry…arrived as an antennaed alien. For some reason, Jewel was also there and now I’ll never listen to “Standing Still” the same way again.

If the whole affair sounds, well, grotesque, it gets worse. Apparently, part of the soiree’s setting was “an almost exact replica of Jeff’s first Amazon office, which was in a garage,” a source told the tabloid. Bezos has since upgraded to a $147 million office in Miami but in continuation of the humble beginnings™ aesthetic, McDonald’s was also served in tribute to his first job ever at age 16. How absolutely McAspirational! Caviar, it’s noted, was also on the menu. Phew.

Since I’m feeling all nostalgic now, let’s check in on the current health of the Bezos dynasty thirty years in the making, shall we? There are widespread layoffs; the company’s France branch was just fined $35 million by a data watchdog for “excessive” tracking of its employees’ whereabouts just months after it had been fined $30 million for allegedly spying on customers’ activity in their own homes; in the U.K., workers are on strike for better pay and work conditions; and in 2023, more than two-thirds of Amazon warehouse workers surveyed by researchers reported injuries and exhaustion as a direct result of the job. Oh, and the Amazon labor union is reportedly rapidly losing support and funding.

See kids! Work hard enough and you, too, can abuse your labor force and throw a party!