A ‘rich kid of Instagram’ has had £500,000 ($850,000) worth of cars torched by arsonists.
Aleem Iqbal, who goes by the moniker of “Lord Aleem” on the social image sharing website/app, discovered via CCTV footage that his Lamborghini Aventador Roadster worth £340,000 ($577,000) was destroyed by three hooded men in a Mercedes 4×4 outside a house in Luton, Beds. A week later three more of his expensive cars were destroyed outside his father’s luxury car hire firm’s garage in Birmingham.
It hasn’t yet been revealed whether or not the crimes were perpetrated by those jealous of Aleem’s abundance of riches that he frequently flaunts on Instagram, or whether it was an unrelated attack on his family’s business, but either way setting someone else’s property alight is obviously an abhorrent crime and those who committed it should rightlly be punished. However, the ‘Rich Kids of Instagram’ phenomenon (or ‘#RKOI’ as they’re known on the app) is particularly tasteless, and scrolling through the Tumblr page dedicated to archiving all posts made by these rich kids leads us to wonder how they haven’t fallen victim to these crimes more frequently.
While hating someone for no other reason than them being wealthier than you is classism, it’s perfectly understandable for you to dislike these Rich Kids of Instagram for their lack of tact when it comes to slapping their multitude of dollar bills across the faces of the rest of the world. Aleem said that the attack was either a “vile act of jealously towards my business or it could just be mindless vandals on an arson spree,” but his Instagram page is devoted entirely to making other people jealous. That’s what the Rich Kids of Instagram are – jealousy machines, manufacturing envy.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that “Lord Aleem” deserves to have his possessions set alight because of this, but it’s also ludicrous for anyone with such a gross habit of flashing their cash in front of those less unfortunate to then seem perplexed upon discovering that some people may not appreciate a teenager getting wealthy on the back of his father’s hard work flaunting his wealth. There’s a whole MTV show dedicated to inspiring hatred for brattish teenagers with more wealth than sense in the form of My Super Sweet 16, we don’t need this shit on the Internet, too.
Hopefully the criminals are apprehended and punished, but this will also hopefully lead to the self-congratulatory Rich Kids of Instagram coming to the conclusion that bragging about the lifestyle afforded to them by their parents’ hard work is unclassy, no matter how many bottles of expensive champagne they photograph themselves drinking.
Photo: Instagram.com/LordAleem
