Should you become a DJ?

If you're a newly wealthy white tech bro, maybe

There comes a time in every suddenly wealthy 30- or 40something white male’s life when, after he moves to a tax shelter, hires a private banker at JP Morgan, and transitions from CEO to chairman of his recently exited tech company, he asks the question that white tech bros have been asking themselves since the beginning of time: “should I become a DJ?”

While it may seem like the obvious answer is, “BROOOOOO,” there is a chance that becoming a DJ is not the right white tech bro early retirement default contrived passion pursuit for you.

A problem far greater than Miami Beach’s gradual descent into the Atlantic ocean is the precipitous rise of really awful super rich amateur DJs who live in full-floor, sparsely furnished, all white penthouses on Collins, Ocean or Lincoln and are placated and perpetuated by their much less wealthy friends who work as product marketing managers for crypto companies, freelance remote-work UX designers, and third-tier nutrition influencers and enjoy attending parties that feature caviar-topped tater tots. This ecosystem of post-economic amateur DJs and their sycophant fans (sycofans) is growing faster than Pioneer can ship decks that will be used like twice.

Before you place your order for a Pioneer DJ OPUS-QUAD 4 channel DJ system on Sweetwater.com, ask yourself the following questions to be sure that, despite never having played the two guitars hanging on your wall or any other musical instrument in your life, or the fact that you have only just begun to pay someone to collect vinyl for you, you are meant to become a DJ who headlines Göspel on Tuesday nights when one of your other ultra wealthy friends does a full buyout for his girlfriend’s best friend’s birthday.

How rich are you exactly?

Not all cap tables are distributed equally. If you’ve somehow sold the niche effervescent beverage brand you launched with a crippling investment-loan from your father, who is a shrewd Chicago-based hedge fund manager who doesn’t actually like you, you may have only netted like $4.2 million. $4.2 million is not enough to dedicate all of your time to learning how to turn knobs with one headphone over your ear while you play another DJ’s set. $4.2 million is also not enough to fund the kinds of parties that will attract a sufficient number of sycofans to make you feel like you’re no longer the socially awkward, doughy math prodigy who in 6th grade was targeted in dodgeball by boys who have grown into loud bald men who now sell life insurance in the least expensive parts of Connecticut, like Wilton for example.

You should only become a DJ if your post-tax exit proceeds are greater than $25 million in Miami, $60 million in New York City, $125 million in San Francisco, or whatever $100,000 is anywhere in Europe or the United Kingdom. Post economic cannabis-tech bros in Los Angeles never become DJs, opting instead to pursue acting, producing, or guest lecturing about post-economic spirituality at The Esalen Institute.

There is also a ceiling on the optimal net worth of a tech bro DJ. If you make plane money in your exit—greater than $250 million—it is not advisable to become a DJ. A better application of your maniacal focus and inexhaustible fortune is learning to fly a helicopter, since helicopters are basically flying DJ decks, what with their many knobs and dials and flashing lights and the terrible racket they make. Flying your own helicopter is also more likely to attract your token tradwife wellness influence raw milk psilocybin dealer girlfriend if you can fly her home from Miami to Panama City Beach to see her mom and stepdad, who is also her ex.

How old are you?

Real DJs, who are paid to be DJs at real parties attended by real people, who are not just pretending to dance or mechanically doing that thing with their right arm that looks like karate-chopping the air in time with the bass, typically learn to DJ in their early teens, which is when post-economic white tech bros began learning to manipulate code and people. The optimal age range for white tech bros to become DJs is between 36 and 45, which is just young enough for these bros to feel hope but also not so old that they feel pain in their necks after hours of rhythmic head-nodding.

How good looking are you?

If a really good DJ ever looks up from turning their little knobs for 3 seconds and also happens to simultaneously remove their beanie or boxy black baseball cap, take a moment to study their face. You will find that most DJs are only slightly above mid when it comes to physical attractiveness. If you are too good looking, you will not be thought of as a credible DJ (unless you are RICHE); people will assume that you only get gigs because of your appearance, like, for example, how BLOND:ISH only books gigs because she has that tiny vertical ponytail on top of her head.

The best DJs are attractive enough to put in front of a crowd of people on MDMA who want to fall in love with the person who is facilitating their roll but not so attractive that they will stop dancing and fixate, which kills the vibe. The optimal attractiveness score for a DJ is 6.5.

How autistic are you?

Many people believe that to become a rich tech bro DJ you must have an inner artist who was clamoring to emerge throughout their 18 months of undergraduate CS education, 9 years of coding at Google while schmoozing Bay Area VCs at the Battery, and 8 years of being diluted by those same VCs, who are also DJs. This is actually because of a simple typo. To be a post economic tech bro turned DJ who entirely underwrites a turnkey Burning Man camp in order to play a sunrise set for about 12 people who are all in a k-hole cuddle puddle on a turbulent come down from candy-flipping, you must be autistic, not artistic.

Many post economic tech bros will find themselves socially exhausted from having to go founder-mode on the dozens of people who actually do the work of building the company so that an investment banker with high cholesterol and low morals is able to package and sell to it to an obscure European holding company as a tuck-in for a third-tier SAP rival that has lost money for the past 6 quarters. The great thing about being a DJ is that you get to be at a party, but you don’t actually have to party or even look at people.

In fact, the absolute best DJs never look up from their deck or emote in any discernible human way. They just nod their head and frown in perpetual frustration that the sound in their cans is not as good as the sound in their oversensitive brain. Most wealthy early middle aged men who become DJs as a frantic lunge at the last trace of their fleeting youth are between a 4 and a 7 on a ten-point autism scale.

How white male are you?

While it is certainly possible for 30- and 40-something females and people of color who come into sudden stratospheric wealth to—of all the things in the world they could do—become bad amateur DJs, literally why would they do that.