Lori Loughlin's college scam achieved every parent's dream: Getting their child an Amazon partnership
Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, so desperate for less-full houses that they allegedly resorted to the oh-so-American crime of scamming college entrance processes for their children, are not exactly masters of subterfuge. Still, that doesn’t mean that at least one of their kids, Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, hasn’t made good on her hard-bought post-secondary education by nabbing Amazon partnerships and, uh, skipping classes.
As spotted by writer and attorney Gabrielle Bluestone, Giannulli posted a #relatable student photo on her Instagram that advertises how Amazon, the company helping her out with a paid partnership, set her up for dorm life by getting college essentials (which, presumably, include that sparkling “OJ” sign) “shipped to me in just two-days [sic].”
As the Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton tweeted, Giannulli has also posted a video tour of her room on her YouTube channel, which includes a mention that “Amazon is coming to shoot some of my room because they hooked me up with, like…basically everything in my dorm.”
And hey, how about some organic sponsorship in the form of this very, weird, very synergistic interview below.
Of course, many generations of students, all the way back to our grandparents, have managed to carefully balance the demands of academia with work as a social media influencer. This doesn’t seem to be the case here, however.
Benton also tweeted a Yahoo! Lifestyle piece from late last summer that covers the backlash Giannulli received after telling her YouTube audience that she “didn’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend” and that she wanted “the experience of, like, game days, partying” but doesn’t “really care about school, as you guys all know.”
Of course, the real problem here isn’t an entitled teenager who’s grown up with immense wealth and is leveraging her name to build a career on YouTube and Instagram, it’s the parents who scammed the schools. There are some great posts to share from them as well, like Loughlin’s thoughts on integrity…
…and Huffman, who, documents show, exclaimed “Ruh ro!” when a kink in the entrance scam came up. Also, here’s her back in 2016.
As all of this shows, the ability for those with money to buy their way into opportunities the rest of us have to work hard to afford is incredibly depressing. It speaks to the rot that’s corrupted institutions that so many want to believe function on merit, not privilege. It’s just about bad enough that it makes you wish for the old days, when everything was perfect and nothing like this could ever happen and, as Richard’s Dreyfuss’ son Ben puts it, celebrities had to achieve unwarranted advantages through humbler means.
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