this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
861 points (99.0% liked)

Microblog Memes

10043 readers
1719 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 207 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (16 children)

Hollywood is almost psychotically convinced that this is true, even though 9/10 times a new star turns out to be someone’s kid. Even the old actors we love are mostly someone’s kid.

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 39 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (8 children)

For the slightest bit of defence: it makes sense. "Nepo baby" generally refers to some kid who doesn't have the qualifications for their role but got it through their parents giving them an unfair chance.

But it makes perfect sense that if you grow up in a house with actors and writers for parents they can both teach you about the business, they'll be happy to pay for that kind of education, and they'll be super encouraging because unlike most families, to them becoming an actor or director is a perfectly reasonable goal.

It's like a child of doctors growing up to become a doctor. On one hand their parents could have just pulled some strings, on the other hand, having parents excited to teach you organic chemistry and advanced math in middle school probably helps you a lot when it comes to qualifying for med school.

I don't think all Hollywood nepo babies are like this. I'm just saying you would expect to see children of great actors become actors themselves.

Edit: so some of these responses confuse me. I say in the first paragraph that "nepo baby" generally refers to a subset of children who take on their parents job who are given unfair opportunities despite not being the most qualified for it. It might not be the strict definition but it's my modern understanding of it and it's the thing that people are actually angry about, including me. Acknowledging this at the top is meant to caveat what I'm saying for the rest of the post that I'm not talking about those people.

I agree that in a perfect world all people should get as much access as possible to any education and opportunities they want and I hope we get that.

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't think qualifications are relevant for nepotism to occur

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yes but the modern colloquialism of nepotism applies an undeserving attribute to the subject. At least, this is how I've noticed it used.

Edit: oops neoptism

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)