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.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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There is a known phenomena among the wealthy where they vastly over rate their classes accomplishments relative to others. So rich kid paints a picture and it should be in a gallery. Poor kid wins an art scholarship and it's due to affirmative action.
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.
I don't think qualifications are relevant for nepotism to occur
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
But all of that training and extra support is exactly what that term is referring to. They wouldn't have gotten that support unless they were born into it. The people aren't as giving with their time to just any kid who wants to study their craft. Maybe some do. We need more of that.
It's like a child of doctors growing up to become a doctor.
Except these aren't remotely the same scenarios, because it simply doesn't happen as often in any other industry. If anything, the 9/10 number is LOW for entertainment.
It's a terrible comparison.
Nobody's going to give the child of a talented surgeon the chance to do surgery on themselves.
But they might give the child of a talented actor a role in a film, this is a situation of connections not nurture.
Example: After Earth (2013)
I wonder what she thinks a “leg up” means.
never mind a leg up… kids in a fucking papoose at this point
Not super related but a friend of the family I’m visiting stopped by yesterday and was bragging about her son, who recently prompted an LLM to write a fantasy series “in the style of the Witcher”, did some loose editing, and published the books on amazon. She wrapped up with “He did some research and it isn’t even plagiarism!”
I tried to look occupied with something else, but she explicitly called out to me “What do you think?” It took everything I had not to lunch into an anti-AI rant starting with “Actually, his pollution of the literary space syphoning money away from real authors is plagiarism, and here’s why!”
Sounds like two failed abortions in two generations.
"Maybe next he can try writting a book! :)" then stare into their soul
Gross. I would be dissapointed if that was my son
Well you'd have to find something to be proud of, and if this is his greatest accomplishment then pickings must be slim indeed...
This is a perfect example of why AI will succeed no matter how mind-numbingly stupid it is: it will give people the warm and fuzzies without having to do jack shit. Yes, they "prompted" the LLM. Yes, they "edited" the output, and yes it was published on the biggest fucking commercial website to exist in the history of man. All of those "achievements" pale in comparison to writing an actual book with your own creativity and words and finesse. But since most people can't expect themselves or their offspring to pull off such a difficult feat, this 'second-place' surrogate will do just fine and so we will all pay with what few resources we haven't already annihilated in order to keep the gears grinding a little longer. 🙏
This generation of AI won't "succeed", I will be surprised if any current companies survive the eventual bubble pop. The LLMs will survive obviously as any other useful tech does.
With the amount they have been funded, borrowed and valued at they need to replace a mass of workers with "Agentic AI" to make the trillions of return they expect/need in like 4 years from now. LLMs doing this is a pipe dream, more GPUs won't make an LLM sentient. And every other use case is a losing proposition for these companies.
I weep. It was excruciatingly hard already to find someone interested in your work to bring it to market, agents literally drown in awesome books they can't publish profitably. A perfect example - A Confederacy Of Dunces - couldn't find an agent/publisher until after the writer's death, then immediately won a pulitzer. this was the late 60's-70s iirc.
Now add the torrent of new writers with an interconnected world wide network.
Then add the tsunami of AI garbage.
We're going to lose masterpieces because of that tsunami, and instead we'll get AI garbage.
Not just in this field. Crap is drowning out real work in the sciences as well as arts. Both in terms of where funding goes as well as the output. It's a cultural disaster.
scientific publishing was hurting bad (signal to noise and ethics issues) before AI... yeah, this is gonna be really bad.
It took everything I had not to lunch into an anti-AI rant
Why did you hold back? It would be a lot better to just be honest about it.
I don’t know this woman, but she’s close with people I care about and responding to her bragging about her son with “His actions are terrible and here’s why” would have stirred up drama. I’m not going to convince her that I’m right and her son is wrong in the five minutes we had together.
Just let it go and don't even ask for the book title is probably enough between 2 old friends.
And one can be honest and tactful, which really is the best way to get people to think about things.
Absolutely! You don't have to be an asshole just because you are being honest. How you say things matter a lot.
Plus it is not hard to get "published" on Amazon. Literally anyone can.
As someone saw the first 25 minutes of the film, I can say ... I hate nepotism.
Thanks for answering the obvious question that popped into everyone's mind.
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