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Plenty of people spend over $12k a year for things that make them feel better (that they don’t need). It’s called a luxury car.

Anyone who bought a new Porsche (and isn’t a professional racing driver using it for work) is probably spending over $12k a year on something for fun.

I assume anyone who buys a new Porsche is indeed rich

A lot of people on HN have Silicon Valley jobs which leads to a distortion field around prices.

That number is almost exactly the median amount of money Americans have left over for spending for "personal entertainment" after all ordinary expenses, per the US government. Americans have anomalously high income generally, not just tech workers.

You don't need to be rich to spend this much on something wasteful, though you may need to be American.

even then, would that half of americans spend the majority of their "personal entertainment" budget on one app?

I'd hope and expect not but Americans do lots of inadvisable things at scale, so it would not surprise me if there is a small sub-population that would. A "small sub-population" can be a lot of people.