Like, a classic yacht that’s just a smaller, wooden boat, single mast, gaff-rigged, that you do the maintenance on yourself (as much as possible) would be cool. Like, you could have some friends onboard or just sail it with your partner, doing a little work at ports to make ends meet and getting out of society for a while sounds neat to me. But, a superyacht where you have a whole crew that does all the work and you just take it on a one week cruise once a year sounds fucking lame.

It's because its one of the few things left that are completely exclusive to the ultra-rich. Every other thing that used to be exclusive to them, nowadays any old petite bourgeois can charter a private jet or book a fine dining reservation, but you have to truly be the ruling class to own a mega yacht.

It's a thing you only "get" when you've got enough money to be rubbing shoulders with the other people that own them and talk about them with each other. Seeing them do that then rubs off onto "I should get one".

Comparatively it's like buying a particular item of clothing simply because you know it's fashionable among your peer group and other people will look at you differently with them. Except this particular item is hundreds of millions of dollars.

They're a handy way to run from authorities too without getting blocked by airport security.