I have no information about his background either way, but I would urge people not to take biographical advice for minor celebrities from LLMs.

LLMs aren’t great at separating out high quality and low quality sources for things like minor celebrities. They end up reciting narratives that people want to push for themselves.

There’s a semi-famous tech person who has been claiming to have “invented” a common concept for years. It’s a false claim on every level, but they’ve been repeating it so widely that when you ask any of the LLMs about it you usually get it to say they were the inventor. The person has, in turn, started citing ChatGPT as confirming their version of events. It’s wild to see it happening in real time.

I think it's wrong, and either calmbonsai is speculating or just colloquially using "trust fund kid" to mean coming from a wealthy family.

That is, Ferris's family was undeniably well-off. From some quick research it looks like his dad was a pharmaceutical exec, his mom was a small gallery owner, he grew up in East Hampton and went to an expensive prep school. But I couldn't find any evidence that he received a large inheritance or had a literal trust fund. So yes, like a lot of people who become rich, it looks like he could afford to take risks, but his financial success flows from his own work and investments.

People have to stop believing Google's AI overview - it can be a useful pointer to other sources but it still makes shit up all the time. In this specific instance, the overview says "Father's Philosophy: His father, a high school graduate, emphasized simplicity in business, famously describing it as three shoeboxes: money in, money out, and profit." Except the link there goes to a page where Ferris was quoting someone else (Nick Kokonas) about Nick's father, not Ferris' own dad. It's flat out wrong and typical AI slop.