I don’t believe that I personally have been changed by the money. The bad thing is people assume you’ve changed because now you have money.

O’Neal distinguishes between actual personal transformation and the social narrative that wealth automatically corrupts or alienates. The quote suggests that money functions less as an inner moral force than as a lens through which others reinterpret your behavior: ordinary boundary-setting, privacy, or new obligations can be read as arrogance or betrayal. He frames the “bad thing” as projection—people attributing character change to wealth rather than acknowledging their own expectations, envy, or discomfort with altered social distance. Implicitly, he argues for continuity of identity and character despite financial success, while also noting the relational cost of fame and fortune: trust becomes harder, and relationships can be renegotiated by assumptions rather than evidence.