I've been reading this for the last few days, finished today.
Very powerful ideas, impressive writing, inspired and sparked new thoughts in my mind every reading moment.
One thing that is mentioned en passant that I would like to know the author's opinion about: if seeking status is so important for these tools growth, what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?
I imagine it is entertainment, the third axis that the author chose not to dive in. But he has such interesting insights that I would love to read a follow-up essay on what drives the "status-giving monkeys".
> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?
Not the author, but my take on it: since status is a scarce resource, the majority of people are not able or willing to put in the work to acquire status. Instead, they live vicariously through the status of others.
> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?
I'd argue its at least partly education. People not yet confident or committed enough to pursue status seeking activities watching and learning from others to explore their interests...
> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?
It would be interesting to see what the demographics of lurkers are. Are these mostly older people who are not so enthralled with seeking status via likes/followers but still want to be able to minimally participate? I'd also be curious to know if the propensity to be a lurker is dependent on the platform - i.e. the work to gain status is too high for some platforms, but not for others - or if some people are generally more likely to be lurkers on all platforms.
I'm probably just an old fart or not getting it in some other way but I was thinking about this the other day. For whatever reason the status seeking culture really really annoys me. I feel it's "wrong". I'm not religious but I know the Bible has more than one passage about seeking status = bad so maybe that's where my thinking is influenced.
So, seeing all the status seeking on Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Twitch, Twitter, etc. and mostly feeling out of touch with that culture it got me wondering what changed. I think what changed is that before all these services, before the internet, the number of people seeking status I could be exposed to was pretty small. It was either certain celebrities, not all of them but a few stuck out as status seeking. Otherwise it would just be the occasional person I might meet at some meetup/trade-show/friend-of-friend/convention that really set my hairs on end and was happy was not part of my everyday life.
Now though it seems it's practically the norm. Maybe the percentage of such status seeking people has not changed, I have no idea, but clearly all these services have made it possible for most of them to find an audience of at least 100 to 1000 people and for me to run across them one way or another. Instagram has lists of the top status seekers, as does TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, etc... I was having a coffee in Brentwood LA a couple of years ago and heard some teens arguing and bragging about who had more followers. This American Life had a segment on teen life with social media and the new rituals of likes.
Anyway, I have no idea of all the status seeking I now see is just it coming out in the open from being hidden or if it's a new thing promoted by it being so easy now. I also have no idea if it's good or bad. My gut says "bad" but that could just be old man thinking.
I think I mostly agree with the authors premise that "We are all status seeking monkeys". It's just that the type of status people seek is different across populations:
> Some people find status games distasteful. Despite this, everyone I know is engaged in multiple status games. Some people sneer at people hashtag spamming on Instagram, but then retweet praise on Twitter. Others roll their eyes at photo albums of expensive meals on Facebook but then submit research papers to prestigious journals in the hopes of being published. Parents show off photos of their children performances at recitals, people preen in the mirror while assessing their outfits, employees flex on their peers in meetings, entrepreneurs complain about 30 under 30 lists while wishing to be on them, reporters check the Techmeme leaderboards; life is nothing if not a nested series of status contests.
I'm not sure if you agree with this or not, I think maybe what you are seeing is that social norms have shifted such that overt pursuing of status seems to be OK, whereas before people would pursue status while pretending not to really care. Perhaps also, as the author points out, people are now competing for status with a much larger audience (before it was just your circle of friends/acquaintance, now it's everyone on ${PLATFORM_OF_CHOICE}, maybe this has made the competition for those who are pursuing this form of status more fierce, or maybe being able to see all these people openly pursuing this form of status has normalized it.
is not status seeking. Even if I have zero interest in status, sharing knowledge and/or getting feedback can be the main and even only goal.
The same is true of many things. You can have a blog where your goal is to share something or get feedback, not to get status. You can usually tell the difference or at least I think I can. You can be an entertainer (actor, musician, writer, animator ...) and actually have your goal as entertaining people, not gaining status. Even photos. I share 5000+ photos on Flickr. They are all marked as CC-BY. I'm doing it to contribute and share, not to get status. If they ever became popular maybe that would change. Mostly I use them for myself and once or twice a year someone tells me they used one and that makes me happy. I don't feel it's increased my status.
I guess I don't agree with the author at all that effectively everything in life can be seen as status seeking
I think the key word when talking about status wrt to research is “prestige”. Just about everyone submitting to Nature I’m sure legitimately wants to share their knowledge and get feedback. But I’m sure they’re also really hoping they get this Nature publication accepted and that it gets cited because that’s a form of social status that is very good for their career (and hey honestly for most people I’m sure it makes them feel important, accomplished, and respected, too, all of which I would argue are at least partially social status).
I do agree with you that not everything is accurately described just by social status, but it does explain a surprising amount human behavior, at least for me.
This was strikingly on point, although I'm saddened it's mostly about the Internet, and only obliquely mentions the status games of office culture, wider adult culture, and pre-technology child's play.
One very, very uncomfortable feeling about the Internet is status-seeking, which is now omnipresent, feels a bit too good. I used to be able to socialize in places where I knew the interaction would lead nowhere -- acquire some status the time of the conversation, make people laugh, make people stay longer than they wanted, maybe buy me candy or silly things -- then leave and kinda calmly come down and sleep and forget about them. Nowadays it's all permeating everywhere and if I want to play the game it has to be "for real" spending a bit of time building up a persona, staying on a platform, knowing whatever happens may live forever on some server or the minds of the mostly random strangers I was trying to impress. The fun part happens a lot less fast, and in addition, you have to deal with it encroaching on your real life and the status games that actually matter much more. (For example, nosy interviewers who want my GitHub.)
There used to be, well, recreational status-seeking, and now, all recreation is status-seeking. You can't even go walk in a park without somebody almost having an accident trying to take a "unique" cellphone pic. I miss having "on" periods that are intense fun but temporary in nature and "off" alone calm periods no one sees. Please somebody turn off the social thingies and give me that world back.
I've long wondered whether it's possible to buy social status. It's tricky because having wealth gives an automatic status increase in most places. Of course, people need to know about the wealth, hence the prevalence of fancy cars, jewellery etc. So those things are used to broadcast wealth and thus hopefully increase social standing. The social networks mentioned in the post don't create status directly, but rather are used to advertise the status or wealth that was already there, which may have a compounding effect. But none of these methods are very efficient, I wonder what a more direct method would be? Something like "rent-a-cool-friend" or any of the Fyre founder's various (fraudulent) schemes.
I think at least in some circumstances you can. Take photography for example. Most photographers can produce a decent shot if given enough time. So something like Instagram is saturated with stunning photos with a dozen likes and no comments. What’s a photographer to do to get noticed? Lo and behold, they can shoot a famous model or ten. The shots are just as good as their sister’s boyfriend’s cousin’s, maybe the modeling is slightly better. But the mere fact that the Instagram-famous model shared the photo and vouched for the wonderful experience will immediately bring more attention to the photographer. Most models in this case won’t just do it for free, so you will be buying this attention. But it is worth it because if you do this enough times, you will get a huge following eventually. Then you can start expanding out from Instagram into other venues. Art shows, magazines, etc. Again, your photography may be “average” (compared to other competent photographers), but your marketing + your cash is what really propels this forward. Do this for a decade or two and chances are you can get gigs that would make you a household name.
IMO you can't buy social status the same way that you buy a macbook. This is the reason why you see a lot of kids of wealthy families flail around forever trying to "make their mark" despite having the power that wealth bestows on them. For whatever reason, they cannot get the people they really admire to take them seriously or even acknowledge their existence and it drives them mad.
You can throw an impressive amount of money on things and earn the admiration of certain kinds of people. But those tend to be the same people who will flock to _any_ person with the same kind of wealth. So you have to live with the fact that these "friends" like you only for your wealth and not for _you_. But maybe that's fine if its what you're looking for.
“Value is tied to scarcity, and scarcity on social networks derives from proof of work," says Wei in his article. On Instgram, TikTok, etc, the status is earned through work IE posting a highly liked photo. TikTok dancing is hard, and people spend hours getting the perfect shot. That creates status, and it's broadcast globally.
I never said it wasn't. But I'm not so sure you can buy status without putting in some effort on your own part. Maybe it's a bit like physical fitness -- you can pay for a nice gym, a personal trainer, etc, but you still have to do the heavy lifting yourself (pun intended).
Love the article - both excellent writing and content. Id say youth are more interested in social capital because of sex and money. Eagerly looking for both makes one "peacock".
I’ve only got halfway through this, but this paragraph was tremendous writing:
> Predictably, everything exploded. The number of posts increased. The engagement with said posts increased. This is the scene in a movie in which, having launched something, a bunch of people stand in a large open war room waiting, and suddenly a geek staring at a computer goes wide-eyed, exclaiming, "Oh my god." And then the senior ranking officer in the room (probably played by a scowling Ed Harris or Kyle Chandler) walks over to look at the screen, where some visible counter is incrementing so rapidly that the absolute number of digits starts is incrementing in real time as you look at it, because films have to make a plot development like this brain dead obvious to the audience. And then the room erupts in cheers while different people hug and clap each others on the back, and one random extra sprints across the screen in the background, shaking a bottle of champagne that explodes and ejaculates a stream of frothy bubbly through the air like some capitalist money shot that inspires, later, a 2,000 word essay from Žižek.
>> People seek out the most efficient path to maximizing social capital
Trying to take the shortest path is like flinging yourself over an invisible wall and hoping that you don't smash into it.
There are only so many times that you can hit that wall before you break. So it makes sense to pick a very long path that will take a lifetime to finish; that way you can be sure that you won't live long enough to see yourself fail.
Very powerful ideas, impressive writing, inspired and sparked new thoughts in my mind every reading moment.
One thing that is mentioned en passant that I would like to know the author's opinion about: if seeking status is so important for these tools growth, what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?
I imagine it is entertainment, the third axis that the author chose not to dive in. But he has such interesting insights that I would love to read a follow-up essay on what drives the "status-giving monkeys".