The funny thing about status is that you can actually get a lot more done if you have it. It's useful.
Admitting that is the first step to gaining status ethically, without shame. Reputation and status are joined at the hip, and while it's really easy to destroy one of these, it's probably very, very difficult to build them in the first place.
I view them as synonymous. Good reputation = high status. Bad reputation = low status. Feel free to substitute "reputation" for "status" if that's clearer to you. I'm referring as broadly as possible to any kind of negative or positive social judgments.
I think they are different. One can have a reputation without a status and vice versa.
Example:
A man who is visually fit and strong usually doesn't have a *reputation* for being strong. However, being strong and fit confers strong status symbols around the ideas of health, power, safety, wealth, free time, etc.
A person could have a reputation of being good in bed but lacks any status symbol that shows this sexual expertise. You'd have to talk to someone who knows the person's reputation in order to find out that they're good in bed.
Status is something you emit, intentionally or not, and reputation is what people think about you, whether it's true or not.
In the context of most discussions, though, I cede they're pretty much the same.
Yea, good points. I think of status as the umbrella term, encompassing all forms of positive or negative social judgment. I think of reputation as a subcategory of status, that is often less conspicuous (as you note) and more determined by gossip and word of mouth. For instance, being strong and fit might boost your status (+1), but having a reputation for being bad in bed might lower your status (-1). These might cancel out when someone is deciding whether to date you. But it’s stuff like whether people want to date you, follow you, hire you, befriend you, listen to you, obey you, etc. that ultimately determines your status.
There are certainly many nuances in the types of social esteem or opprobrium one might accrue, and how one might accrue them. But I think it’s useful to zoom out and use a broad umbrella term (I use “status” but maybe there’s a better umbrella term), because these subtypes share many commonalities, one of which is their signaling fragility and resultant weirdness.
Especially for the more aspie people who have trouble understanding status, and might need to put a bit more conscious effort into it. I think it would be a waste if they do not get to use their abilities and niche field expertise due to lack of memetic prowess and social chess elo.
I think it is also important to keep in mind that while this can be ethical, good, and shameless - it is likely to trip the creep detectors on the evolutionarily uninitiated. I don't think it's a reason for self-censorship, but it is a reason for prudence.
Nice post, but under this framing is *everything* status seeking? And if everything is status seeking, how much relevance does such a determination really have?
Yes, thanks, I think I would own up to that. I’d say almost everything, but yea—that’s the idea. I’m using status in a very broad sense, though, to encompass things like reputation, popularity, virtue points, prestige, power, loyalty, group status, perceived trustworthiness, etc. You can think of it as “overall social value” if you prefer. But yea, it’s everything. We’re hypersocial animals. It’s probably the single greatest selection pressure shaping the human brain. I think this has tons of relevance, especially given our inclination to hide it. I see this whole substack (including future planned posts) as cashing out that relevance. Our denial of our status drive might be the biggest source of bullshit. Thanks for reading. I recommend Will Storr’s The Status Game for more info on this idea.
Thanks for the response. Would you equate the struggle for status with Nietzsche's will to power, where he wrote, "“Even the body within which individuals treat each other as equals ... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant – not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power"?
Personally I would try to differentiate between Maslow's hierarchy of needs and/or Kaczynski's fulfillment of fundamental needs versus what he called "surrogate activities", which are all activities that are not rooted in achieving our fundamental needs. In other words, the things we need to do for survival -- eating, drinking, finding adequate shelter, finding a mate, etc -- are not surrogate activities, and these activities took up most of our time during hunter/gatherer societies for all of human history up to 10,000 years ago (which, in small tribes, was much more egalitarian -- and so status mattered much less -- than in agricultural, hierarchical societies). Doing those difficult but reachable activities, according to Kaczynski, fulfilled our power process and made us happy. Now, fulfilling our basic needs are either too easy (eating, drinking) or close to impossible (achieving personal autonomy, having a significant impact in the world), so we waste time on surrogate activities which are fundamentally hollow and empty, unfulfilling. Status seeking tends to blend these things all together in this weird hyper-social, post-industrial environment, because women want to mate with high-status men and high-status men have an easier time making money...
Hm, don’t have a lot of expertise on Nietzsche, but that quote sounds about right. I agree with the part about how the drive for status (or power) lurks within even supposedly egalitarian movements—Will Storr writes about this contradiction within communist regimes. I’m not a fan Maslow’s hierarchy theory, as I think it ignores and oversimplifies too many evolutionary drives, I don’t think there’s such a neat and strict hierarchy, and I think self-actualization is just a highfalutin way of saying status. Not sure I understand Kazcynski’s framework, but insofar as he’s aligned with Maslow I would disagree with him. I think all our evolved motives are equally fundamental and I’m not sure what a nonfundamental motive would be. But anyways, sounds like a much larger conversation! Thanks for sharing these interesting ideas—I will have to look into Nietzsche more.
I think we can take interesting ideas and intuitions from people like Nietzsche and Kaczynski. We can (and maybe should!) rephrase their strongest points in terms that align with the evolutionary psychology of status striving - and this way refine and steel-man what they 'meant'.
However I would only do this with concepts that are *very* close already, otherwise it is just a retcon of old philosophies for the purpose of ancestor worship, when in fact they didn't really have those ideas. I don't think these were so close.
Nietzsche's Will to Power is essentially a Will to Dominate in modern terms, but Dominance (ability to inflict costs) is just one part of status, whereas there is also Prestige (ability to confer benefits). Our somewhat functioning societies rely more on prestige than dominance, which may not have been true in Nietzsche's time; regardless, both are status games but they are different, and I don't think Nietzsche understood it in these terms - or at least definitely not in the fascist appropriation of Will to Power.
I'd also note that Maslow did not put needs on a hierarchy, merely enumerated them; it was other people relying on second-hand accounts of his work that spread that inaccurate idea. Of course in a sense you need to focus on continuing life before reproducing, but there are many tradeoffs and immediate sacrifices people make for status, for reproduction, sacrificing "lower" needs for "higher" ones, so it does not stack up evolutionarily.
"Can we somehow learn to defend the status games that actually make the world better and attack the ones that actually make the world worse?"
I guess we can be more cognizant of the status games we choose to play (and encourage our family members to play) and pick those we think have the best externalities.
I think this is exactly the point of the Science of Human Nature - to give us choice and awareness that we did not have before. We should use this power for good.
Nice essay. As a status seeking commenter, this is almost too meta to even comment on.
Status is tied to self/group awareness, consciousness itself, sure. Short of a special lobotomy, we're stuck performing for each other.
Why wouldn't we want to learn from the people best at finding food, making things, sheltering, healing?
I strongly agree, a species threatening set of conditions probably warrant a better status symbol set. But, our very nature makes that symbol set prone to variance. Babylon.
You’re right that the question of who to learn from--the best toolmakers, healers, etc.--is less prone to variance than the question of who is high-status. I can be the best toolmaker, but people might still think I’m an asshole if I’m constantly bragging about it, and I might lose out to the guy who’s not as good me but is more humble. So we can learn from people who aren’t high status (and complain about their assholery as we learn). And we might even delude ourselves into thinking that the more humble person is actually better at making tools, even if he’s not, just to spite the asshole who’s constantly bragging. And maybe we’d even learn more from the more humble person anyways! Maybe learning is more about having a nice, humble, patient teacher than having the most talented teacher. But these questions of niceness, humility, patience, virtue, and assholery are way harder to answer and way more volatile. That’s where the variance comes from.
For a minute there I thought you'd captured the reason for the continued candidacies of more than one politician.
If I ask different questions - that if an individual "figured out" status for a large group, how long can they hold onto it? How have we unintentionally constructed the social signaling network to communicate status? Is the system signature dictating the types of messages we can experience, can choose or can vote on? Based on - all big status individuals in our culture are way beyond individual person to person experiences and interactions. I digress.
This is fascinating, but a bit dispiriting. Do you think there's any comfort to be found in the notion that some people's personalities predispose them to be somewhat less status-focused than others (ie differences in the Big Five personality/dark triad traits) or is that grasping at straws?
Thanks, Clara. Sorry to be dispiriting (sincerely). Still trying to figure out how to keep things positive but it's a work-in-progress for me. I do think there is variation in status-seeking, and that's part of where the uncoolness of status-seeking comes from. We sense that those who are more status-obsessed are more likely to be assholes, or self-absorbed, which is why we don't want to come off looking like status-seekers ourselves. We don't want people to confuse us with those self-absorbed, status-seeking assholes out there. But, and here's where the dispiriting part comes in, the desire to not look like a status-seeking asshole is itself a kind of status-seeking--a desire to look like a virtuous person, to virtue signal. I think nice people are more motivated to seek "niceness status"--i.e., to be seen as nice--and to cover up the fact that they are seeking niceness status (because if they didn't cover it up, they wouldn't be seen as nice). It's just that the *truly nice* people are more successful in pulling off this subtle signaling strategy effectively, and convincing us that they're truly nice. Good for them! They won the game, fair and square. Assholes might *try* to look nice and fail, because we see through it. Anyways, this all gets very complicated and confusing real fast, but the point is that nice people are real. They exist. You seem nice. I think I'm nice too. Just because nice people (unconsciously) signal their niceness doesn't mean they're not nice. They are, and they're wonderful. I love nice people. We all do. If we can move toward "niceness status games" and away from other kinds of more toxic status games, the world would be a better place. I hope you join me in trying to make that happen. But maybe me calling out the "niceness status signal" is counterproductive, and might actually threaten its stability. If so, sorry about that. The good news is, status games are pretty robust, and reading one blog post is unlikely to really threaten any one of them. So keep on being nice! And keep praising nice people! And I'll work on that positivity thing. Thanks for reading.
Thank you for your reply. That all makes a lot of sense. I don't think you should feel you need to couch this in more positive terms. The stark nature of the message is partly what makes it so interesting. It's just a bit disorientating to see everything through this lens. It's hard to stop thinking about it (until conscious awareness of it all fades once again, I guess). Thank you!
Your comment on purposeful status-games makes me think about religion. I haven't examined this thought very closely, but as a first pass religions seem to fill the social niche of "useful" status game. They categorize the rules of the game, assign an arbiter of the winners of the status game (God/gods and their representatives), and are remarkably sticky. The status of the game "disciple of Christ" has been around for millennia, and though there are innumerable fractal status games being played with Christendom over that time, the innate game of who can gain status by being visibly more like Christ seems to be pretty stable. I need to think about it more, but I'm curious about your take on the role of religion in status games specifically.
Yes I think this point is astute. I see religions as, in large part, engineers of sacredness as I define it. And since the purpose of sacredness is to stabilize a status game, then it is not surprising that religions contain the most stable and enduring status games we’ve ever seen. How they create such sacredness is an interesting question I don’t quite know the answer to. I suspect rituals are playing a big role. Rituals are perhaps one of the main ways we create and sustain a sense of sacredness. There may be other ways.
Rituals seem like a convincing argument as a method for inducing sacredness. You've sent me down a path of thinking about negative status games and positive status games in history by looking at bad vs. good moments in religious history (ie crusades vs. MLK style pacifism). Love the post, thanks for the reply. Looking forward to the rest.
I don’t entirely agree with the idea that revealing something is a status game causes it to collapse. You could reveal that sports, music, writing, etc. are status games and people would still partake in these things. You could reveal that volunteering at the homeless shelter is a status game and people would still do it. I think it mainly applies to status games that are “fashions” - signals that almost anyone can put out. Examples are stylish clothes and stylish opinions. Over time, these status games tend to burn out either because they become so saturated that there is little status to be gained from partaking or because rivals successfully portray them as low status.
Thanks, but I think a closer look at your examples will reveal a real collapsibility in those status games. If a homelessness charity announced that they don’t actually care about helping the homeless, and they only care about looking morally superior to others, their donations would plummet and people would stop associating with them. If an athlete was caught taking steroids—revealing that they care more about winning than they care about fairness and hard work—they would absolutely lose status. If every athlete was suspected of having this motive—eg bribing referees to win, sabotaging the other team—no one would want to watch or participate in the sport. If a musician announced that they don’t care about making good music and all their lyrics are made-up bullshit and all their melodies are ripoffs and all they care about is making as much money as possible, they would absolutely lose status. This fear of “selling out” has been hugely influential in all forms of art—and especially in music. It’s key to understanding how music and art evolve. We have sacred values of excellence, beauty, integrity, fairness, creativity, dedication, perseverance, authenticity, insight into the human experience, etc. Believing in these sacred values absolutely drives the activities you mention. Just because you personally can see through a status game doesn’t mean the players themselves see through it. The most devoted players of a status game are almost always (with the exception of a few sociopaths) true believers in the game’s sacred values.
I've been thinking about this response all day. I was going to write a rebuttal but I basically have to concede the point - you're right, those things would collapse if enough people admitted they were status games. The examples I gave are pretty durable but those who partake have to appeal to altruistic motives (helping others) or intrinsic motives (loving your sport/instrument, wanting to play at a high level). This raises the question of why some status games collapse fairly quickly while others can go on for centuries or millennia. I think it's partly about how convincing the core values are and partly about how much skill and commitment is required.
Thank you for conceding the point. That is rare in internet discussions and I appreciate it. There must be something about the vibe of this substack that attracts people who are unusually good at engaging with ideas in good faith. I’m continually pleasantly surprised by it. Anyways, I agree it’s a hugely interesting question what makes some status games more stable than others. Clearly religions are doing a good job of this, but it’s not obvious what they’re doing right. I suspect rituals are a big piece of the puzzle, but why they have the power they do is kind of mysterious to me. Thanks again for your thoughtful comments. Cheers.
Hmmm… that there are status games within games, fractally as you’ve suggested, is fine - a great point, actually.
But that doesn’t change the point that at its first level, professional sports is a status game, that everyone knows is a status game in large part, about a) winning and also b) that most professional athletes want to make a lot of money, and the two are correlated (albeit not perfectly), and this hasn’t collapsed the allure of pro sports at all.
Unlike on your incentive determinism piece, where you can at least plausibly claim that incentives determine everything, and even if we assume only your/my subculture where seeking status is generally frowned upon / considered “icky” is the norm, the case for “revealing a status game will always cause the collapse of that status game” just doesn’t hold up.
Professional sports is a perfect example of this. Per below, that there are games-within-games that will cause different individual pro athletes social status to collapse notwithstanding, everyone knows that professional sports is a status game and that professional athletes seek status for winning and also seek fortune - and these days even fame - from it, and it hasn’t caused the pro sports to collapse at all - even amongst those of us from your subculture.
LeBron James is widely admired by people from pretty much all American/global subcultures despite (at least for those in your/my subculture; certainly in some other subcultures it’s also *because of*) occasionally flaunting his wealth and status as King James
First we need to agree on what status is though, I've yet to find someone define status in a way my mind simply clicks around the concept better than my own, so here's my attempt:
Status is 'the amount to which other people will support or be influenced by this person'
If we can agree on this definition, I don't find it particularly 'sinful' or 'evil' for someone to be visibly eliciting support from other people, or convincing them accepting their influence would be to their benefit, in other words to be openly playing a status game.
Your assertion that you can't play status games if you know you're playing it for status, or that you lose the game if you realize you're playing it, is only true for a subset of status games that include the rule that you don't know it's a status game in the first place - plenty of other status games exist.
For example, take a company's sales team where the culture accepts and celebrates money motivation. It is celebrated when one closes a deal, everyone knows that everyone's competing with each other to hit the top of the leaderboard, and when someone wins, everyone respects them and this person understands that they're fighting for recognition & respect. They're all in the same boat, fighting for the same thing: status (and income, but we all know it's status.)
With this in mind, imagine a society where mass education of our primal tendencies is widespread & well known. Everyone knows that everyone else is vying for status. Sure it's recursive, as one's status would also be defined by.. one's success in building status... but I see a stable system at the end of the day.
That's the ideal outcome, because then we can direct these status games to actually improve our living conditions in the first place, because no one cares about status when they're starving. We still have base-layer needs that need to be solved in this world, and we should be caring about that more.
Thank you for the challenge. I agree that it is not sinful or evil to seek status--that's too strong. But I do believe that it is generally considered icky and judged negatively. There's some empirical evidence for this (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-11685-004), and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence in the form of us not liking showoffs, braggarts, snobs, narcissists, ass-kissers, bigshots, bullies, social climbers, virtue signalers, thirst trappers, power trippers, etc. The fact that we have so many words for this is good linguistic evidence that status-seekers are judged negatively. There's also ethnographic evidence that bragging and bigshot behavior is severely punished in hunter gatherer societies (see Christopher Boehm's Hierarchy in the Forest and Moral Origins).
As for your example of the company's sales team, I would suspect that there is some non-status value being explicitly pursued, like the good of the company, the pursuit of excellence, team morale, customer satisfaction, etc. that justifies and underlies the status competition. If someone said "I don't care about being a good salesman or helping the company or improving morale; I just want to show everyone I'm better than them" they would lose status. If someone cut corners and lied to customers to get more sales, thereby winning status but losing customer satisfaction, they would lose status. If the sales team leader said "this is about winning and being better than other people. the people at the top are superior. the people at the bottom are worthless scum." this would lower morale. If the sales team leader said, by contrast "this is not about winning or losing. this is about what's best for the company. it's okay if you don't make it to the top as long as you try your best. we're all in this together" that would increase morale. So I actually doubt that your sales team status game is very much out in the open. We could even ask people in the sales competition whether they're primarily motivated to do a good job and help the company, or whether they're primarily motivated to impress people / show they're superior, and I'd predict that everyone would say the former and not the latter. Because if they did say the latter, they'd lose status. That's the idea.
I think we may just be exploring the idea that certain (or most) status games require lying, and we don't like liars, so those scenarios are weird.
I agree, the terms sinful or evil were too strong - I meant to convey the sense of ickiness that (I think) you're trying to capture with that negative judgment.
I suspect that most status games where the individuals aren't comfortable with the concept of status will align with your referenced studies (thanks for the effortful reply), however with the rising tide of education lifting all boats, we're going to see more and more groups of people where we all generally understand status - like this very comment thread, or my sales team example.
I have been in a very high performing and very highly educated sales team myself, and the motivations to simply beat each other were what fueled the entire team. This was fostered and hired for, alongside money motivation, and it was such a successful team we IPO'ed. It was a great experience, and if anyone mentioned anything about motivations being 'for the company' they would've been laughed at. We all knew why we were there, for ourselves and for the thrill of the game, and we all knew that if anyone said they didn't care about how the other team members felt about them - they'd be lying.
I found it a stark contrast to the normal status games in an employment scenario, wherein any suggestion that you're simply working for money instead of the good of the company, or at the very least the good of your colleagues and the customer, would be met with disdain and that 'ick' factor you allude to.
The top rep at the company plainly stated he was motivated this much simply because he wanted to win. Money at this stage, we're talking nearly 7 figures a year, doesn't motivate someone, something deeper does - competition for the sake of competition, status.
Perhaps that's the root of it, we have many arenas where competition exists solely for the sake of competition.
The compulsion to beat someone else in a competitive task, take tennis for example, is awfully close to wanting to win simply for wanting to beat the opponent for everyone watching to know that you're "better" than them. The expressed motivations from top tier athletes often sounds like "I want to be the best" or "I play to win" but you're definitely right, we do have a lot of athletes stating their sacred virtues, like "I just want to do the game justice" or "I just go out and make my team proud."
The sales team scenario is a situation where one's increase in status very clearly benefits the group as a whole - so status seeking behavior is acknowledged and celebrated. Other situations work as well, like a university where a researcher admitting to wanting to be known by the whole world would be more likely to be motivated to get published and therefore hired, or the high school debate club that searches out the most competitive individuals because the desire to win a debate is the best predictor of who will try the hardest, in prep, practice, and competition.
When the group is either based upon, or has goals that align with, individual status seeking, then it's rewarded, not stigmatized.
It's ONLY icky when an individual is perceived to be lying about their motivations. That is the effect that is coming out of the woodwork here. That's just usually true, so the generality is true.
Take the athlete that says "I just want to be the best" who scoffs at their fans and treats them badly vs. the athlete that says "I just do it for the fans" who then ... also scoffs at their fans and then treats them badly. Neither case is great, but I get a strong sense of ick from the liar.
My hope is that this conclusion, that status seeking isn't always stigmatized, can lead towards a general society where status seeking can align with society more comprehensively and positively than it does today.
Interesting anecdote about your sales team. I suspect that sort of overt status competition is more the exception than the rule. I doubt most status games are that explicitly cutthroat, and it seems like you agree that this was fairly atypical compared to your other jobs. So perhaps there are some interesting exceptions out there, along the lines of what you've experienced. But I still think the pattern of status-seeking being judged negatively is common enough that it offers a good explanation of why status is so weird, and why it's so dynamic and culturally variable. I also agree that we'd be better off as a society if we were more open about it.
Apologies if I seem a bit simple about this, but isn’t status useful? Looks a lot like a ticket to a networking event. Paying to much attention to the collapsing and reemergence of status and anti status games could distract from what could be the actual goal of gaining status in the first place, which to my mind is to get something! I suppose knowing that the status games morph can be advantageous!
Yes, good point. I'm not saying that status is bad, or that wanting status is bad. I actually think wanting status is morally neutral and pragmatically good. I'm just saying that people *think* wanting status is bad. So if you're trying to get it, you should be careful not to make it look like you were trying to get it.
Thank you very much for these insights. I have been making it a point to purposefully look at my daily interactions through the lens of status seeking. This approach has been very interesting for me. Much appreciated. Cheers!
Aug 2, 2023·edited Aug 2, 2023Liked by David Pinsof
Great piece. In school, I was first the bullied intellectual type, as a coping mechanism I became an outsider: whenever I saw others playing a status game I immediately rejected it and played my own anti-status game. I think I still do this, reading Substacks and writing my own is actually my current anti-status game.
My biggest anti-status game was freestyle scootering in the early 2000s (riding kick scooters in skateparks). Now this sport is popular with young kids but back then literally no one did it, we were the first ones. I was delusioning of how one day when the sport blows up big and mainstream (like skateboarding) we all will have high status as champions and founding fathers - obviously none of this ever happened.
Having played many anti-status games that failed to replace any actual status games I see that being an outsider and playing your own anti-status games CAN get you some status, but only so much: its slightly better than sucking at the mainstream status game but far worse that winning it. Or maybe what I've just said is some bullshit self-delusion I am feeding myself to avoid feeling low status. Who knows, either listen or don't listen to me.
To me, it seems like status signalling is subject to fads and trends much like music, fashion and everything else in our culture. Its very high status to actually start a new trend/fad, it's also high status to be able to spot a new trend early on and jump on the bandwagon before everyone else does. Conversely, hanging on to a dying trend/fad is cringe and low status. Ew.
However, fads and trends come and go, and unless you are a highly talented prodigy and/or already have a high status in a given industry, it is very hard to influence mainstream fads and trends. Which brings me to the question: should we even bother to attack/defend the big, mainstream status games? We usually have very little impact, but on the other hand maybe it's like democracy: one vote doesn't change much, but every vote counts?
Alternatively, maybe we should focus on attacking/defending 'small' status games played in our local community / social circle? In my anti-status game player career I rejected many trends/fads that actually were status games my social circle played (e.g. running, climbing, archery, racing cheap sport cars, going on boat trips etc), but in this setting I think I could have had some impact if I attacked or defended any of them - instead, almost always I chose to opt out.
Thanks, Piotr. I can relate to your experience playing anti-status games--I had a similar youth. Re your question on attacking big vs small status games, it’s hard to say. I wish I had a user manual for status games, but we’re in uncharted waters here. The concept of a status game is only a few years old (I believe Will Storr coined it), and the concept of collapsing and re-emerging (anti-)status games protected by sacred values appears to be brand-new (I’m not aware of anyone else who’s had that specific idea). I feel like we would need decades of research to answer your question. But I can give you my hunch, which is that you don’t need much, other than a platform, to collapse a status game, at least for some subset of people, given that you’re convincing and compelling enough. I think of it as an emperor’s new clothes situation. The little boy who says the emperor is naked is not high-status, but he gives voice to something that is true, but that nobody wants to admit. He creates common knowledge, in the game theoretic sense. Yes, people need to be in earshot (that’s where having a platform comes in), and the game needs to be particularly fragile (the denying the nakedness of the emperor game was quite a fragile situation), but beyond that, you just need to call bullshit, and be right. Easier said than done of course. And probably the emperor game was fragile because it lacked a strong sacred narrative (eg “only the truly wise and virtuous can see the emperor’s clothes”). But I think there’s hope. There really are cases where a little boy can make a big status game come tumbling down. It may take some work to find these fragile, unguarded status games, but I think they’re out there.
Thanks David. My status is enlightened and energized but confused from reading this, as usual. Do I understand correctly that the status game you've chosen to play is fighting bullshit status games? Is there then a holy, pure, un-bullshit status game that you want to recruit us to play instead? Can we play it in full awareness that we are doing so?
Asking because I suppose if I knew a better game that I could consciously play, maybe I wouldn't suck so much at it.
Thanks, Chris. Glad you're enlightened and energized. And don't worry about being confused. This topic is genuinely confusing. Humans are a very twisted and paradoxical species, and to make matters worse, they often do not want to be understood. To answer your question, "a holy, pure, un-bullshit status game" is impossible, so we might as well give up on it. Status games can only survive if they are not seen as status games. That means all status games are, by definition, bullshit. They are all in denial of what they are. My own status game is no different. It is just as bullshitty. I'm pretending my status game is about seeing through bullshit and telling the truth and gaining insight about human nature and yada yada yada but really it's just about status, like all status games are, at the end of the day. And it's painful for me to admit that. As it should be! I'm only human. Whereas all status games are equally bullshitty, some status games are better for the world than others. So I can at least comfort myself with the fact that maybe my status game is better for the world--that maybe gaining knowledge and insight into ourselves leads to better outcomes. Maybe. That's the type of thing I would like to believe, and would be biased to believe. But maybe it's true in any case. That's for you to decide. That's for anyone who isn't too biased to decide. Hopefully you and these unbiased people will hear my arguments, and other people's arguments, think them over, and pick whatever status games is genuinely best for the world. That's the hope.
Aug 2, 2023·edited Aug 2, 2023Liked by David Pinsof
Sounds like you've got here in your answer the makings of a rousing State of the Bullshit address. Count me in to wave a bullshitty flag at it.
I can still be more convinced that status games can't exist if you admit to playing them. Like, I endeavor to earn the status of "World's Best Dad" and am not afraid to let anyone know it, including other great dads who I hope to be better then.
This makes me think of a remix of a quote from Nietzsche (thank you, spell chek): "He who has a why will overcome any status game." If aliens abduct my pregnant wife and son, I will abandon all status games in pursuit of them. So maybe there's a way to give up the static "what" of status entirely and go after the "why" of… um… movement-us?
Haha. I guess that would make me the president of bullshit? I’ll take it. Yea with the world’s best dad thing (and I’m a dad too so I can relate), I’m guessing it’s sort of a fake status game with a wink wink nudge nudge. But if I started to actually disparage you as a father, so that I could be a better dad than you, then all of a sudden things would not be cool, we would stop winking and nudging, and the status game would become real and dark and ugly. And I think a lot of parenthood culture and safetyism has veered in that direction, sadly. It’s become more about competing to be holier than thou than about what’s actually best for the kids, even though these parental status-seekers tell themselves that it’s all about what’s best for the kids. That’s the sacred value that covers up the ugly status game, and the status game would collapse if the ugliness were exposed. So I’m happy to play a winky dad status game with you, but as soon as it becomes a real status game, with real competition and real attacks on one another’s parenting, that’s where I get off the boat. And I’m guessing you get off the boat there too. I’m guessing you’re not interested in playing that kind of status game--you just genuinely want what’s best for your kid. Which isn’t really a status game, it’s just called being a good parent. That’s a project I can get behind. It’s one of those rare things that’s not bullshit.
The funny thing about status is that you can actually get a lot more done if you have it. It's useful.
Admitting that is the first step to gaining status ethically, without shame. Reputation and status are joined at the hip, and while it's really easy to destroy one of these, it's probably very, very difficult to build them in the first place.
Do you have any simple way to distinguish reputation and status? I get how they are not synonyms but don't have an easy way to grasp the difference.
I view them as synonymous. Good reputation = high status. Bad reputation = low status. Feel free to substitute "reputation" for "status" if that's clearer to you. I'm referring as broadly as possible to any kind of negative or positive social judgments.
I think they are different. One can have a reputation without a status and vice versa.
Example:
A man who is visually fit and strong usually doesn't have a *reputation* for being strong. However, being strong and fit confers strong status symbols around the ideas of health, power, safety, wealth, free time, etc.
A person could have a reputation of being good in bed but lacks any status symbol that shows this sexual expertise. You'd have to talk to someone who knows the person's reputation in order to find out that they're good in bed.
Status is something you emit, intentionally or not, and reputation is what people think about you, whether it's true or not.
In the context of most discussions, though, I cede they're pretty much the same.
Yea, good points. I think of status as the umbrella term, encompassing all forms of positive or negative social judgment. I think of reputation as a subcategory of status, that is often less conspicuous (as you note) and more determined by gossip and word of mouth. For instance, being strong and fit might boost your status (+1), but having a reputation for being bad in bed might lower your status (-1). These might cancel out when someone is deciding whether to date you. But it’s stuff like whether people want to date you, follow you, hire you, befriend you, listen to you, obey you, etc. that ultimately determines your status.
I think that's pretty good, David.
I might say that there are those who have high status in our society, but a low reputation, but then again, it totally depends on who you ask!
There are certainly many nuances in the types of social esteem or opprobrium one might accrue, and how one might accrue them. But I think it’s useful to zoom out and use a broad umbrella term (I use “status” but maybe there’s a better umbrella term), because these subtypes share many commonalities, one of which is their signaling fragility and resultant weirdness.
I agree with this.
Especially for the more aspie people who have trouble understanding status, and might need to put a bit more conscious effort into it. I think it would be a waste if they do not get to use their abilities and niche field expertise due to lack of memetic prowess and social chess elo.
I think it is also important to keep in mind that while this can be ethical, good, and shameless - it is likely to trip the creep detectors on the evolutionarily uninitiated. I don't think it's a reason for self-censorship, but it is a reason for prudence.
Nice post, but under this framing is *everything* status seeking? And if everything is status seeking, how much relevance does such a determination really have?
Yes, thanks, I think I would own up to that. I’d say almost everything, but yea—that’s the idea. I’m using status in a very broad sense, though, to encompass things like reputation, popularity, virtue points, prestige, power, loyalty, group status, perceived trustworthiness, etc. You can think of it as “overall social value” if you prefer. But yea, it’s everything. We’re hypersocial animals. It’s probably the single greatest selection pressure shaping the human brain. I think this has tons of relevance, especially given our inclination to hide it. I see this whole substack (including future planned posts) as cashing out that relevance. Our denial of our status drive might be the biggest source of bullshit. Thanks for reading. I recommend Will Storr’s The Status Game for more info on this idea.
Thanks for the response. Would you equate the struggle for status with Nietzsche's will to power, where he wrote, "“Even the body within which individuals treat each other as equals ... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant – not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power"?
Personally I would try to differentiate between Maslow's hierarchy of needs and/or Kaczynski's fulfillment of fundamental needs versus what he called "surrogate activities", which are all activities that are not rooted in achieving our fundamental needs. In other words, the things we need to do for survival -- eating, drinking, finding adequate shelter, finding a mate, etc -- are not surrogate activities, and these activities took up most of our time during hunter/gatherer societies for all of human history up to 10,000 years ago (which, in small tribes, was much more egalitarian -- and so status mattered much less -- than in agricultural, hierarchical societies). Doing those difficult but reachable activities, according to Kaczynski, fulfilled our power process and made us happy. Now, fulfilling our basic needs are either too easy (eating, drinking) or close to impossible (achieving personal autonomy, having a significant impact in the world), so we waste time on surrogate activities which are fundamentally hollow and empty, unfulfilling. Status seeking tends to blend these things all together in this weird hyper-social, post-industrial environment, because women want to mate with high-status men and high-status men have an easier time making money...
Hm, don’t have a lot of expertise on Nietzsche, but that quote sounds about right. I agree with the part about how the drive for status (or power) lurks within even supposedly egalitarian movements—Will Storr writes about this contradiction within communist regimes. I’m not a fan Maslow’s hierarchy theory, as I think it ignores and oversimplifies too many evolutionary drives, I don’t think there’s such a neat and strict hierarchy, and I think self-actualization is just a highfalutin way of saying status. Not sure I understand Kazcynski’s framework, but insofar as he’s aligned with Maslow I would disagree with him. I think all our evolved motives are equally fundamental and I’m not sure what a nonfundamental motive would be. But anyways, sounds like a much larger conversation! Thanks for sharing these interesting ideas—I will have to look into Nietzsche more.
I think we can take interesting ideas and intuitions from people like Nietzsche and Kaczynski. We can (and maybe should!) rephrase their strongest points in terms that align with the evolutionary psychology of status striving - and this way refine and steel-man what they 'meant'.
However I would only do this with concepts that are *very* close already, otherwise it is just a retcon of old philosophies for the purpose of ancestor worship, when in fact they didn't really have those ideas. I don't think these were so close.
Nietzsche's Will to Power is essentially a Will to Dominate in modern terms, but Dominance (ability to inflict costs) is just one part of status, whereas there is also Prestige (ability to confer benefits). Our somewhat functioning societies rely more on prestige than dominance, which may not have been true in Nietzsche's time; regardless, both are status games but they are different, and I don't think Nietzsche understood it in these terms - or at least definitely not in the fascist appropriation of Will to Power.
I'd also note that Maslow did not put needs on a hierarchy, merely enumerated them; it was other people relying on second-hand accounts of his work that spread that inaccurate idea. Of course in a sense you need to focus on continuing life before reproducing, but there are many tradeoffs and immediate sacrifices people make for status, for reproduction, sacrificing "lower" needs for "higher" ones, so it does not stack up evolutionarily.
"Can we somehow learn to defend the status games that actually make the world better and attack the ones that actually make the world worse?"
I guess we can be more cognizant of the status games we choose to play (and encourage our family members to play) and pick those we think have the best externalities.
I think this is exactly the point of the Science of Human Nature - to give us choice and awareness that we did not have before. We should use this power for good.
Nice essay. As a status seeking commenter, this is almost too meta to even comment on.
Status is tied to self/group awareness, consciousness itself, sure. Short of a special lobotomy, we're stuck performing for each other.
Why wouldn't we want to learn from the people best at finding food, making things, sheltering, healing?
I strongly agree, a species threatening set of conditions probably warrant a better status symbol set. But, our very nature makes that symbol set prone to variance. Babylon.
The self-help side of this is shame. Funny.
You’re right that the question of who to learn from--the best toolmakers, healers, etc.--is less prone to variance than the question of who is high-status. I can be the best toolmaker, but people might still think I’m an asshole if I’m constantly bragging about it, and I might lose out to the guy who’s not as good me but is more humble. So we can learn from people who aren’t high status (and complain about their assholery as we learn). And we might even delude ourselves into thinking that the more humble person is actually better at making tools, even if he’s not, just to spite the asshole who’s constantly bragging. And maybe we’d even learn more from the more humble person anyways! Maybe learning is more about having a nice, humble, patient teacher than having the most talented teacher. But these questions of niceness, humility, patience, virtue, and assholery are way harder to answer and way more volatile. That’s where the variance comes from.
For a minute there I thought you'd captured the reason for the continued candidacies of more than one politician.
If I ask different questions - that if an individual "figured out" status for a large group, how long can they hold onto it? How have we unintentionally constructed the social signaling network to communicate status? Is the system signature dictating the types of messages we can experience, can choose or can vote on? Based on - all big status individuals in our culture are way beyond individual person to person experiences and interactions. I digress.
This is fascinating, but a bit dispiriting. Do you think there's any comfort to be found in the notion that some people's personalities predispose them to be somewhat less status-focused than others (ie differences in the Big Five personality/dark triad traits) or is that grasping at straws?
Thanks, Clara. Sorry to be dispiriting (sincerely). Still trying to figure out how to keep things positive but it's a work-in-progress for me. I do think there is variation in status-seeking, and that's part of where the uncoolness of status-seeking comes from. We sense that those who are more status-obsessed are more likely to be assholes, or self-absorbed, which is why we don't want to come off looking like status-seekers ourselves. We don't want people to confuse us with those self-absorbed, status-seeking assholes out there. But, and here's where the dispiriting part comes in, the desire to not look like a status-seeking asshole is itself a kind of status-seeking--a desire to look like a virtuous person, to virtue signal. I think nice people are more motivated to seek "niceness status"--i.e., to be seen as nice--and to cover up the fact that they are seeking niceness status (because if they didn't cover it up, they wouldn't be seen as nice). It's just that the *truly nice* people are more successful in pulling off this subtle signaling strategy effectively, and convincing us that they're truly nice. Good for them! They won the game, fair and square. Assholes might *try* to look nice and fail, because we see through it. Anyways, this all gets very complicated and confusing real fast, but the point is that nice people are real. They exist. You seem nice. I think I'm nice too. Just because nice people (unconsciously) signal their niceness doesn't mean they're not nice. They are, and they're wonderful. I love nice people. We all do. If we can move toward "niceness status games" and away from other kinds of more toxic status games, the world would be a better place. I hope you join me in trying to make that happen. But maybe me calling out the "niceness status signal" is counterproductive, and might actually threaten its stability. If so, sorry about that. The good news is, status games are pretty robust, and reading one blog post is unlikely to really threaten any one of them. So keep on being nice! And keep praising nice people! And I'll work on that positivity thing. Thanks for reading.
Thank you for your reply. That all makes a lot of sense. I don't think you should feel you need to couch this in more positive terms. The stark nature of the message is partly what makes it so interesting. It's just a bit disorientating to see everything through this lens. It's hard to stop thinking about it (until conscious awareness of it all fades once again, I guess). Thank you!
Your comment on purposeful status-games makes me think about religion. I haven't examined this thought very closely, but as a first pass religions seem to fill the social niche of "useful" status game. They categorize the rules of the game, assign an arbiter of the winners of the status game (God/gods and their representatives), and are remarkably sticky. The status of the game "disciple of Christ" has been around for millennia, and though there are innumerable fractal status games being played with Christendom over that time, the innate game of who can gain status by being visibly more like Christ seems to be pretty stable. I need to think about it more, but I'm curious about your take on the role of religion in status games specifically.
Yes I think this point is astute. I see religions as, in large part, engineers of sacredness as I define it. And since the purpose of sacredness is to stabilize a status game, then it is not surprising that religions contain the most stable and enduring status games we’ve ever seen. How they create such sacredness is an interesting question I don’t quite know the answer to. I suspect rituals are playing a big role. Rituals are perhaps one of the main ways we create and sustain a sense of sacredness. There may be other ways.
Rituals seem like a convincing argument as a method for inducing sacredness. You've sent me down a path of thinking about negative status games and positive status games in history by looking at bad vs. good moments in religious history (ie crusades vs. MLK style pacifism). Love the post, thanks for the reply. Looking forward to the rest.
I don’t entirely agree with the idea that revealing something is a status game causes it to collapse. You could reveal that sports, music, writing, etc. are status games and people would still partake in these things. You could reveal that volunteering at the homeless shelter is a status game and people would still do it. I think it mainly applies to status games that are “fashions” - signals that almost anyone can put out. Examples are stylish clothes and stylish opinions. Over time, these status games tend to burn out either because they become so saturated that there is little status to be gained from partaking or because rivals successfully portray them as low status.
Thanks, but I think a closer look at your examples will reveal a real collapsibility in those status games. If a homelessness charity announced that they don’t actually care about helping the homeless, and they only care about looking morally superior to others, their donations would plummet and people would stop associating with them. If an athlete was caught taking steroids—revealing that they care more about winning than they care about fairness and hard work—they would absolutely lose status. If every athlete was suspected of having this motive—eg bribing referees to win, sabotaging the other team—no one would want to watch or participate in the sport. If a musician announced that they don’t care about making good music and all their lyrics are made-up bullshit and all their melodies are ripoffs and all they care about is making as much money as possible, they would absolutely lose status. This fear of “selling out” has been hugely influential in all forms of art—and especially in music. It’s key to understanding how music and art evolve. We have sacred values of excellence, beauty, integrity, fairness, creativity, dedication, perseverance, authenticity, insight into the human experience, etc. Believing in these sacred values absolutely drives the activities you mention. Just because you personally can see through a status game doesn’t mean the players themselves see through it. The most devoted players of a status game are almost always (with the exception of a few sociopaths) true believers in the game’s sacred values.
I've been thinking about this response all day. I was going to write a rebuttal but I basically have to concede the point - you're right, those things would collapse if enough people admitted they were status games. The examples I gave are pretty durable but those who partake have to appeal to altruistic motives (helping others) or intrinsic motives (loving your sport/instrument, wanting to play at a high level). This raises the question of why some status games collapse fairly quickly while others can go on for centuries or millennia. I think it's partly about how convincing the core values are and partly about how much skill and commitment is required.
Thank you for conceding the point. That is rare in internet discussions and I appreciate it. There must be something about the vibe of this substack that attracts people who are unusually good at engaging with ideas in good faith. I’m continually pleasantly surprised by it. Anyways, I agree it’s a hugely interesting question what makes some status games more stable than others. Clearly religions are doing a good job of this, but it’s not obvious what they’re doing right. I suspect rituals are a big piece of the puzzle, but why they have the power they do is kind of mysterious to me. Thanks again for your thoughtful comments. Cheers.
Hmmm… that there are status games within games, fractally as you’ve suggested, is fine - a great point, actually.
But that doesn’t change the point that at its first level, professional sports is a status game, that everyone knows is a status game in large part, about a) winning and also b) that most professional athletes want to make a lot of money, and the two are correlated (albeit not perfectly), and this hasn’t collapsed the allure of pro sports at all.
Unlike on your incentive determinism piece, where you can at least plausibly claim that incentives determine everything, and even if we assume only your/my subculture where seeking status is generally frowned upon / considered “icky” is the norm, the case for “revealing a status game will always cause the collapse of that status game” just doesn’t hold up.
Professional sports is a perfect example of this. Per below, that there are games-within-games that will cause different individual pro athletes social status to collapse notwithstanding, everyone knows that professional sports is a status game and that professional athletes seek status for winning and also seek fortune - and these days even fame - from it, and it hasn’t caused the pro sports to collapse at all - even amongst those of us from your subculture.
LeBron James is widely admired by people from pretty much all American/global subcultures despite (at least for those in your/my subculture; certainly in some other subcultures it’s also *because of*) occasionally flaunting his wealth and status as King James
I'm going to challenge you on this.
First we need to agree on what status is though, I've yet to find someone define status in a way my mind simply clicks around the concept better than my own, so here's my attempt:
Status is 'the amount to which other people will support or be influenced by this person'
If we can agree on this definition, I don't find it particularly 'sinful' or 'evil' for someone to be visibly eliciting support from other people, or convincing them accepting their influence would be to their benefit, in other words to be openly playing a status game.
Your assertion that you can't play status games if you know you're playing it for status, or that you lose the game if you realize you're playing it, is only true for a subset of status games that include the rule that you don't know it's a status game in the first place - plenty of other status games exist.
For example, take a company's sales team where the culture accepts and celebrates money motivation. It is celebrated when one closes a deal, everyone knows that everyone's competing with each other to hit the top of the leaderboard, and when someone wins, everyone respects them and this person understands that they're fighting for recognition & respect. They're all in the same boat, fighting for the same thing: status (and income, but we all know it's status.)
With this in mind, imagine a society where mass education of our primal tendencies is widespread & well known. Everyone knows that everyone else is vying for status. Sure it's recursive, as one's status would also be defined by.. one's success in building status... but I see a stable system at the end of the day.
That's the ideal outcome, because then we can direct these status games to actually improve our living conditions in the first place, because no one cares about status when they're starving. We still have base-layer needs that need to be solved in this world, and we should be caring about that more.
Thank you for the challenge. I agree that it is not sinful or evil to seek status--that's too strong. But I do believe that it is generally considered icky and judged negatively. There's some empirical evidence for this (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-11685-004), and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence in the form of us not liking showoffs, braggarts, snobs, narcissists, ass-kissers, bigshots, bullies, social climbers, virtue signalers, thirst trappers, power trippers, etc. The fact that we have so many words for this is good linguistic evidence that status-seekers are judged negatively. There's also ethnographic evidence that bragging and bigshot behavior is severely punished in hunter gatherer societies (see Christopher Boehm's Hierarchy in the Forest and Moral Origins).
As for your example of the company's sales team, I would suspect that there is some non-status value being explicitly pursued, like the good of the company, the pursuit of excellence, team morale, customer satisfaction, etc. that justifies and underlies the status competition. If someone said "I don't care about being a good salesman or helping the company or improving morale; I just want to show everyone I'm better than them" they would lose status. If someone cut corners and lied to customers to get more sales, thereby winning status but losing customer satisfaction, they would lose status. If the sales team leader said "this is about winning and being better than other people. the people at the top are superior. the people at the bottom are worthless scum." this would lower morale. If the sales team leader said, by contrast "this is not about winning or losing. this is about what's best for the company. it's okay if you don't make it to the top as long as you try your best. we're all in this together" that would increase morale. So I actually doubt that your sales team status game is very much out in the open. We could even ask people in the sales competition whether they're primarily motivated to do a good job and help the company, or whether they're primarily motivated to impress people / show they're superior, and I'd predict that everyone would say the former and not the latter. Because if they did say the latter, they'd lose status. That's the idea.
I think we may just be exploring the idea that certain (or most) status games require lying, and we don't like liars, so those scenarios are weird.
I agree, the terms sinful or evil were too strong - I meant to convey the sense of ickiness that (I think) you're trying to capture with that negative judgment.
I suspect that most status games where the individuals aren't comfortable with the concept of status will align with your referenced studies (thanks for the effortful reply), however with the rising tide of education lifting all boats, we're going to see more and more groups of people where we all generally understand status - like this very comment thread, or my sales team example.
I have been in a very high performing and very highly educated sales team myself, and the motivations to simply beat each other were what fueled the entire team. This was fostered and hired for, alongside money motivation, and it was such a successful team we IPO'ed. It was a great experience, and if anyone mentioned anything about motivations being 'for the company' they would've been laughed at. We all knew why we were there, for ourselves and for the thrill of the game, and we all knew that if anyone said they didn't care about how the other team members felt about them - they'd be lying.
I found it a stark contrast to the normal status games in an employment scenario, wherein any suggestion that you're simply working for money instead of the good of the company, or at the very least the good of your colleagues and the customer, would be met with disdain and that 'ick' factor you allude to.
The top rep at the company plainly stated he was motivated this much simply because he wanted to win. Money at this stage, we're talking nearly 7 figures a year, doesn't motivate someone, something deeper does - competition for the sake of competition, status.
Perhaps that's the root of it, we have many arenas where competition exists solely for the sake of competition.
The compulsion to beat someone else in a competitive task, take tennis for example, is awfully close to wanting to win simply for wanting to beat the opponent for everyone watching to know that you're "better" than them. The expressed motivations from top tier athletes often sounds like "I want to be the best" or "I play to win" but you're definitely right, we do have a lot of athletes stating their sacred virtues, like "I just want to do the game justice" or "I just go out and make my team proud."
The sales team scenario is a situation where one's increase in status very clearly benefits the group as a whole - so status seeking behavior is acknowledged and celebrated. Other situations work as well, like a university where a researcher admitting to wanting to be known by the whole world would be more likely to be motivated to get published and therefore hired, or the high school debate club that searches out the most competitive individuals because the desire to win a debate is the best predictor of who will try the hardest, in prep, practice, and competition.
When the group is either based upon, or has goals that align with, individual status seeking, then it's rewarded, not stigmatized.
It's ONLY icky when an individual is perceived to be lying about their motivations. That is the effect that is coming out of the woodwork here. That's just usually true, so the generality is true.
Take the athlete that says "I just want to be the best" who scoffs at their fans and treats them badly vs. the athlete that says "I just do it for the fans" who then ... also scoffs at their fans and then treats them badly. Neither case is great, but I get a strong sense of ick from the liar.
My hope is that this conclusion, that status seeking isn't always stigmatized, can lead towards a general society where status seeking can align with society more comprehensively and positively than it does today.
Interesting anecdote about your sales team. I suspect that sort of overt status competition is more the exception than the rule. I doubt most status games are that explicitly cutthroat, and it seems like you agree that this was fairly atypical compared to your other jobs. So perhaps there are some interesting exceptions out there, along the lines of what you've experienced. But I still think the pattern of status-seeking being judged negatively is common enough that it offers a good explanation of why status is so weird, and why it's so dynamic and culturally variable. I also agree that we'd be better off as a society if we were more open about it.
Apologies if I seem a bit simple about this, but isn’t status useful? Looks a lot like a ticket to a networking event. Paying to much attention to the collapsing and reemergence of status and anti status games could distract from what could be the actual goal of gaining status in the first place, which to my mind is to get something! I suppose knowing that the status games morph can be advantageous!
Yes, good point. I'm not saying that status is bad, or that wanting status is bad. I actually think wanting status is morally neutral and pragmatically good. I'm just saying that people *think* wanting status is bad. So if you're trying to get it, you should be careful not to make it look like you were trying to get it.
Thank you very much for these insights. I have been making it a point to purposefully look at my daily interactions through the lens of status seeking. This approach has been very interesting for me. Much appreciated. Cheers!
Interesting take. Thanks David.
Great piece. In school, I was first the bullied intellectual type, as a coping mechanism I became an outsider: whenever I saw others playing a status game I immediately rejected it and played my own anti-status game. I think I still do this, reading Substacks and writing my own is actually my current anti-status game.
My biggest anti-status game was freestyle scootering in the early 2000s (riding kick scooters in skateparks). Now this sport is popular with young kids but back then literally no one did it, we were the first ones. I was delusioning of how one day when the sport blows up big and mainstream (like skateboarding) we all will have high status as champions and founding fathers - obviously none of this ever happened.
Having played many anti-status games that failed to replace any actual status games I see that being an outsider and playing your own anti-status games CAN get you some status, but only so much: its slightly better than sucking at the mainstream status game but far worse that winning it. Or maybe what I've just said is some bullshit self-delusion I am feeding myself to avoid feeling low status. Who knows, either listen or don't listen to me.
To me, it seems like status signalling is subject to fads and trends much like music, fashion and everything else in our culture. Its very high status to actually start a new trend/fad, it's also high status to be able to spot a new trend early on and jump on the bandwagon before everyone else does. Conversely, hanging on to a dying trend/fad is cringe and low status. Ew.
However, fads and trends come and go, and unless you are a highly talented prodigy and/or already have a high status in a given industry, it is very hard to influence mainstream fads and trends. Which brings me to the question: should we even bother to attack/defend the big, mainstream status games? We usually have very little impact, but on the other hand maybe it's like democracy: one vote doesn't change much, but every vote counts?
Alternatively, maybe we should focus on attacking/defending 'small' status games played in our local community / social circle? In my anti-status game player career I rejected many trends/fads that actually were status games my social circle played (e.g. running, climbing, archery, racing cheap sport cars, going on boat trips etc), but in this setting I think I could have had some impact if I attacked or defended any of them - instead, almost always I chose to opt out.
Thanks, Piotr. I can relate to your experience playing anti-status games--I had a similar youth. Re your question on attacking big vs small status games, it’s hard to say. I wish I had a user manual for status games, but we’re in uncharted waters here. The concept of a status game is only a few years old (I believe Will Storr coined it), and the concept of collapsing and re-emerging (anti-)status games protected by sacred values appears to be brand-new (I’m not aware of anyone else who’s had that specific idea). I feel like we would need decades of research to answer your question. But I can give you my hunch, which is that you don’t need much, other than a platform, to collapse a status game, at least for some subset of people, given that you’re convincing and compelling enough. I think of it as an emperor’s new clothes situation. The little boy who says the emperor is naked is not high-status, but he gives voice to something that is true, but that nobody wants to admit. He creates common knowledge, in the game theoretic sense. Yes, people need to be in earshot (that’s where having a platform comes in), and the game needs to be particularly fragile (the denying the nakedness of the emperor game was quite a fragile situation), but beyond that, you just need to call bullshit, and be right. Easier said than done of course. And probably the emperor game was fragile because it lacked a strong sacred narrative (eg “only the truly wise and virtuous can see the emperor’s clothes”). But I think there’s hope. There really are cases where a little boy can make a big status game come tumbling down. It may take some work to find these fragile, unguarded status games, but I think they’re out there.
Thanks David. My status is enlightened and energized but confused from reading this, as usual. Do I understand correctly that the status game you've chosen to play is fighting bullshit status games? Is there then a holy, pure, un-bullshit status game that you want to recruit us to play instead? Can we play it in full awareness that we are doing so?
Asking because I suppose if I knew a better game that I could consciously play, maybe I wouldn't suck so much at it.
Thanks, Chris. Glad you're enlightened and energized. And don't worry about being confused. This topic is genuinely confusing. Humans are a very twisted and paradoxical species, and to make matters worse, they often do not want to be understood. To answer your question, "a holy, pure, un-bullshit status game" is impossible, so we might as well give up on it. Status games can only survive if they are not seen as status games. That means all status games are, by definition, bullshit. They are all in denial of what they are. My own status game is no different. It is just as bullshitty. I'm pretending my status game is about seeing through bullshit and telling the truth and gaining insight about human nature and yada yada yada but really it's just about status, like all status games are, at the end of the day. And it's painful for me to admit that. As it should be! I'm only human. Whereas all status games are equally bullshitty, some status games are better for the world than others. So I can at least comfort myself with the fact that maybe my status game is better for the world--that maybe gaining knowledge and insight into ourselves leads to better outcomes. Maybe. That's the type of thing I would like to believe, and would be biased to believe. But maybe it's true in any case. That's for you to decide. That's for anyone who isn't too biased to decide. Hopefully you and these unbiased people will hear my arguments, and other people's arguments, think them over, and pick whatever status games is genuinely best for the world. That's the hope.
Sounds like you've got here in your answer the makings of a rousing State of the Bullshit address. Count me in to wave a bullshitty flag at it.
I can still be more convinced that status games can't exist if you admit to playing them. Like, I endeavor to earn the status of "World's Best Dad" and am not afraid to let anyone know it, including other great dads who I hope to be better then.
This makes me think of a remix of a quote from Nietzsche (thank you, spell chek): "He who has a why will overcome any status game." If aliens abduct my pregnant wife and son, I will abandon all status games in pursuit of them. So maybe there's a way to give up the static "what" of status entirely and go after the "why" of… um… movement-us?
Haha. I guess that would make me the president of bullshit? I’ll take it. Yea with the world’s best dad thing (and I’m a dad too so I can relate), I’m guessing it’s sort of a fake status game with a wink wink nudge nudge. But if I started to actually disparage you as a father, so that I could be a better dad than you, then all of a sudden things would not be cool, we would stop winking and nudging, and the status game would become real and dark and ugly. And I think a lot of parenthood culture and safetyism has veered in that direction, sadly. It’s become more about competing to be holier than thou than about what’s actually best for the kids, even though these parental status-seekers tell themselves that it’s all about what’s best for the kids. That’s the sacred value that covers up the ugly status game, and the status game would collapse if the ugliness were exposed. So I’m happy to play a winky dad status game with you, but as soon as it becomes a real status game, with real competition and real attacks on one another’s parenting, that’s where I get off the boat. And I’m guessing you get off the boat there too. I’m guessing you’re not interested in playing that kind of status game--you just genuinely want what’s best for your kid. Which isn’t really a status game, it’s just called being a good parent. That’s a project I can get behind. It’s one of those rare things that’s not bullshit.
Let’s get unflattering about this game and play the game. To watch the game and play the game is a different mode of being.