Signaling as a Service

Similarly, signaling pre and post-internet evolves too. Pre-internet signaling was all about IRL flashiness (a Louis Vuitton bag) while post-internet signaling is about digitally-native flashiness (a Cryptopunk NFT).

A lot of networks that have achieved super scale had some sort of status incentives or status games built in, very early on. It helped them to get that kinetic energy that you need in order to achieve scale that then increases your utility. Those networks were paying you to develop the network — paying with ego, with status, with a sort of an emoti... See more

A difference, though, is that human signals often trickle to the rest of society, which weakens the power of the signal. Once a signal is adopted by the masses, the affluent abandon it.

It's hard to get around that, but the way you can do it is if you build in utility. And I think that is largely because advertising was a hell of a drug for these companies for so long. That is why all these big internet advertising platforms were slow to become marketplaces, because it would have a temporary negative financial impact. Th... See more