Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole | Melting Asphalt

Life, put simply, is all about status. I recently read W. David Marx’s book Status and Culture —thanks Bryce Ferguson for the rec—and that fact was my clear takeaway. The book subtly changed how I look at the world; when you start to pay attention, status dictates nearly everything in our lives.

In the book, Marx argues that:

1. There is no human soci

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3. Status attended to is the status that matters. Status is most relevant when we try to keep it or change it. For many people, status is upmost in our minds in every interaction. But it only matters when the person we’re engaging with cares about status. 4. Status has inertia. We’re more likely to work to maintain our status (high or low) than we are

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We all seek a sense of belonging. It's what inspires our desire to seek out groups of like-minded people. Once that fit is established, there's status in being a community leader. The most direct example here is Reddit: the moderator of a particular subreddit holds status to those engaged in the community. Even a contributor that writes a popular c... See more

Status roles involve whether this action will move someone up or down in the estimation of their peers or competitors.

As we learned earlier, normal status requires following certain conventions. This means imitating our peers, while distinguishing ourselves from the behaviors of lower-status groups and rivals. Meanwhile, achieving higher status requires distinguishing ourselves from our current status tier and imitating the practices of superiors. The end result i

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The paths that Ranjit and I were drawn to also offered something else: prestige. Though hard to define, prestige can be thought of as the attention you get when you do things that others see as impressive. Paul Graham, the founder of a startup incubator and mentor to thousands of young people, sees this attention as a trap. In his view, prestige is

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Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.