
Status as a Service - jger15
https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service
======
soneca
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"_.

~~~
cabalamat
> inspired and sparked new thoughts in my mind every reading moment

That's my experience too. It probably helps that I'm building a social
networking website[1] right now.

This article would probably benefit from being re-read at intervals for new
insights.

[1] MeowCat:
[https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2](https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2)

------
tokyodude
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.

~~~
sgillen
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.

~~~
tokyodude
> submit research papers to prestigious journals

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

~~~
sgillen
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.

------
svantana
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.

~~~
nilskidoo
I'd say it is actually far, far easier to buy social status than to earn it.

~~~
svantana
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).

~~~
nilskidoo
I get what you're saying, but I can't imagine the Kardashians lifting anything
heavier than a toilet lid to upchuck their biscotti though.

------
arandr0x
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.

------
bobm_kite9
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.

~~~
dkresge
You’d love the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest.

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brentis
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".

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santoshalper
This article is dense with insight and some truly deep thinking about social
status.

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jondubois
>> 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.

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theNJR
By the way, I pasted the article in Word. It's 74 pages.

