This tweet rubbed me the wrong way.
No shade to the author. He’s just making an observation. I have no bone to pick with its truth value. The tweet bugs me because it is a poignant reminder of how easily we are manipulated.
A few comments on status generally.
- There’s a lot of discourse about status games, luxury beliefs, status legibility, and even status-as-a-service.
- Status is scope dependent. Every subculture from gamers, to social justice warriors, to Yakuza, to Maori tribes has its own status hierarchy. You might be a lowly admin at work but be the greenest thumb in your gardening group.
- Status liquidity varies. Airlines are never going to invite current and past Grand Wizards of the KKK to board with the active military. Meanwhile being rich/famous appears to give your words more weight even if your source of status has nothing to do with your thoughts being worth a spoon of sand. (I think one of my favorite discoveries in the world of permissionless posting is watching wildly successful people accidentally reveal how little intelligence has to do with making money — since brains like height aren’t evenly distributed this is a delightfully egalitarian conclusion. If you’re keeping score, the flipside should also get a point — smart doesn’t equal effective.)
Reality is in the room with us — status games are unavoidable. We are social creatures who use status to compress information. But the tweet bugs me because it reminds us that the speed of heuristics has a cost. In the same way tests narrow the definition of learning in the name of scalability, the tantalizing aroma of status cheese lures us from fuller definitions of growth.
Status is a zero-sum game. If money or abs are prestigious but we all get richer or take ozempic then status transfers from achieving objectively desirable ends of wealth and health to having these things more efficiently — can you be rich while also wearing flip-flops? If you have abs but work out 4 hours a day for them then your status goes through the other side of the Pac-Man map to “Jersey Shore reality star”.
The tweet is a reminder that status symbols change. It’s fashion. The symbols go in and out of style. If you orient your heading to those goals by definition you will fall behind the curve. If everyone is fashionable, nobody is.
You’d have to be a real piece of bread to read this and be like “oh my god I need to stop chasing these status markers”. Status-seeking to the point of self-detriment is more insidious. It takes the form of copying which we were built to do. Approval-seeking monkeys hacked by social proof. In the age of “you need 12.5 min of sunlight right when you wake up, followed by a 59 mg titer of nootropics…” you are playing adult Pokemon Go where the goals are set by people who believe in 3-figure probabilities. (Hey, sometimes the mask slips and you see the structure of the game.)
I’m not above status games either. Nobody is. But I don’t see any specific thing like a “meeting-free calendar” and think this person is “free”, “absolved”, or “in-control”. Because I have no idea what that feeling means to them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is projecting what they think it would mean to them. I’m unprepared to draw conclusions from such observations.
I’ll tell you what impresses me broadly.
People who look forward to Mondays. People who struggle to sleep because they are so stoked to be awake. This is a person who excels at something they enjoy and has the opportunity to do it. It doesn’t mean their life is free of things they don’t want to do. But their energy is directed towards activities that adequately solve their earthly needs for food and shelter and well-being needs for self-expression & autonomy.
This is messy.
Nobody is “arrived”. You’re always en route.
But it’s the most liberating thought if you let yourself take it seriously.
I love McCaughnney’s advice to never look at the scoreboard. That’s how you choke. You just run through. Through the endzone. Into the tunnel. Let’em tell you you scored when you’re gone.
Persist, ignore the crowd (but not the opinion of those you deliberately accommodate — this list should be small — you cannot serve everyone), and realize that course-correction is a constant.
The original tweet is irksome because the list unjustly narrows the imagination in a way that obscures the broader spirit — intentionality choosing your compromises. To many, the ultimate status is not having to make compromises. This is a childish view. Life is risk. In ventures and relationships. Risk is vulnerability and vulnerability means compromise. Being able to choose your compromises is a more reasonable asymptote to strive for.
All of this thus far is me engaging the tweet at its face.
But I have a red pill reaction too.
The tweet is a clue to the illegitimate foundation of status — the projection of desire that intersects with evolutionary fitness. We are obsessed with images, youth, and vitality but we live well past reproductive age.
Which makes the most underrated form of status — grace. Navigating our common compromises with courage and integrity instead of fantasizing about controlling them. (I said “underrated”, but “unrated” closer to the truth.)
Look around at who has status. How many of them do you think have honor? Too often we confer status by standards that are bankrupt. Just like a test we are taught to.