Status itself is zero-sum — one person moving up necessarily moves someone else down the global social hierarchy. But most things people work on are positive-sum for society: building a good story, a house, a cocktail, a song, a friendship, etc.
Pro-social behavior is building things because they’re good and you like them — and then society allocates status largely based on contributions.
Anti-social or a-social behavior is chasing status itself by hacking society’s status allocation systems (e.g. making money via bot farms, most marketing, getting attention via plastic surgery, getting a good follower ratio by following/unfollowing, etc.)
All right on. The overt Zoomer status seeking is a disaster...incredibly distasteful to observe from everyone else, and impossible for it to lead to anything other than profound disappointment or embarrassment for those same overtly striving Zoomers once they get older and everything they're presently valorizing or striving for inevitably starts to erode.
Also, for most of American history, normative messaging regarding the dangers and immorality of status obsession were regularly pounded into people's heads, especially kids...by their parents, in children's books, in church, basically everywhere. It was the norm to constantly be overtly discouraging youthful narcissism and status striving. It feels like that messaging just kind of disappeared in the 21st century, or the incentives of the internet/social media steamrolled right over it. But pride, envy, and greed (all drivers of status striving) are literally right there in the seven deadly sins, classically considered the worst and most dangerous human failings that were preached against for hundreds of years. I suppose the decrease in religious belief is probably at least a factor in overt narcissism becoming socially acceptable, though mostly I think it's just being online (can't really separate the online world from decreasing religiousity anyway, they go hand in hand).
I'm going to have to be that guy: I don't think status can be divorced from collective recognition. I mean, it can, and we see it with modern phenomenas like Clavicular or rap, but that's why their prestige is deeply contested.
Hipsters' were doing two important social things: revalorizing manual labor in an age of slave immigrant labour, and making things taste incredible, as anyone who tasted hipster coffee can tell. These are not random values, these are pro-social attitudes.
We should get back to Storr's definition because we get lost in inane threads on here: status is dominance, competence or virtue. Hipsters clearly cultivated competence, and a lot in our ability to taste can be summed up to virtue or competence (choosing the best thing, that's either the most socially acceptable or made in the most competent way). Harry Potter is now agreed by freaks online to be unvirtuous because it'd promote anti-social attitudes, so it's virtuous to avoid it. And these things change because the idea of what's good for society change often. Status is also different for people of different background, as Walter elegantly noted in his essays, and this might account for most of the disagreement on this topic.
100% agree.
Status itself is zero-sum — one person moving up necessarily moves someone else down the global social hierarchy. But most things people work on are positive-sum for society: building a good story, a house, a cocktail, a song, a friendship, etc.
Pro-social behavior is building things because they’re good and you like them — and then society allocates status largely based on contributions.
Anti-social or a-social behavior is chasing status itself by hacking society’s status allocation systems (e.g. making money via bot farms, most marketing, getting attention via plastic surgery, getting a good follower ratio by following/unfollowing, etc.)
All right on. The overt Zoomer status seeking is a disaster...incredibly distasteful to observe from everyone else, and impossible for it to lead to anything other than profound disappointment or embarrassment for those same overtly striving Zoomers once they get older and everything they're presently valorizing or striving for inevitably starts to erode.
Also, for most of American history, normative messaging regarding the dangers and immorality of status obsession were regularly pounded into people's heads, especially kids...by their parents, in children's books, in church, basically everywhere. It was the norm to constantly be overtly discouraging youthful narcissism and status striving. It feels like that messaging just kind of disappeared in the 21st century, or the incentives of the internet/social media steamrolled right over it. But pride, envy, and greed (all drivers of status striving) are literally right there in the seven deadly sins, classically considered the worst and most dangerous human failings that were preached against for hundreds of years. I suppose the decrease in religious belief is probably at least a factor in overt narcissism becoming socially acceptable, though mostly I think it's just being online (can't really separate the online world from decreasing religiousity anyway, they go hand in hand).
I'm going to have to be that guy: I don't think status can be divorced from collective recognition. I mean, it can, and we see it with modern phenomenas like Clavicular or rap, but that's why their prestige is deeply contested.
Hipsters' were doing two important social things: revalorizing manual labor in an age of slave immigrant labour, and making things taste incredible, as anyone who tasted hipster coffee can tell. These are not random values, these are pro-social attitudes.
We should get back to Storr's definition because we get lost in inane threads on here: status is dominance, competence or virtue. Hipsters clearly cultivated competence, and a lot in our ability to taste can be summed up to virtue or competence (choosing the best thing, that's either the most socially acceptable or made in the most competent way). Harry Potter is now agreed by freaks online to be unvirtuous because it'd promote anti-social attitudes, so it's virtuous to avoid it. And these things change because the idea of what's good for society change often. Status is also different for people of different background, as Walter elegantly noted in his essays, and this might account for most of the disagreement on this topic.