oooooh

starsuckers

now I understand status

wow pretty messed up 30 years later I get it explained in a dumbass documentary. nobody else could explain wtf "status" was, even those I'd ask who wanted it more than anything else... was so illogical

and turns out it is!

so - in your opinion, what is "status"?

@tosensei monkey see monkey do

if someone seems high status you copy them to have a better life

in modern society "high status" is fake though. in small tribes it would work fine because you could copy people with morals and future-thinking strategies, which then improves outcomes of the group

but society instead props up people with signals that say they're high status when they have no such qualities. actually the film didn't touch upon it explicitly but who they prop up is who follows orders the best (and otherwise are very flat and honestly not even people), which always confused me but now it all makes sense

this also would explain for example why my roommate would diss me yet copy what I would do... the copying is the status. I've always been annoyed when people copied me but now I get ittt

@jestdotty you haven't actually described what status _is_. only what's wrong with it, in your opinion.

@tosensei monkey see monkey do

@jestdotty that is "imitation", not "status".

that is what some people _do with_ status.

@tosensei no it's the whole basis of status

@jestdotty you're confusing cause and effect. status is how people are _perceived_ in a (hierarchical) society. imitation is one result of that perception.

@tosensei no it's just imitation and nothing else

@jestdotty so, if it's imitation and nothing else, that'd kinda imply that every poor little serf in the middle ages would run around with a yellow-painted wooden crown, to try and imitate the king (slightly exaggerated).

not everything that symbolises status is being imitated, and not everybody is trying to imitate people of higher status.

if, as you claim, status WAS imitation, the previous statement would not be true. but status clearly is a CAUSE for imitation. a cause so obvious, even simpletons can see the connection, even without realising that the underlying causality does not dictate equality of the two concepts.

@tosensei you seem to think status is a objective and not subjective thing

and I don't understand the other babble