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Who wants to play the status game?

thepointmag.com

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Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#171

Post by pdonis »

hndude wrote: post #167
pdonis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Productivity" grants status Possibly, yes. > which is why people care about it No, people care about it because it produces valuable things . People would still care about productivity even if nobody had the slightest idea what status was.

Why do people care about "valuable things"? Status

> Why do people care about "valuable things"? Status

No, they care about them because they need them. People need food, clothing, shelter, companionship, and many other things. People also provide those things. Producing those things and trading for them is not "status"; it's filling genuine needs.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#172

Post by sangnoir »

ahi wrote: post #147

Of course this is written by an academic. Most of the rewards and penalties of academia are status related. No one besides the football coach is making private sector money, and no one gets fired for anything less than a felony. There are large portions of the ivory tower that do nothing more than burnish the self-importance of other status seekers; armies of Associate Dean of Innovative Circle Jerks attending pointl…

> Of course this is written by an academic

I see you are truly gifted at this game - that is a sublime opening gambit.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#173

Post by eindiran »

chrisweekly wrote: post #27
afpx wrote: post #19

Another "more advanced game" is the collaboration game. In this game, the players determine their common ground. The players evaluate each other and think, "Hey this person seems to be good at X and knows a lot about Y. I know a lot about Z. Maybe we can join forces." They then identify common goals that they can work on together. I don't know about most people, but I'm definitely more interested in playing the colla…

Great points! Tangent: I wish more games were explicitly collaborative. Some competitive games can easily be adjusted, others not so much. Games like "Forbidden Island" represent, for many, a completely foreign paradigm where everyone's in it together. Shame that's not more common.

There is a fairly large number of collaborative board games:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2023/cooperative...

Some interesting ones:

* Gloomhaven

* Spirit Island

* Pandemic (or any of the other games in the series)

* Codenames Duet

* Arkham Horror (or any of the other games in the series)

* Mysterium

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#174

Post by travisjungroth »

willemlabu wrote: post #92
fatninja wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats interesting. Consider a scenario of a guy with proper attire vs this guy. If the guy with proper attire did the same level of presentation as this guy, who have the probability to "win the clients"

He explained it as a rudimentary scale from 1 to 10. Expectations for him starts at a 3, and might rise to 8. Someone well dressed, might start at a 6 and rise to 8. The difference is, well, what makes the difference.

Reminds me of what I called “emotional ramping” when I worked at conference booths. Most people in a booth are either a zombie (exhausted and uninterested) or a clown (putting on a show of excitement). The trick is to start your interactions with people somewhere above zombie and end somewhere below clown. If you start at a 10, you have nowhere to go.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#175

Post by kerkeslager »

toasterlovin wrote: post #163
kerkeslager wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honesty might seem like an escape from the Importance and Leveling Games: you say the truth, so you're not basing what you say on an attempt to get status, so you've exited the game, right? Well, that doesn't quite work out in practice: First, you can only be as honest with others as you are with yourself, and being honest with yourself is hard: you just end up playing the games unintentionally. Second, honesty is ne…

Part of my conflict is that I appreciate the restraint and subtlety of the Portland approach, but I also appreciate the honesty of the LA approach. The compromise I've come to is to acknowledge that I strive to be part of the elite class, but promise myself that I won't be a jerk in pursuit of my ambitions.

I suspect that the honesty/subtlety of the approaches really only is differentiable at the low levels which most people are able to master. If you can't do that you can't play, of course, but being able to do that doesn't really differentiate you.

At the higher levels, I suspect LA involves just as much dishonesty as Portland, and as much subtlety to make those lies work in an environment where brazen-ness is the norm.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#176

Post by CuriouslyC »

andrewprock wrote: post #44
moron4hire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A scalar is a single dimension

I love that this is both technically correct, and at the same time is a "move" in the "status game".

Everything is a move in the status game, including your comment and this one.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#177

Post by refurb »

willemlabu wrote: post #63

I once attended a talk by a man who was head of a creative marketing agency. He also had a side gig of being a presentation consultant. I forget his name and agency, but I don't think I could forget what he said. He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of th…

This technique can also work from a status perspective.

When someone is playing by all the rules, you assume they are doing their best to cement their status.

When someone bucks the norm, you create at least two potential thoughts in people’s minds: 1) this person lacks status or 2) this person’s status is so high they don’t need to conform.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#178

Post by luckyscs »

celticmusic wrote: post #124
justzisguyuknow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > It is much easier to mock others for engaging in the Importance Game and the Leveling Game than to acknowledge one is doing it. If you think that playing 'to lose' is somehow opting out then you're fooling yourself. The point us that we are always playing.

nah, people like us just value different things. I can tell you I grew up extremely poor, to the point of homelessness, and if you think for a second I give a shit what bob thinks of me, you're wrong. Those sorts of experiences give you a different perspective. It's one of the major reasons why I've situated my life in such a way that these same people's disapproval isn't going to affect me. In fact, I had a company…

We all value different things, but we all have the same core needs that make us value security. Food, water, shelter. In my head right now I cant think of one status signifier that doesn't also signify security. Gold toilets included.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#179

Post by lawnchair_larry »

kstenerud wrote: post #48

> but we also need an aspirational target at the top, so as to inspire us to excellence, creativity and accomplishment. Why do we need this? Is the author suggesting that without an externally provided target, none shall be inspired? The status game is inherent to all socially cooperative creatures. It's not a morality thing; it's an evolutionary thing. It's nothing we can legislate or moralize or shame away; all you…

> Why do we need this?

To get to the moon.

Re: Who wants to play the status game?

#180

Post by zweep »

I remember hearing a story about Walmart founder Sam Walton at an annual vendors meeting. He walked up onto the stage and pulled his glasses out of his pocket and a bunch of his personal effects got pulled out and spilled on the floor and he got on his hands and knees to pick them up before going on stage. Then in another meeting with a completely different set of people he did the same exact thing. The guy who told me the story asked him what was going on and he said that the vendors in the room were making American median income and he was one of the richest guys in the world and he had to bring himself down a notch if he was going to connect with them.

This kind of stuff is harder to do now, since the first one would have been on Twitter within minutes.

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