Playing the Status Game

The hidden structure of human life

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) by Edouard Manet, 1863

Years ago, I quit coffee like I did drugs. But I recently relapsed. Coffee shops with sophisticated, single-origin pour-overs are all over Oakland.

On my last trip to Piedmont Avenue, I parked my car directly across from Blue Bottle, a corporate establishment that never fails to lure me in. It was early. So early that I didn’t bother with the parking meter because the streets were empty, and I sometimes like to roll the dice with these things. There were only a few souls outside, Oaklanders beginning their usual morning routines: a woman walking her border terrier, a nurse hustling to the hospital down the block, a man down on his luck staring blankly at the foggy sky. I felt complicit in this love for the secret quiet of the morning, the way it always felt pregnant with possibility no matter what the day before might have brought.

But when I saw myself approaching the glass door of Blue Bottle, I realized I was looking, as my mother might say, rather shlumpy. Rangy mid-length hair, sweats with crusty stains, Adidas crocs, a face in need of a good shave. I thought of Elena, the barista who—after several weeks of relapsed coffee visits—I had become quite friendly with. At least, in the type of way that one becomes friendly by way of habituated routine. It’s not like I’d invite her to my second wedding or anything, but she’s a nice young woman. Would she notice my shlump? I guess if there’s anything I’m guilty of, it’s caring too much about what people think of me.

As I walked through the door, I decided to slip on my flashy neon-green reflective sunglasses. They promised to suggest I didn’t give a fuck like some celebrities do to erase any doubt in their appearance. Maybe the green could even round out my baggy, haggard look in a way that looked aptly Gen Z.

But before my shades were squarely on, I stopped myself. How absurd was this, to feign to present myself as if through some twisted Instagram filter? An image briefly scrolled until I was gone. Disappeared into the void. Then, just as quickly as it came, this other awareness left me. Or maybe I banished it too soon. Because I thought fuck it, these are cool sunglasses, and I like feeling cool. I put them on to stay and purchased my $7 dark roast from Elena without another thought.

Later that morning though, I couldn’t help but think of this incident and my urge to wear my shades. A mild panic rattled my spine. It was a specific kind of anxiety that reminded me of my drug-fueled years at Twitter. What it was to be hyper-aware of every social gesture I made, as if I was operating on an invisible platform of virtual “likes.” It made me think about one of the more impactful books I’ve read this year: The Status Game by Will Storr. As Storr explains, we are constantly measuring our status. Neuroscientists dub this the “status detection system.” For instance, if you are in a group conversation, your brain will effortlessly track how much eye contact you receive compared to the others. Or, while at breakfast, if a waiter pours you slightly less orange juice than someone else at your table, your brain notices this detail with alarm. Not so much because you desired more OJ, but because the inequality of the gesture felt like a personal insult, a direct assault on your worth. How dare they offer you less than someone else!

Some people like to claim that they DGAF about this kind of stuff. They say: I don’t play status games. But as musician turned philosopher Alex Ebert might ask such a person: when was the last time you went naked in public on a hot, sunny day? The answer is never, because going out naked is not something we socially do, even if it would be more comfortable to be free in the California heat. In other words: if you don’t walk around naked, then you haven’t passed the DGAF test.

We are a strange species of ape that learned how to cooperate. A skill that has transformed us from violent monkeys into humans capable of organizing in hunter-gatherer bands, ultimately able to form complex civilizations built around ideas of status. Our ability to find in-group connection and approval determines our survival; thus, status-seeking isn’t just some shallow, frivolous activity. It’s aligned with our most consequential evolutionary goals. And it’s still the operating mechanism that governs our psyches, or as Storr describes it: “the hidden structure of human life.”

Even if you inhabit the highest rungs of status, you still play the game. Note how the true designers of fashion—the Anna Wintours, Coco Chanels, Tom Fords, etc.—restrain from wearing the crazy clothing their lines recently produce for the masses. No. Generally speaking, they pull their hair back tight in a ponytail, wear all black, and keep their style elegantly simple. At the highest levels of status, the game becomes about wearing the nondescript yet absurdly priced watch or handbag with no logos that you only know is elite if you know. Similarly, tech billionaires are infamous for wearing hoodies and jeans. Mark Zuckerberg’s monotonous clothing choices signal that he doesn’t have to play the same game that his VP of Marketing does, who might don slacks and a button-down.

The status game also works in funny ways. As a thought experiment, imagine if you saw me, a 35-year-old dude, slip on the ice on Broadway in Manhattan. While falling, I wildly flail my limbs before landing flat on my back, making quite the scene. Unless you hate fun, this image would likely be pretty funny. But now imagine if you saw Elon Musk slip in the exact same motion. God damn, it would be so universally funny, the memes would circulate for weeks. The higher your status, the more people relish in your embarrassment. It is why we love Entertainment Weekly, tabloids, and celebrity gossip. The desire to cut down and criticize those at the highest levels of status as a means to feel better about your own status is universal to the human condition. It’s a cultural phenomenon known as tall poppy syndrome.

Storr explains that we play three types of status games with ourselves and for public entertainment:

1. Dominance games are when status is coerced by force or fear (e.g. mafias and armies).

2. Virtue games are when status is awarded to those who are conspicuously dutiful, obedient, and moralistic (e.g. religions and royal institutions).

3. Success games are when status is awarded for the achievement of closely specified outcomes that require skill, talent, or knowledge (e.g. corporations and sporting contests).

Of course, these three games can (and do) blur together. A Mexican drug cartel lord and a swimsuit model and a Nobel scientist might play all three games at once, depending on the circumstances. Someone like Michelle Obama or Oprah might be eager to win the virtue game. But if either of them had a conversation with Robin Carhart-Harris, a leading psychedelic neuroscientist, about how psychedelics can engender a curative mystical experience, they might feel perplexed and unsure of themselves.

Once you trade money for meaning and impact, it can be easy to judge people who are still primarily playing the success game for their lack of virtue. Hence how the rich pretty much always appear snobby, despite whatever efforts are made to minimize their wealth. Yet the converse is true too: when you pursue virtue over success, it can be easy to feel good about yourself, to be reassured in your meaning-making abilities.

When Storr set out to write The Status Game, he was convinced his research would confirm his suspicion that the virtue game is the one to play to maximize well-being. But his fascinating conclusion is that the virtue game can be the most dangerous one to play—especially if paired with a dominance game. A mix of virtue and dominance games define our online climate of bullying, canceling, and scapegoating. One of the great challenges of this postmodern era is the supposed embrace of pluralism—honoring multiple and diverse perspectives. But the virtue game has twisted pluralism into tribalism, which results in “my way, or the highway” ultimatums of banishment and shame. When Storr analyzed civilizations’ worst criminals—from Ted Kaczynski to the Nazis—he found status games gone wrong with a humiliated male at the center. As the African proverb foretells:

“A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” 

If the status game is inescapable, the heart of the matter here is developing greater awareness of its complex inner workings within your psyche. Why is that you do the things you do? Why do you not do the things you wish you did instead, regardless of what other people think?  

One thing I’m clear about: for many years I’ve played the success game with no regard to virtue. Most people will default to playing the success game in Western society—barring an existential intervention or serious personal inquiry—because our culture is addicted to it. By some measures of my previous life, I succeeded, by staying singularly focused on rising up the ranks of companies that shaped the technology sector. Yet the consequences were disastrous over time, an endless self-destructive cycle that I’ve tried to document at length.

During Covid, one might say I even traded the success game for the virtue game. Though it feels somewhat embarrassing to admit it: that unbeknownst to myself, my decision to pursue my dharma around addiction, psychedelics, and writing boiled down to a mere status game swap. At least at first. But acknowledgment is the first step of taking strides to change. Looking back, I can see how my mind was shifting between cultural addictions, that it was the only way that I could begin to make a positive change for my life, even though status insisted on getting in the way until I could become more practiced at noticing my behavior and catching certain pitfalls.

Most recently, I’ve come to believe that we are each a node of the universe seeking to express and know itself. And, in doing so, we each have specific gifts to make the most of in this life. But how we do so involves nuance. There’s a difference between using such gifts in furtherance of an endless status game—and deciding to do what we love because we need to do it for ourselves in order to feel fulfilled and happy. Not to impress others. Deeper truths exist at the seat of our being beyond status.