The Demon’s Name

Social status ^ global information technology = ???

Human beings are status monsters wrapped in muscle and skin, equipped with the brains and digits to effect extraordinary outcomes in our pursuit of social recognition.

This should come as no surprise. Our species has lamented this basic human folly for thousands of years. The Greeks wrote volumes insisting that the power, longevity, and supremacy of kingship, even divinity, cannot save us from our lust for status. In Iliad, Homer devotes 600 pages to the wanton slaughter of Greece and Troy’s best men, all for a personal dispute over the most beautiful woman on earth.

Homer fills more than a few pages noting that literal heaps of impossibly gorgeous women exist, which both suitors freely indulge; but status insists on the most beautiful woman, and so it went that the two empires imploded in a spasm of gore to satisfy the vanity of their leaders.

Greek orgies you can’t contemplate were insufficient to spare the lives of virtually everyone.

Status is not derived from, nor satisfied by, wealth. There have been countless millions of very wealthy people throughout history, largely forgettable. Many died miserable. Wealth is cloth; Status demands more substantial tributes.

Stripped of the illusions of wealth, status is three things: influence, legacy, and romantic partner(s). People also yearn for things like respect and love, which are important and desirable, but separate from status.¹

Exhibit A: Mark Zuckerberg visibly desiring the status that Lauren Sanchez’s tits confer on rival Jeff Bezos

Exhibit B: Jeff Bezos frantically scrubbing over his geeky past by painting over it with new imagery, mostly of Lauren’s tits

Impossibly, Jeff looks almost younger in the most recent photo. Certainly healthier. In this, he demonstrates the kind of status only infinite money can buy: something approaching divinity. This is his legacy, the dot-com photo an endearing footnote.

The credibility of his legacy, of course, depends on the mind-boggling hotness of his romantic partner Lauren Sanchez (it doesn’t matter if she’s not your type, and you know it). I could go on about influence — Jeff famously purchased Washington Post in 2013, and prominently positions himself at all of President Trump’s events today — but I don’t want to give the impression this is a piece about Jeff Bezos, or even the rich and famous. ²

Jeff is not abnormal, not in this way. Jeff is doing what every other status monster/ human being is hardwired to do. The other eight billion of us are driven by the same impulses, going back to our early evolutionary success working together in tribes to achieve essential, complex goals like hunting large game. Our most important currency was, and is, social.

All we really need to be happy is love and dignity, but in very important ways we are not engineered to aspire for happiness. We are wired to seek social approval so we can influence solutions to the tribe’s most pressing problems, and we feed on the significance of our own legacy. This was an essential quality for thousands of years when humans were grimly overcoming impossible odds to become a civilization with overnight shipping, but it also inflicts human beings with our greatest vulnerability: our ego, which is simply our perception of our own status.

Today, crypto bros dump infuriating sums of money (and respect) in pursuit of status. The absence of love and respect will only fuel their misplaced desire for status, frequently leading them to greater acts of selfish destruction and humiliation. Same as it ever was.

These are just the men whose resources and extravagance elevate them to our social media feeds. Again, the engine driving this behavior is deeply embedded in the DNA of every human being on earth. It has very different expressions across time, culture, and individual, but fundamentally, this crass desire for status is at the root of many of our actions, and most of our pathologies…

THE DEMON’S NAME IS STATUS.

Acknowledging this and saying it aloud will not defeat the demon, but it does weaken its power. Most people spend their lives rationalizing themselves out of this conclusion, building sprawling labyrinths of delusion to convince themselves that they are somehow immune from the most insidious human pathos in all history. Of course, failing to reckon with the demon only increases its grip. To assert any agency at all, you must confront the forces that control you…

SPEAK ITS NAME.

The demon Status has provoked incomprehensible tragedy, strife, and death over thousands of years of human history, but all of that was foreplay. The subtitle of the piece is the formula that has turned this historic scourge into an existential menace:

Social status ^ global information technology = ???

There are infinite and varied responses to this equation, but for the purposes of this writing, the exponential increase in the power of Status via modern technology manifests in two important ways:

1. It turns peasants into slaves.

One of the great underrated marvels at the confluence of republican government and market capitalism is that today, individuals (on this side of the global wealth divide) can express themselves rather effortlessly through choices in geography, consumption, and social media. If you do not like whatever status games are played in your cultural geography, move. Choose your own status games. Now you are a rock climber in Denver, surrounded by other people who confer status on totally epic rock climbing experiences. Buy cool gear, take cool trips, post the photographs to Instagram. Other people will see you doing well at your chosen status games, and give you status points. Upload the photos on a dating app, and you can find a romantic partner who has chosen similar status games (at the very least, you’re likely to find someone in the same socioeconomic tier — status).³

A conventionally attractive man showing off considerable prowess in his chosen status game, extreme ironing. I bet all my socks this photo appeared on his dating profile ⁴

Truly unprecedented stuff. What’s the downside? As the world grows increasingly socially barren out there in reality, our egos become overly dependent on the fake status games we’re playing online. They are all we have, and they are a double-edged sword. In addition to expressing ourselves, these tools allow us to compare ourselves to everyone else who chose the same status games we did — in endless, effortless ways. Worse, these great constructs of the modern agora are the intentional design of the richest corporations in history, and it is the legal duty of CEOs to do everything in their capacity to maximize advertising revenues for investors. Specifically, tech CEOs must imbue their massive global information platforms with nuclear-grade psychological research and advanced algorithms to maximize addiction and attention, or they will not be competitive.

To the extent that this helps people lead lives that are meaningful to them, all of this is very laudable. More often, as shown by the absolutely devastating statistics on social media and depression, it chains us to utterly un-winnable global marathons of “keeping up with the Joneses.” If you organize happiness around your performance in these games, you’re probably pretty sad. Status games are separate from the levers of happiness, a distraction even, and you will never be enough…

You think you’re happy? Are you earning an American tech income doing remote work in some cool Latin American city, meeting hot Spanish speakers and enjoying daily cleaning and meal prep services for pennies on the dollar? Think again. See how sad you are?⁵

At this point you might reasonably wonder how any of this makes someone a slave, as claimed. A common refrain in online personal finance circles is that when rich people see you in an expensive leased car, with the latest sneakers, flashing cash at clubs, they know you are poor. They know you are a slave, who affords these flimsy tokens of status on credit instead of investing in real skills and creating real wealth. You will work forever to repay your creditors, you will die poor, and no one will remember your name. “Slave” is definitely hyperbole, but humiliation burns hot, and the smoke obscures the distinction. All that’s visible through the haze are the bright, colorful screens dancing with proof of your subordination.

All that said, pretty much every actual slave in history would be dazzled by the comforts and quality of life in the developed world; to suggest to them that many Americans sincerely proclaim this slavery would be the foulest insult. But the ubiquitous, intrusive, and spectacular visibility of modern social hierarchy is historically unique. In important ways it colonizes our brains, and a treacherous mind is a terrible prison.

Was all of this worth it? Only you know the answer. But until you reckon with the forces of social status ^ global information technology in your life, the demon controls you. Speak its name. Weaken its power.

2. It turns tyrants into gods.

Humans used to be ruled by gods. Egyptian god-kings were presumed to carry divine blood within them, and divinity granted them the authority to command vast armies of slaves in generational construction projects. These towering tombs formally embossed the names of mortals on the eternal tablet. All the precious sap of countless family trees was needed, to press the ink so indelibly. Scores of forgotten Egyptian lineages gave their literal lives to satisfy the vanity of one… and did these very human pharaohs even feel satisfied, in the end? Knowing humans, probably not. History is littered with the evidence.

Remember, it’s in our DNA. Wielding social influence effectively has been critical to the survival of our ancestors since before homo sapiens was a species. Most humans will predictably deploy everything in their capacity to satisfy the rapacious demon Status, and now the richest humans wield godlike power. Elon Musk is not only halfway to a trillion US dollars, he also gained expansive personal access to some the most critical databases on earth through his stint with DOGE. His Twitter acquisition drew widespread liberal mockery at the time, but now the world’s richest man with the world’s most sensitive data troves also has the world’s biggest megaphone. He owns supercomputer intelligence systems to operationalize his data, and amplify his signals. He can build military hardware, rockets, and robots in rapidly automating factories around the globe…

More manufacturing is probably coming back to America, but the jobs to secure a resilient middle class probably aren’t… ⁶

If it can dance, it can kill ⁷

Mao Zedong wasn’t right about much, but he nailed one thing: and if “power comes from the barrel of a gun,” then it definitely comes from the barrel of an automated, globe-spanning neo-industrial stack for making programmable weapons of war.

…

Look, I get it. This whole hog-shit thesis feels a little stretched at this point. Status is going to compel Elon Musk to dominate the globe with a robot army? How did we even get here? Fortunately, one of Elon’s baby incubators, Ashley St.-Claire, recently graced us with the all-too-familiar prints of Status.

This is a human who clearly aspires to godhood:

… Excuse me? ⁸

This is some sci-fi Genghis Khan kinda shit, alloyed with modern powers that the brilliant warlord could scarcely imagine. Elon fancies himself a real-life Tony Stark, and I think that’s fitting, too. Good intentions frequently produce bad outcomes, and when you have enormous power, sometimes those consequences are existential species-level crises featuring weapons of mass destruction and super-villains.

What powers will Elon’s “legion” of estranged children amass, after inheriting omnipotence? Why can’t this guy just live a normal family life and father loving children who honor his legacy by their own accomplishments and reputation? Status. And here’s the thing…

Status ^ de facto omnipotence = ???fffff

1. Ezra Klein has published some great ideas and discussions re: status as the engine of humanity and civilization. Highly recommend this conversation (free audio):

https://player.fm/series/the-ezra-klein-show/we-build-civilizations-on-status-but-we-barely-understand-it

2. H/t Substack writers like

Cartoons Hate Her

and

Love Me Like a Robot

for helping me understand and develop lesser-understood dimensions of my hog-shit thesis, like Lauren Sanchez and dating apps

3. Studies have shown that one of the most prevalent outcomes of dating apps is matching on socioeconomic status. Even more compelling, I think, is the existence of apps like Raya, where celebrities must get verified to gain access to a dating pool of other celebrities

https://talkpoverty.org/2016/03/28/the-inequality-of-online-dating/index.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/tinder-adds-job-and-education-profiles/415584/

https://www.rayatheapp.com/

4. Make it make sense https://www.instagram.com/timetobehave/p/CwpdQRqIu2K/?img_index=6

5. Life flexing https://www.businessinsider.com/puerto-vallarta-airbnb-experiences-remote-work-paradise-2022-6

6. Tesla’s automated Berlin factory

7. Tesla competitor Boston Dynamics has dancing robots (so does Tesla, just less impressive)

8. Elon seeks to produce legion of children who won’t know their father any better than you do for totally normal global dynasty reasons* https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/elon-musk-ashley-st-clair-legion-of-children-13880760.html

*fwiw I’m here arguing that the impulse for legacy status is, in fact, pretty normal