Will Storr
About
Author of The Status Game and Selfie; journalist and guest
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Claims by Will Storr (20 of 50)
Three Genres of Status Game
Humans play three genres of status game: dominance (status through aggression, coercion, bullying, or any threat that forces deference), virtue (status through knowing, following, enforcing rules and sincerely believing the group's myths), and success (status through being competent and good at valued things).
Egalitarian Groups Are Driven By Status Concern
Hunter-gatherer groups appear egalitarian precisely because members care so intensely about status: they constantly jostle and enforce checks and balances, pulling down anyone who acts hubristically (e.g., singing songs of derision) to enforce humility.
High-Status Dress Signals By Going Plain
Status cues are an arms race; once you are above the people adorned in finery, you signal superiority by dressing plainly (fashion insiders in black, Zuckerberg in a hoodie, even Hitler in a plain uniform), because the pose 'I don't even need that' is still a pose marking you as separate from the elite.
Imaginary Audience Generates Conscience
Humans have evolved an 'imaginary audience'—a tribe carried in our heads that judges us—producing feelings of pride and shame and functioning as conscience, so that we feel a jolt of higher status even when we do good things privately and others reward us with status when they discover them.
Brain Has a Status Detection System
Neuroscientists describe a 'status detection system' in the brain that constantly measures cues like eye contact with numerical precision; in one study, people served slightly less orange juice than others became preoccupied and upset—not about the juice but because the system read it as a status insult.
We Play Multiple Status Games Simultaneously
We do not play one status game with everyone; we are members of many tribes at once and care most about co-players in our own games, so insults from people we consider low status sting far less than disparagement from those above us in a game we value.
Language May Have Evolved For Gossip
A dominant theory holds that language evolved in the first place to support gossip; gossip is universal, is how we learn to live and behave from childhood, moderates behavior, and underlies religion (an omniscient gossip network) and modern media (a huge gossip network).
Conspiracy Belief Is Status-Driven Recruitment
People get sucked into conspiracy worlds like anti-vaccination because the groups offer status: an isolated young woman impressed by powerful women rose in status by passionately believing vaccines are a conspiracy and enacting that belief in the world, transforming from an ordinary mom into a heroic figure on a mission to save the world.
Success-Game Leaders Less Dangerous Than Virtue-Game Leaders
Trump plays a small-minded success game (wealth rankings, winning elections) and doesn't care about virtue or remaking the world in his image, making him less dangerous than virtue-game world leaders like Lenin and Hitler who seek to redraw the world in superior ways and cause millions of deaths.
Don't Wait For The Thank You
Orwell advised that when giving money to homeless people one should never expect or wait for thanks; Storr follows this (making eye contact but not looking back) yet still allows himself to feel good about doing a kind thing, holding that it would be mean-spirited and puritanical to deny someone the pleasure of feeling good about doing something nice.
Holocaust Deniers Protect Loved Ones' Reputation
Many Holocaust deniers Storr traveled with had parents who served on the Nazi side, suggesting their denial functions to avoid believing the culturally dominant story that their loved ones were evil—a cognitive mission to prove their parents weren't monsters.
Belonging to More Groups Improves Stability
Research suggests people are happier and more emotionally stable the more groups they belong to; hedging across multiple status games protects against the catastrophic identity collapse that comes when a single dominant source of status (like a career) fails.
Status Is Measured By Any Available Token
Status is not chiefly about money; humans can use anything to measure it, like Monopoly tokens unique to each game, so even people in the bottom 1% of local wealth can look down on the wealthy by using different status criteria (e.g., taste, authenticity).
We Become the Status Games We Play
Identity is fluid and multiple: we become the games we play because joining groups means following their rules, and the better we follow them the higher we climb, so we begin to dress, talk, and consume art like that group—making status games inseparable from identity.
Status Urge Produces Modernity and Progress
The status urge is not merely the worst of human nature (serial killers, genocide, incel violence); it is also the best, because without it there is no modernity, no progress, no science, no technology, and no vaccines—so it is a mistake to condescend to it.
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