We all want to affiliate with high status people, but since status is about common distant perceptions of quality, we often care more about what distant observers would think about our associates than about how we privately evaluate them.
Thus, people can genuinely dislike their allies having an activity that gives shallow negative impression (feel the dislike, not just deem the activity a mistake), even if they understand this first impression to be incorrect, or that any person giving a minute’s thought to the question will come to the same conclusion.
Robin Hanson wrote about a relevant phenomenon in Why Signals Are Shallow:
Thus, people can genuinely dislike their allies having an activity that gives shallow negative impression (feel the dislike, not just deem the activity a mistake), even if they understand this first impression to be incorrect, or that any person giving a minute’s thought to the question will come to the same conclusion.
After re-reading that, and reflecting on my feelings reading the OP, I think my opinion of Hanson’s signaling theories has gone up quite a bit.
This explains a LOT as applied to the feedback I get.
Money is just a proxy. Status makes the world go round.