That’s a good point; I guess those are hard to ask directly. Though maybe you can still ask a variant of it if you’re careful and kick into their abstract reasoning? Maybe something like “Oh my gosh, friend, I feel so insecure around person because they’re more successful than me! Does that ever happen to you successful people?” Of course, they might answer the way they wish they could answer and keep acting weird around you anyway.
Though, I feel like that’s a question you half-know the answer to before you ask. Are there situations where knowing the answer to a status-related question is important for making a decision and guessing wrong has a high penalty?
I probably hang out with mostly similar-status people, but there’s got to be a lot of context I’m missing, because I can think of a number of decision questions that don’t depend on the answer to “well, is this person I’m with higher status than me?”
I think it depends on the reading. If you read it in a sort of snooty dismissive voice, yes, certainly. But if you read it in a genuinely perplexed kind of voice, it mostly sounds confused.
I was pretty confused by “every situation” because I can definitely think of some situations where status considerations factor only negligibly into your decision process. For example: you are out with some people and notice your shoe is untied. Do you tie it? Uhh. Does it really matter if your friends are higher or lower status? Maybe if they can’t afford shoes or something, but otherwise, not really. I think?
It seems like by “status” you mean status within society at large, mainly economic status, while I think most people here are thinking about status within your own social group.
So if you stop to tie your shoe and you have high status within your social group, your friends will stop and wait for you; if you have low status, they won’t. (You display your assessment of your own status by asking “Hey, wait up, I have to tie my shoe” or by not asking.) There are finer gradations depending on how quickly you tie your shoe: you might hurry to avoid slowing down your friends, which I’m sure has various implications.
I’m not saying you should care about any of this; but it certainly could be an issue. If it’s not an issue, that could mean one of two things: either you’re so high-status you don’t even notice these things, or you’re not in high school any more :)
Oh, that’s interesting. I guess I do think about stuff like that but I don’t … usually frame it as a status question. I just think about it in terms of what the people I’m around have a problem with. Like if they seem annoyed that I’m tying my shoes all the time, I try not to do it? Or whether I like the people enough to do stuff for them, for example.
Actually, you made me think of a really good example of this and it goes back to the earlier question of whether we should ask people things. I have a bad habit of walking off and not responding during IM conversations! I mostly do it because IM is that sort of casual medium where you can be doing a bunch of other things at the same time. I think most people I talk to don’t really care but when people tell me that they’re bothered by it, I make an effort to let them know if I’m not gonna respond for a while. But I guess some people might be interpreting it as a status move and therefore not letting me know it bothers them? So maybe the people that I figure are also not responding because they’re busy are actually deliberately not responding to also signal status? Oops.
Sounds like he’s male. A while ago, I read something in a thread on reddit about women in IT, where a woman complained about women having to prove themselves all the time there. And I was thinking that yes, that sucks; you’d think that after a time, people would recognize that hey, this woman knows her stuff. But then a man asked what was the problem with that, after all, it wasn’t like men didn’t have to prove themselves with every interaction as well.
I have a friend who owns a business that they ran for years as a female then transitioned with hormones. Over a short time they appeared very obviously male to everyone they met. He said that people stopped questioning everything he said and just believed him. Like, he would make a reasonable informed statement and that would be it, people accepted it as the truth.
I’ve heard this is a universal experience of transmen, which is interesting as they are often shorter and smaller yet still find this advantage.
My guess: you don’t live in a very large city, so most of the people you interact with already know well (cf this), whereas that doesn’t apply to RomeoStevens; and/or you are in the hard sciences or similar and he is in the humanities or similar (cf this).
exactly.
That’s a good point; I guess those are hard to ask directly. Though maybe you can still ask a variant of it if you’re careful and kick into their abstract reasoning? Maybe something like “Oh my gosh, friend, I feel so insecure around person because they’re more successful than me! Does that ever happen to you successful people?” Of course, they might answer the way they wish they could answer and keep acting weird around you anyway.
Though, I feel like that’s a question you half-know the answer to before you ask. Are there situations where knowing the answer to a status-related question is important for making a decision and guessing wrong has a high penalty?
uh...every situation?
Sounds like you worry a lot more about status than I do. o_O
That’s a high-status thing to say :)
I probably hang out with mostly similar-status people, but there’s got to be a lot of context I’m missing, because I can think of a number of decision questions that don’t depend on the answer to “well, is this person I’m with higher status than me?”
I just said it because it was funny.
I think I am bad at knowing which comment to reply to. ^_^
To the point of being banal and transparent.
I think it depends on the reading. If you read it in a sort of snooty dismissive voice, yes, certainly. But if you read it in a genuinely perplexed kind of voice, it mostly sounds confused.
That’s why I put the confused-face!
I was pretty confused by “every situation” because I can definitely think of some situations where status considerations factor only negligibly into your decision process. For example: you are out with some people and notice your shoe is untied. Do you tie it? Uhh. Does it really matter if your friends are higher or lower status? Maybe if they can’t afford shoes or something, but otherwise, not really. I think?
It seems like by “status” you mean status within society at large, mainly economic status, while I think most people here are thinking about status within your own social group.
So if you stop to tie your shoe and you have high status within your social group, your friends will stop and wait for you; if you have low status, they won’t. (You display your assessment of your own status by asking “Hey, wait up, I have to tie my shoe” or by not asking.) There are finer gradations depending on how quickly you tie your shoe: you might hurry to avoid slowing down your friends, which I’m sure has various implications.
I’m not saying you should care about any of this; but it certainly could be an issue. If it’s not an issue, that could mean one of two things: either you’re so high-status you don’t even notice these things, or you’re not in high school any more :)
Oh, that’s interesting. I guess I do think about stuff like that but I don’t … usually frame it as a status question. I just think about it in terms of what the people I’m around have a problem with. Like if they seem annoyed that I’m tying my shoes all the time, I try not to do it? Or whether I like the people enough to do stuff for them, for example.
Actually, you made me think of a really good example of this and it goes back to the earlier question of whether we should ask people things. I have a bad habit of walking off and not responding during IM conversations! I mostly do it because IM is that sort of casual medium where you can be doing a bunch of other things at the same time. I think most people I talk to don’t really care but when people tell me that they’re bothered by it, I make an effort to let them know if I’m not gonna respond for a while. But I guess some people might be interpreting it as a status move and therefore not letting me know it bothers them? So maybe the people that I figure are also not responding because they’re busy are actually deliberately not responding to also signal status? Oops.
Sounds like he’s male. A while ago, I read something in a thread on reddit about women in IT, where a woman complained about women having to prove themselves all the time there. And I was thinking that yes, that sucks; you’d think that after a time, people would recognize that hey, this woman knows her stuff. But then a man asked what was the problem with that, after all, it wasn’t like men didn’t have to prove themselves with every interaction as well.
There might be a difference in the baselines that men and women have to prove themselves against.
Yes, good point.
I have a friend who owns a business that they ran for years as a female then transitioned with hormones. Over a short time they appeared very obviously male to everyone they met. He said that people stopped questioning everything he said and just believed him. Like, he would make a reasonable informed statement and that would be it, people accepted it as the truth. I’ve heard this is a universal experience of transmen, which is interesting as they are often shorter and smaller yet still find this advantage.
My guess: you don’t live in a very large city, so most of the people you interact with already know well (cf this), whereas that doesn’t apply to RomeoStevens; and/or you are in the hard sciences or similar and he is in the humanities or similar (cf this).