I like it, this follows some of the things that I have thought about social respect/status.
A wrinkle—this can change around a lot depending on how flexible status is in a particular tribe.
I would figure medieval feudalist tribes have a powerful division between “noble” and “commoner” that can’t simply be crossed. They’re tight-knit, so it may be expected that everyone around knows what everyone’s status is, and that it can’t be changed. So if the commoner was to compliment a noble in a notably muted way in public (“Prince John’s new coat is pretty nice, I guess”), everyone would see it as an insult, likely to have dangerous consequences. The noble would basically have to act horribly offended and demand some sort of public tribute to him, or risk losing his status in the eyes of his fellow nobles and the local commoners.
Then picture a party full of Hollywood up-and-comers. I would think that status is a big deal, but nobody knows for sure exactly how much status most people have, and many people don’t know each other very well at all. If one person, say Bob, gives another one, say John, a similarly muted compliment, it will cause witnesses to initially think that Bob has substantially higher status than John. This is potentially confirmed or refuted by how John takes it. John could gushingly accept it, confirming his much lower relative status, make some noncommittal noise and ignore it, suggesting that he actually has much higher status, respond in a similarly passive-aggressively muted way, suggesting a jockeying for status and possible conflict.
It feels to me like there’s an instinctive part of our brains that just knows this kind of stuff instantly, and it helps our social interactions to learn to listen to it instead of drowning it out with logic. You can understand these things logically, but the part of our brain that does that never does it fast enough.
I like it, this follows some of the things that I have thought about social respect/status.
A wrinkle—this can change around a lot depending on how flexible status is in a particular tribe.
I would figure medieval feudalist tribes have a powerful division between “noble” and “commoner” that can’t simply be crossed. They’re tight-knit, so it may be expected that everyone around knows what everyone’s status is, and that it can’t be changed. So if the commoner was to compliment a noble in a notably muted way in public (“Prince John’s new coat is pretty nice, I guess”), everyone would see it as an insult, likely to have dangerous consequences. The noble would basically have to act horribly offended and demand some sort of public tribute to him, or risk losing his status in the eyes of his fellow nobles and the local commoners.
Then picture a party full of Hollywood up-and-comers. I would think that status is a big deal, but nobody knows for sure exactly how much status most people have, and many people don’t know each other very well at all. If one person, say Bob, gives another one, say John, a similarly muted compliment, it will cause witnesses to initially think that Bob has substantially higher status than John. This is potentially confirmed or refuted by how John takes it. John could gushingly accept it, confirming his much lower relative status, make some noncommittal noise and ignore it, suggesting that he actually has much higher status, respond in a similarly passive-aggressively muted way, suggesting a jockeying for status and possible conflict.
It feels to me like there’s an instinctive part of our brains that just knows this kind of stuff instantly, and it helps our social interactions to learn to listen to it instead of drowning it out with logic. You can understand these things logically, but the part of our brain that does that never does it fast enough.