Something not mentioned is that when the people who are doing this cool new thing because this is a cool thing that I want to do for its own sake (and, incidentally, I might get some status from it, even though I don't care about such things very much, because I don't see any way to stop this) begin to be approached in numbers in the group by the people who are doing this cool new thing because they can get status from it, and are precisely drawn to it because it will generate status for them, and status is what they care about more than anything or most anything in the world) -- Gresham's law kicks in.
Many of the cool people *leave* because they cannot stand to be around people who *aren't* in it for its own sake.
I'm sick of starting cool groups, companies, etc which I have to leave when it stops being about the things I love and care about, done by people I like more than a little, and starts being about giving status to people I am at best indifferent to, and often dislike, and who often take a strong dislike to me because, for as long as I can hold out, I will try to flatten the status levels which cuts into their prestige.
If you haven't looked on the creation of status as an undesirable outcome that needs limiting, you may not have ended up in a situation where the first person to drive you and other likeminded out of your group gets to keep all the chips. And that is one place where the psychopaths thrive.
This is exactly right. At any given point in time, there's a bunch of pre-movements in pre-cycle, and most of them only attract people interested in the ideas of the movement itself rather than the status (since there's really no status to be gained at this point anyway). On the other hand, there would also be a movement or two in the beginning of their cycle, and people interested in getting status would flock to those (thinking it's the next big thing or whatever). These groups of people are not the same!
It's hard to know until after the status has arrived that this was a good thing to get involved with a short time before, but it is possible that writing a substack may work out this way.
Then how do the status-seekers flood the cool new thing? Or is there just enough status-seekers flooding everything that whenever any of them hit it big they've already been infected?
Also isn't writing a substack just giving money/status to the people who already hopped on the "write a blog" subculture a few years ago and not minting new celebrities?
There are enough status-seekers to flood everything.
The 'write a blog' subculture generally produced articles for free. Maybe you could get paid for clicks, and maybe you could set up your blog so that you could use your reader's machines to mine cryptocurrency .... but probably not. The notion of directly subscribing to journalists is becoming more and more attractive. The next big thing? Only time will tell.
Right, the write a blog subculture did it only for (status | art | joy), substack is normalizing paying for it. But are any of the substack stars / success stories people who are not already leveraging preexisting status? Such as through having previously created a blog or news site?
https://subredditstats.com/ shows the subreddits with the highest % follower increase over the last month, week and day. Part of reddit's special charm is the quantification of status, so if you wanted to play that game, the "month" column shows where your time could probably be best invested.
I have to say, though, none of these subreddits look particularly interesting or wholesome. But when an important new fad arises, I'm sure it's reflected in these stats pretty early.
Something not mentioned is that when the people who are doing this cool new thing because this is a cool thing that I want to do for its own sake (and, incidentally, I might get some status from it, even though I don't care about such things very much, because I don't see any way to stop this) begin to be approached in numbers in the group by the people who are doing this cool new thing because they can get status from it, and are precisely drawn to it because it will generate status for them, and status is what they care about more than anything or most anything in the world) -- Gresham's law kicks in.
Many of the cool people *leave* because they cannot stand to be around people who *aren't* in it for its own sake.
I'm sick of starting cool groups, companies, etc which I have to leave when it stops being about the things I love and care about, done by people I like more than a little, and starts being about giving status to people I am at best indifferent to, and often dislike, and who often take a strong dislike to me because, for as long as I can hold out, I will try to flatten the status levels which cuts into their prestige.
If you haven't looked on the creation of status as an undesirable outcome that needs limiting, you may not have ended up in a situation where the first person to drive you and other likeminded out of your group gets to keep all the chips. And that is one place where the psychopaths thrive.
This is exactly right. At any given point in time, there's a bunch of pre-movements in pre-cycle, and most of them only attract people interested in the ideas of the movement itself rather than the status (since there's really no status to be gained at this point anyway). On the other hand, there would also be a movement or two in the beginning of their cycle, and people interested in getting status would flock to those (thinking it's the next big thing or whatever). These groups of people are not the same!
> approached in numbers in the group by the people who are doing this cool new thing because they can get status from it
Are there concrete examples of this? What cool new things can I do right now in order to get status?
It's hard to know until after the status has arrived that this was a good thing to get involved with a short time before, but it is possible that writing a substack may work out this way.
Then how do the status-seekers flood the cool new thing? Or is there just enough status-seekers flooding everything that whenever any of them hit it big they've already been infected?
Also isn't writing a substack just giving money/status to the people who already hopped on the "write a blog" subculture a few years ago and not minting new celebrities?
There are enough status-seekers to flood everything.
The 'write a blog' subculture generally produced articles for free. Maybe you could get paid for clicks, and maybe you could set up your blog so that you could use your reader's machines to mine cryptocurrency .... but probably not. The notion of directly subscribing to journalists is becoming more and more attractive. The next big thing? Only time will tell.
Right, the write a blog subculture did it only for (status | art | joy), substack is normalizing paying for it. But are any of the substack stars / success stories people who are not already leveraging preexisting status? Such as through having previously created a blog or news site?
https://subredditstats.com/ shows the subreddits with the highest % follower increase over the last month, week and day. Part of reddit's special charm is the quantification of status, so if you wanted to play that game, the "month" column shows where your time could probably be best invested.
I have to say, though, none of these subreddits look particularly interesting or wholesome. But when an important new fad arises, I'm sure it's reflected in these stats pretty early.