Some High Status Socialization Patterns

An Infinity from Gamma Dreams

Valdimir Pervunensky, In the Vortex of the Waltz, 2005, oil on canvas, location unknown

This post will focus in from the last one and look for some specific characteristics of high status social groups. It’s the latest in a series branching off the appearance of a low-intelligence Gamma pattern on a comment page. Each topic covers a piece of context necessary to explain the conclusion. But they’re also written to stand alone, so it’s not necessary to catch up. Having Li’l Turdling as a pole star sets context limits for huge topics. Organic voluntary social groups on the internet excludes most of life. I’m also limited by experience. No matter how many environments I’ve been in, I’m just a guy, with material constraints on where I can go. There are all sorts of circles I can’t speak any more than any of us on the outside looking in. So two limits, one extrinsic and one intrinsic. With that in mind, high status socialization as I can see it helps understand why dishonesty and idiocy are so transparent.

Set parameters of organic internet socialization. Number one is it’s voluntary. High-status performance groups like in workplaces or teams have to be more socially tolerant. Organic socialization doesn’t have any of those pressures. You only do it because you want to. We’ve all laughed at people who let their social life spiral into a source of anxiety. If there are no formal skill requirements, there’s also no need to tolerate anyone irritating. It’s what we ended in the last post. People attractive enough in some way that other attractive people want to spend some of their limited social bandwidth on them. And what happens after. Online socialization even eliminates appearance issues, in theory at least. The reality is a tad more complex, because appearance contributes to SSH, and SSH gets obvious even online. What doesn’t change are the dynamics that come with mutual choice.

Yoann Lossel and Easton Press, Beowulf - Grendel's Mother Mare, 2017 mixed media on Arches paper, graphite, hydrangeas petals, gold, silver and copper leaf

High status groups and individuals overlap but aren’t the same. I’m considering individual status in SSH terms because it’s the only marker that isn’t circumstantial. Group status is social context and that is entirely circumstantial. Profiles play out on different social levels - a high-status group has its Deltas, while a low-status group Alpha can quickly wear out his welcome. Status and popularity aren’t the same either. Not unrelated, but different. People in high-status groups are often popular with lots of secondary and tertiary friends and acquaintances. And if high-status groups weren’t widely appealing, there wouldn’t be so much social pathology around them. But “popular” in the pop culture sense also means broadly accessible. By definition, high status is low accessibility for various reasons. The main one being most people lack sufficiently desirable traits.

The highest-status groups are completely exclusive.

Nazgul, animation cel from Ralph Bakshi, The Lord of the Rings, part 1.

Internet socialization complicates the popularity issue a little but not really on a deep level. The difference between the internet and the infinite school cafeteria metaphor is that the real life settings have physical boundaries. Not just everybody’s on the internet - everyone can be in any “public” space. Listening in where not welcome is harmless, but the compulsion to contribute is irresistible for some. This already came up - the high status solution is police formal and informal barriers. But there’s another side. You’ll see truly awful people with considerable online followings. Bots aside, there are organic communities active enough to provide a good living - and the aura of status - to the sort of rancid creature who’s an irl punchline. We recently became aware of a repugnant boomer coward who appears to enjoy dressing as Poochie from The Simpsons while spewing House of Lies narrative and beating women. It also appears reasonably successful. But here’s the thing. If everyone is on the internet, everyone has to go somewhere. Trash people can congregate around higher-profile trash that make them feel better about themselves. A quick tell is who seeks attention from whom. And if you want to elevate the status of your own group, being discriminating is the start.

I am Much Put Out, 1903, prelinen postcard, Raphael Tuck & Sons - the texts raises it to Roots of Gamma tier perfect…

An organic high status social group has all the randomness of any social scenario. Who meets who where and when. All the alchemies of personal affection and contextual possibilities can take time to shake out. What’s consistent is that mutual choice weeds out posturers. Organic high-status socialization is more real in terms of people being with what they claim to be. Fakes are transparent and tiresome. They offer nothing. Appealing people appeal because of what they radiate socially. But a lie is a non-contributing void. When triaging limited social bandwidth is a necessity, non-reciprocating vacuums are easy cuts. It’s actually simple when laid out. HSS is mutual positive appeal. That little involuntary smile when one of your boys kills it - raising your own status associatively…

Thinking it through, the social science terms abundance and scarcity mentalities stand out as fundamental. Because they determines the base reality that imprints reflex world view. When someone always wants to hang out with you, blowing off toxic people doesn’t have much cost. When there are always pretty girls around, getting out of a sub-optimal situation or shrugging off failure is the same. When social time is valuable, it becomes obvious that no one has an intrinsic right to it. Outside obligations and duties that command commitment. One big high/low status divide is attitude towards responsibility. Abundance mentality - when opportunity and success are common, responsiveness and proactivity become norms. You do stuff. And when it doesn’t work, laugh it off with a self-depreciating bit, and do something else. I can’t imagine a world where social opportunity is scarce. I require a lot of solitude, but that’s personal choice. Extensive read-and-react over long periods gets tedious, and as I’ve gotten older, my social desires have dwindled. But a life where it’s desirable to reemerge and there’s no one there is existentially horrifying.

John Singleton Copley, The Return of Neptune, 1754, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speculating here - I suspect a lot of the low-status framing tap-dance you see online is related to social anxiety. Fear of somehow blowing their image, which matters for some reason. High-status communication is much more direct. Not necessarily of few words - we can talk into the night. But when conversation is desired. It’s jabbering that has no place. The directness includes calling out someone in the group who’s not measuring up somehow.

Appeal is a lot of things. The Gamma assumption of a dashing appearance - or that intricately framed opening - totally misses that friendship is temporal. A picture that builds over time. One common factor is overall satisfaction with themselves. Not self-worship. Everyone has things they like to change and self-improvement is a high status virtue. Basic comfort in your own skin that carries into social contexts. Self-identity from what they are, not what they aren’t. Being their impressive selves without weirdness and sublimated envy. Anyone who’s watched a high status older woman respond with matronly warmth and affection to a beautiful younger one knows exactly what I mean. What the socially maladjusted miss is that organic socialization isn’t something you act out. It’s natural, mutual fit. My own read and react process is a non-starter without something at home in a context. Chosen as well as choosing. Then I grow in that place or I don’t - like anyone else. The idea of targeting strangers with a false front to become “friends” for status is sociopathic.

John Sloan, McSorley’s Cats, 1928, oil on canvas, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

In a organic social group, socialization isn’t secondary to some objective - it is the objective. And people who are secure, at peace with themselves, are cool with what they are etc. are just much more enjoyable to be around. Their social outputs are likeable personalities living in the present, hilarious or captivating stories, or some cool or interesting thing they’re doing. Topics can be discussed at length objectively without everything reverting to someone’s personal dissatisfaction. Self-absorption is uninteresting - barely tolerable among females and ironically self-erasing among men. Note how often low-status groups wallow in grievance - wasting their finite spans huffing cortisol over someone for whom they’re beneath notice. An energy metaphor - in HSS, participants generally put out something positive or are at worst situationally neutral. Low status socialization is an energy vacuum. Self-obsessed mediocrities droning about banalities or personal failings seems needy to the edge of sociopathy. Emotionally incontinent man-babies are awful. Why tolerate them if you have choice?

The mutual part is that you don’t do it or you’re not tolerated either.

Adriaen Brouwe, Peasants Brawling over Cards, 1631-1633, oil on oak wood, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Respect plays a bigger part in organic high status social groups. Because people genuinely like each other for their qualities, regard naturally follows. Competition can be fierce, but respectful and not personal. Mutual respect also colors social interaction. High status groups can be really hard on each other in private company, but build each other up publicly. When they do air it out in the open, it’s serious. Not to say they’re more moral - though an honest frame is a better base. Just that public appearance and decorum matter as expressions of self-respect. Seeming high character - whether sincere or not in some cases. An innate sense that making the group look better makes you look better. No one’s bean counting. Everyone knows everyone’s hand. Apex Alpha doesn’t expect core Delta’s lawn party to match his own. But it’s assumed it will be a good party, and he’ll have a great time dominating the proceedings in his usual organic way. Thereby raising the status of the event, and by extension, his lower-SSH status HS group buddy. Conversely, a crab bucket of low status, backstabbing, poseurs seems infinitely less pleasant than being alone.

Public behavior - in reality or online - is also more self-respecting. The personal humiliation rituals that lower status men and women subject themselves to for attention are out of the question. Sexual fulfillment is typical, but in ways that don’t bring shame. High-status couples being typical. And another place where low status scarcity mentality totally transforms attitudes between the sexes.

Daniel Gerhartz, Until We Meet Again, oil on linen, 2020s, private collection. Note the contrast with the earlier picture of a letter. Status.

You can have productive non-sexualized conversations with women when not driven by oneitis and thirst. And high status groups back each other. On the internet, the low status concept of White Knighting is often misapplied. The manlet orbiter swooping into the crab bucket presumes some ridiculous romantic fantasy. High status female trolls know exactly what they’re doing. The rest tend to communicate in normal pro-social ways that are … wait for it … pleasant. When a sociopathic freak hassles them out of the blue, it’s expected high status males respond in the appropriate way. Clear gender codes but socially equality within them is a hard one for low status types to grasp. Li’l Turdling betrayed itself instantly when it tried to interact in a peer manner. It’s a lot more obvious live, but tone, interaction pattern, and connotations were all off. And trying some kind of pseudo-lascivious humiliation game in public stands out like … a fecal stench. It’s actually not complicated.

That’s good for now - put it all together next post. I’ll leave with an off-beat take. Classic comics are great illustrators because they trafficked in big archetypes. Here’s some high status socialization between enemies - heart & beauty of the title team and an alien princess on one side, a dark triad monarch and preeminent villain of the era on the other. Ignore Stan’s wordiness here - the story wound up rushed. It’s Jack’s visuals that tell the tale.

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott, Fantastic Four #87, June, 1969, Marvel Comics