Status as a Service
I&#x27;m probably just an old fart or not getting it in some other way but I was thinking about this the other day. For whatever reason the status seeking culture really really annoys me. I feel it&#x27;s &quot;wrong&quot;. I&#x27;m not religious but I know the Bible has more than one passage about seeking status = bad so maybe that&#x27;s where my thinking is influenced.<p>So, seeing all the status seeking on Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Twitch, Twitter, etc. and mostly feeling out of touch with that culture it got me wondering what changed. I think what changed is that before all these services, before the internet, the number of people seeking status I could be exposed to was pretty small. It was either certain celebrities, not all of them but a few stuck out as status seeking. Otherwise it would just be the occasional person I might meet at some meetup&#x2F;trade-show&#x2F;friend-of-friend&#x2F;convention that really set my hairs on end and was happy was not part of my everyday life.<p>Now though it seems it&#x27;s practically the norm. Maybe the percentage of such status seeking people has not changed, I have no idea, but clearly all these services have made it possible for most of them to find an audience of at least 100 to 1000 people and for me to run across them one way or another. Instagram has lists of the top status seekers, as does TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, etc... I was having a coffee in Brentwood LA a couple of years ago and heard some teens arguing and bragging about who had more followers. This American Life had a segment on teen life with social media and the new rituals of likes.<p>Anyway, I have no idea of all the status seeking I now see is just it coming out in the open from being hidden or if it&#x27;s a new thing promoted by it being so easy now. I also have no idea if it&#x27;s good or bad. My gut says &quot;bad&quot; but that could just be old man thinking.