Status as a Service (Staas)

Most people say they want to be loved. They are mistaken. Being loved is the cheapest form of acceptance. What people really want is to matter. They want their absence to be noticed, their presence to carry weight, their words to be taken seriously simply because they were the ones who said them. They work for it, talk for it, dress for it, buy things for it, post for it, even think for it. We don't need elaborate psychological theories to explain a considerable portion of human behavior. Man is an animal perpetually trying to elevate his position in the eyes of other animals. What we call civilization is often just that animal in better clothes.

There used to be certain inconvenient requirements for acquiring status. You had to accumulate wealth, master something, gain admission to a particular circle, accomplish something, or at least possess the means to finance the appearance of accomplishment. Status was expensive. It demanded time, money, knowledge, or connections. Today, a phone, an internet connection, and a sufficiently underdeveloped sense of shame are often enough to get started. Humanity believes it has democratized status. What it has actually done is industrialize it.

We are told that social media companies sell people the ability to communicate. That is the version of the story suitable for investors. People do not go to such extraordinary lengths merely to communicate. When someone photographs their dinner from three different angles, selects one, adjusts the colors, writes a caption designed to convey something about themselves without explicitly saying it, and then repeatedly checks how many people have seen it, that is not communication. It is a small-scale public relations operation. And the target audience, more often than not, already knows the person responsible. Evidently, the objective is not to become acquainted. It is to alter the terms on which one is perceived.

This is why Eugene Wei's examination of social networks through the economics of status is important. But the issue is not merely that social platforms distribute status. The more interesting problem is that people have surrendered the production, measurement, and distribution of their own status to systems owned by somebody else. Historically, people sought titles from kings, positions from governments, and credentials from institutions. Now they seek approval from algorithms. The technology has changed. The habit of kneeling has not changed very much.

The funniest part is that everyone considers themselves independent. People speak of building their personal brands, writing their own stories, constructing unique identities. Then they use the same music, speak in the same phrases, adopt the same aesthetic preferences, and compete for the approval of the same people. When individuality becomes an industry, it does not produce individuals. It produces crowds doing identical things in the hope of appearing different. They are so convinced they are the protagonists of their own lives that they forget to ask who wrote the script.

Most people no longer concern themselves primarily with experiencing something. They concern themselves with calculating how that experience will be perceived by others. Visiting a beautiful place is not enough; people must know you were there. Reading a book is not enough; the title must be visible. Succeeding is not enough; the success must be packaged from the appropriate angles. Even misery, presented under sufficiently flattering lighting, can be converted into social capital. Human life is becoming less something to be lived and more a display window requiring constant rearrangement. Few people care what lies behind the glass. Often, not even its owner.

A peculiar economic arrangement has emerged. People produce content for free, turn their own lives into raw material, and spend hours competing for the attention of strangers. In return, they receive a few numbers generated by the very system they are serving. They then work harder to increase those numbers. I cannot think of another industry that has perfected its business model quite so elegantly. The customers are also the workers. The product is the customers themselves. And the wages consist of temporary visibility that can be withdrawn the following morning. It would be unfair to say that capitalism invented something new here. It simply discovered how to remove human vanity from the production costs.

Of course, beneath all this lies a perfectly ordinary desire: superiority. Humanity's admiration for equality does not change the fact that human beings dislike being regarded as equal. Everyone wants visibility, but when everyone is visible, visibility loses its value. Everyone wants to be special, yet being special depends on somebody else remaining ordinary. This is why the happiness promised by the status economy cannot mathematically be distributed to everyone. One person's ascent does not necessarily require another person's fall, but everyone cannot simultaneously stand above everyone else. Nevertheless, billions of people behave as though the game will eventually award first place to every participant.

More interesting still is the confusion between the symbols of status and status itself. People mistake follower counts for influence, views for interest, likes for respect, and popularity for importance. These are entirely different things. A person may be recognized by millions and taken seriously by nobody. Another may be known to only a few hundred people, yet a decision made by that person can change thousands of lives. Determining which one possesses more power requires no calculator. A little judgment will do. Unfortunately, no one has yet invented a view counter for judgment.

The distinction between status and power becomes apparent here. Status concerns what people think of you. Power concerns what they must do even when they dislike you. Attracting someone's attention is one thing; changing their behavior is another. Being recognized by everyone in a room is not the same as entering that room and changing its decisions when you speak. Yet social media behaves as though the distinction has disappeared. Attention can be measured. Power cannot always be measured. Therefore, the measurable is declared important. It is one of modern man's favorite intellectual shortcuts: whatever can be counted must be valuable, and whatever cannot be counted must be irrelevant.

Besides, the status distributed by these platforms does not even belong to the person who believes they have earned it. Access to an audience cultivated over years can diminish overnight because of a single algorithmic adjustment. Yesterday, your thoughts were placed before millions. Today, they may reach almost nobody. The distribution rights to what you consider your own reputation are controlled by another company. You wake up one morning, and although nothing about what you say, who you are, or what you have accomplished has changed, you suddenly matter less. Because the system has decided so. Calling this ownership is remarkably optimistic. There is a more accurate word: tenancy.

The tragedy is that people carry this rented reputation into their actual lives. Someone who introduces themselves by announcing their follower count may inadvertently be revealing that there is nothing more interesting to say about them. A person accustomed to being watched by everyone often has no idea what to do at a table where nobody is listening. A character capable of inspiring admiration on a screen can disintegrate at the first serious objection in person. Visibility does not create character. It merely magnifies whatever character already exists. When there is nothing inside, the result is an enormously visible nothing.

None of this means that social media is worthless. On the contrary, attention is an exceptionally valuable resource. Recognition creates opportunities. The circulation of an idea, the ability to move beyond one's immediate environment, the possibility of reaching millions with something one has built—these things matter. The problem is not seeking visibility. The problem is making visibility the ultimate objective. When a tool begins directing its owner's life, it ceases to be a tool. Most people believe they are using social media. When someone spends their days calculating what might be worth posting, it becomes rather difficult to determine who is using whom.

Real influence does not require constantly reminding people that you exist. It is the ability to introduce an idea that continues to be discussed in your absence. To build a business that people continue using while you sleep. To make a decision whose consequences endure independently of your presence. Visibility can be useful for achieving these things, but it is not indispensable. Much of history was shaped less by people whose names everyone remembers than by people whose decisions continue to determine the conditions under which we live. Fame is one possible route to influence. It is not influence itself.

The question people ought to ask themselves, therefore, is not how many people know them, but what those people do as a result. If a million people see you and continue scrolling, you have generated considerable traffic. Perhaps even a business opportunity. But that alone does not establish the existence of a consequential person. One of the easiest mistakes to make today is to confuse crowds with importance. A crowd is merely a crowd. Sometimes it fills a stadium, sometimes a public square, sometimes a comment section. Its size does not automatically confer depth upon whoever stands at its center.

I have no objection to people wanting status. The desire for status is entirely human and often productive. My objection is to people abandoning their own standards in pursuit of it. Changing what they admire to secure the admiration of others. Adopting behavior unworthy of respect in order to be respected. Sacrificing their originality in the hope of appearing original. And ultimately arranging much of what they consider their own lives around the trivial reactions of strangers.

When people do not know what they want, they begin wanting whatever everyone else wants. This is one reason algorithms have become so extraordinarily successful. They do not need to teach people what to desire from nothing. They need only show them what other people desire. Envy, imitation, and the fear of exclusion take care of the rest. Millions then follow one another while maintaining the illusion that they are making independent decisions. We call this procession a trend.

In the end, the matter comes down to a simple distinction. Some people spend their lives trying to secure a position in the eyes of others. Others build things that exist independently of those eyes. The former must constantly remind the world of their existence. The work of the latter can continue reminding the world for them.

Wanting to be seen is understandable. But living for the purpose of being seen eventually makes living itself unnecessary. A person no longer builds a life; they advertise one. Worse, they continue advertising even when there is no life left worth advertising.

You can arrange for everyone to see you. You can make everyone talk about you. With sufficient effort, you might even convince yourself that everyone likes you.

None of these things guarantees that anything would be missing in your absence.

And perhaps that is the only serious measure—not of status, but of significance.