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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34389 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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On iPhones as a status symbol--

Quick preamble: Not sure if there is a formal name for the phenomenon whereby someone supposedly intelligent and/or scientific declares certain human behavior to be illogical or irrational, often with an undercurrent of smugness or contempt, when said behavior can fairly obviously be explained away in logical/rational terms. For example, I've read in more than one pop psychology/economics book that consumers are irrational when they pay attention to celebrity endorsements, because a move star has no professional expertise in whether say a particular make or model of car is any good. Yet celebrities have personal brands to protect, and rationally one expects the most famous ones to have teams perform some level of due diligence on what they are endorsing. Furthermore, expensive endorsement deals signal a basic level of liquidity and financial strength in the brand, which in turn means it's less likely for what it sells to be crap, given that will in turn dilute the brand value, etc. You don't typically pump and dump by signing multi-year branding deals. Then there is the reality that fans of a particular celebrity tend to align with them in tribal identification and values/preferences in general, so there is reason to believe that say a machismo star will like the same type of cars as a machismo fan, etc.

So when I encounter a behavior that doesn't seem rational, I generally assume I'm missing something under the surface rather than conclude that people are simply stupid. Well, here's a behavior that doesn't seem rational, and I'd like to understand what I'm missing:

iPhones are seen as minor status symbols--they're not Rolexes or Porsches, but still have what I consider to be outsized gatekeeping power relative to their cost. In particular, at least here in the US, younger people make a big deal out of blue/green bubbles, as the latter signals someone who does not have an iPhone. Beyond cosmetics, iPhone intentionally makes communication with Androids more difficult by refusing to integrate with RCS, which does complicate communicating with non-iPhones, but this complication is more a problem for the Android user than the iPhone user (e.g., picture Android sends iPhone is fine, but the reverse is low-res), since the lack of integration is largely unidirectional.

But the problem is iPhones really aren't a very useful signal in terms of conspicuous consumption, because they have a huge price range. For anyone looking, Walmart is about to sell the SE for $99, and the 11 for $199. Of course, plenty of Androids can be bought for even cheaper, but plenty are also premium phones costing the same as any iPhone, in particular the Samsung Galaxies and Google Pixels. Phones also look more or less identical in recent years, especially when you wrap a cover around it, so it takes effort to tell whether you have the latest Pro Max or the standard from a couple of years back. And to be honest, among women I know (who literally ALL have iPhones), at least half own ones that are 2 or more years old, and like a quarter have cracked screens. This doesn't exactly scream affluence.

Signals are useful when they are harder to fake. It's hard to fake being tall, so height (in real life) is often used as a proxy for a man's worth. Many also often anchor on Ivy League degrees for the same reason. When signals are easier to fake, people tend to place less value on them--you automatically assume the inbound message featuring a beautiful woman to be a bot, that people will look worse than they do in their Instagram. A Rolex (might be counterfeit) is less trustworthy than a Porsche (might be leased), which in turn is less trustworthy than a penthouse apartment or a mansion in SF.

So why do people seem to rely upon iPhones and blue bubbles so much, when it's so cheap and trivial to "fake"? Obviously all the Reddit/Twitter posts about women rejecting men when they find out their numbers are green bubbles are not representative of all, but it's prevalent enough to be part of the culture, and at some point the masses consciously or subconsciously adhere to that default.

The only thing I can think of is that buying iPhone is less about whether you have money, and more about whether you conform to the norm. When you own one, you signal that you accept that is what you are supposed to get, and that can be helpful in filtering out weirdos who post thousands-word essays on the internet about how buying one is so irrational.

When you own one, you signal that you accept that is what you are supposed to get, and that can be helpful in filtering out weirdos

To me this smells of a forced meme, a product of Apple's marketing department. It reminds me of a recent meme about 'black air force energy', referencing Nike shoes that have somehow become a signal of a madman that should not be trifled with.

sigh

You know some people actually like iPhones, right? Personally, I think they're a better product. You're welcome to disagree; please let's not rehash that argument all over again.

As to why some people think they're a status symbol? Well, in my experience, people who prefer iPhones tend to like aesthetics, ease-of-use; people who prefer Androids tend to like customisability, value-for-money.

So to certain people, buying Android signals "poor or nerdy", and iPhone signals "money and taste". To be clear, that's not my reason for buying one - I actually like the phones - but you asked where the signalling comes from, so there you go.

@vpn isn't complaining that iPhones are worse, he's complaining that they're treated as status symbols (e.g. my brother's gf suggested I'd have better luck dating if I bought an iPhone) which doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a "costly signal" perspective.

Personally, I think they're a better product.

Here we go. Let me list all the reasons why I disagree.

You're welcome to disagree; please let's not rehash that argument all over again.

Okay. Nevermind. Good day sir. Enjoy your phone.

I prefer iPhones because I don’t use my phone for anything other than calling, basic web browsing and 2fa. I need a phone that works, has repair facilities everywhere, has infrastructure everywhere, is extensively documented, has broad accessory support and has consistent quality control. When I buy a used iPhone I know exactly what I’m supposed to be getting. Any problems I encounter are guaranteed to be solved or at least documented.

Also iMessage is dominant in the US. I ain’t no green bubble loser.

Furthermore I hate Google more than Apple.

I think it’s stupid how some nerds act like there are absolutely no benefits to choosing iPhone over android. I use FOSS and Linux daily at home and I still use an iPhone because the specifics of what CIA tracking device I use when I go outside doesn’t concern me.

For anyone looking, Walmart is about to sell the SE for $99

Tangential to your post, but it appears this deal is only for a model locked to Straight Talk Wireless (a prepaid contract-less Verizon subsidiary). I haven't been paying very close attention lately, but I thought carrier-locked phones were practically extinct in the US at this point?

I have no idea what Straight Talk's unlock policy is (maybe they'll unlock it if you ask nicely), but annoying regardless.

Don't quote me, but I believe all the carriers basically auto unlock after 60 days now. Think the locked piece is more for antitheft than to reduce customer churn.

However, you have to activate it with them first (that starts the timer); you can't just call them and try to get it unlocked.

So they're subsidizing it to a degree, knowing you'll be paying for their service for a couple of months.

This can be a hassle when buying new-old stock on eBay; fortunately, "phone sold as unlocked in the listing isn't" will get you a refund.

Signals are useful when they are harder to fake. It's hard to fake being tall, so height (in real life) is often used as a proxy for a man's worth. Many also often anchor on Ivy League degrees for the same reason. When signals are easier to fake, people tend to place less value on them--you automatically assume the inbound message featuring a beautiful woman to be a bot, that people will look worse than they do in their Instagram. A Rolex (might be counterfeit) is less trustworthy than a Porsche (might be leased), which in turn is less trustworthy than a penthouse apartment or a mansion in SF.

I wonder where wokeness fits in this paradigm. Anyone can parrot woke beliefs but it still confers some benefit career-wise and socially. Maybe we're near peak saturation

It's extremely difficult to stay on the knife edge of "social progress" though, which is where the real signal is: "this person is so socially plugged in that she knows why the acronym we adopted last week is now problematic, has a trendier one ready, and is savvy enough not to impose it on her coworkers until it's on the cusp of going mainstream." That's not just chanting shibboleths, it's an unfakable signal of social power.

Asking when woke will be saturated is like asking when fashion or court politics will be saturated. They all just get progressively more surreal and byzantine until history overtakes the arena of that status competition, via a fashionable city losing economic power, dynasty collapse, revolution, etc.

The only thing I can think of is that buying iPhone is less about whether you have money, and more about whether you conform to the norm.

I think this is it. Apple is the ultimate acceptable woketech company. They're the perfect encapsulation of the principle desire of the current Cathedralist zeitgeist: man locked in a walled-garden of feminine rounded corner bubble quadrilaterals for his own "safety" and "protection", disallowed from deciding fully for himself what software he will install (on his phone, but they would obviously love for this to apply to your brain too), constantly surveilled, tracked, and analyzed, his very soul residing in "the cloud".

I mean obviously your average feminine enforcer of this status quo has no idea about the details of the above, but they clearly get the hint about what their masters prefer. The only issues one could take with Apple (its wokeness, its effeteness and emphasis on (feminine) aesthetics over function, its censoriousness, its enervating maternalism, etc.) are fundamental paradigms of the current orthodox weltanschauung of power. Those who oppose Apple are thus dangerous, because if they can oppose Apple on those grounds, then they can easily reject the whole system. Thus they must be stigmatized.

The Blackberry used to be a status symbol, and same for the Razr and those taco-shaped smartphone. The iPhone succeeded because it was the most aesthetically appealing, and it had other benefits such as the app store and good product reliably. In my opinion mac product are overpriced, unusable, walled-garden toys and would only use if no other choice, but the stock has done great though. The success of apple does to some degree baffle me considering how bad the user experience is compared to alternatives for anything beyond just basic web browsing . The iPhone integrated with the iTunes store, too, so you didn't need an mp3 and a cellphone. This was in 2008-2012, before wokeness was a thing.

This was in 2008-2012, before wokeness was a thing.

This is like saying "This was in 1916 - 1920 [foundation year of NSDAP], before German Nationalism was a thing." Wokeness has existed at least since the 60s, even if it wasn't called that (and Apple has been aligned with whatever it was called at the time since its formation). Political tendencies don't magically snap into existence at the exact point in history where they grow dongs big enough to slap everyone in the face.

Sure, but you didn't have people buying Apple products because Apple was signaling how much they loved gay people. People were buying Apple products because they liked what they were buying.

They liked what they were buying in large part because of the image of the product, not some genuinely enlightened analysis of its raw utility. If you slapped an Android logo on an iPhone with iOS modified to change all of the logos to Android's, they'd like it a lot less. And wokeness is a large part of that image.

I don't completely disagree, I'm sure if Apple had a partnership with Google where they released a new Google Pixel but it had all its logos changed to Apple, it'd sell like hotcakes. But as a reverse thought experiment, if Google released two phones, one that's a normal Pixel, and one that's an iPhone with the Android logo on it, you'd still see a lot of people preferring the iPhone version.

I'm really not one to argue the iPhone advantages, I'm not that into phones and I strongly prefer Android myself in any case, but it should be obvious some people genuinely enjoy the iPhone for itself, not just for signaling purposes.

should be obvious some people genuinely enjoy the iPhone for itself

But do they really enjoy the unique features of it or simply what's common to every smartphone (and yes admittedly Apple pioneered a lot UX-wise here)? In a world where only Androids existed, would they really be deprived of much actual functionality?

I have no doubt they enjoy it for itself. To go back to the debate that took this place by storm a bit ago, surely people who drink $2000 wine enjoy it for itself. The question is how much they enjoy it more than any wine beyond the prestige signaling.

If I had argued the opposite point I'd get someone telling me how wokeness is much worse or new

It can be both worse/novel and also an extrapolation/continuation of prior tendencies, much like the different stages of cancer.

The only issues one could take with Apple (its wokeness, its effeteness and emphasis on (feminine) aesthetics over function, its censoriousness, its enervating maternalism, etc.) are fundamental paradigms of the current orthodox weltanschauung of power.

Wow, what do you do for a living, man? I assume you code switch and employ a far more colloquial vernacular when conversing with coworkers and clients or engaging in small talk with cashiers and customer service reps. Now, it would be fun to watch a TV series featuring a main character who insists on speaking as you do in quotidian interactions. Except that'd require expensive writers that networks seem reluctant to hire.

I can't say I'm a fan of your flair though. I don't hold "your average feminine enforcer of this status quo" to high esteem either, but do you actually find that people who unironically self-describe as "pedofascist" or "androsupremacist" to be company you are keen to keep? That's not a rhetorical question by the way. I actually have no idea how you'd answer that.

Now, it would be fun to watch a TV series featuring a main character who insists on speaking as you do in quotidian interactions.

Have you read A Confederacy of Dunces? No offense to @komm_nach_unteralterbach implied - despite myself being a life-long GNU+Linux user who has recently retired his Thinkpad in favor of a MacBook Air M2. Apple Silicon is superior to x86 for performance efficiency currently, and it doesn't have an Intel ME backdoor in the hardware.

I have. Perhaps I should revisit it.

and it doesn't have an Intel ME backdoor in the hardware.

An Intel ME backdoor? Maybe not. A backdoor at all? Probably. If you really care about this then open source hardware processors are the only way IMO.

Probably.

That's the crux of it - Intel laptops have a known "backdoor", whereas it is unknown if this is the case for Apple Silicon. I can only act on what I know. But I agree, and RISC-V looks promising.

I personally do all of my computing on a room-sized cluster of Playstation 2s. I doubt those were compromised way back in the day.

Wow, what do you do for a living, man?

Shitpost online and use my fabulous cryptocurrency wealth to jet set around the globe as a beautiful child and teen bikini model photo/videographer*

*Whole line of text may be wholly or partially inaccurate - caveat lector

but do you actually find that people who unironically self-describe as "pedofascist" or "androsupremacist" to be company you are keen to keep?

You're asking if I find people who share my own political ideals, based in (to a high degree) self-coined (independently, perhaps not originally) terminology, to be company that I'm keen to keep?

...Yes? Not to be impolite at all, but I'm genuinely not sure why you might suspect the opposite. I even put "(unironic)" in my flair to make it clear. What's a fella got to do for their heterodox ideological preferences to be taken seriously!?

Shitpost online

...

I'm genuinely not sure why you might suspect the opposite

Gee I wonder why.

I see you've refined your flair so I have one more objection in "LibertAryan". The "public choice" part is now too anodyne in comparison. I look forward to seeing that part getting upgraded to something a little spicier.

You're asking if I find people who share my own political ideals, based in (to a high degree) self-coined (independently, perhaps not originally) terminology, to be company that I'm keen to keep?

I don't think my question is as ridiculous as you imply it to be. People serve different functions. I don't look for the same traits in a spouse as I do in a friend, a boss, a direct report, etc. If you are a dictator who hates taking orders from others, I doubt you'd want to surround yourself with your clones. I also doubt any of your beautiful models know half of the words in your flair. So, how many people in real life with whom you actually like to hang out match the description in your flair? I find it far more plausible you'd mesh with their online personalities than their real-life totalities, which was my original query.

I see you've refined your flair so I have one more objection in "LibertAryan". The "public choice" part is now too anodyne in comparison. I look forward to seeing that part getting upgraded to something a little spicier.

  1. I'm out of characters unfortunately so that upgrade is unlikely.

  2. The contrast in indelicacy between the two phrases is the point; it is intended to emphasize my dual nature.

(PS: It was intended to be "libertAryan" from the beginning; I just typed it in wrong.)

I doubt you'd want to surround yourself with your clones.

Clones no; ideological comrades yes.

In any case, I'm not retardedly suicidal (socially or otherwise), so I do not in fact presently go around waving the flag of pedofascism IRL. If I just want to "hang out" with someone, I don't particularly care what their serious political convictions are as long as they can tolerate some measure of rants about the inferiority, venality, and depravity of the modern femoid, the Jew, etc. (as is my habit and personal opinion, which may vary), maybe some "joking" perverted comments toward young girls occasionally, and so on (and quite a few more people than you might think are willing to take such things casually with someone they otherwise enjoy the company of so long as they are presented with the appropriate tact of ambiguous commitment).

As for any models, if I am to be in such a creature's company, I am solely trying to get their tight ass on camera as efficiently and erotically as possible, not hear whatever hysterical TikTok-derived zoomer mad libs they claim constitute political opinions or at least that's what they seem like to me (though if I really had the inclination and got the chance I might perhaps make a subtle, seemingly innocuous inquiry to confound their existing preconceptions and valiantly vandalize their internal ideological milieu with a favorable bit of irresoluble (within the bounds of permissible thought) perplexity).

I'm out of characters unfortunately so that upgrade is unlikely.

You could always take out the "(unironic)" to free up space.

Two more questions, if you'll indulge me:

  1. Why make your profile private*? I assume you've taken enough effort to make yourself undoxxable. And you're hardly making an effort to evade bans with "femoid, the Jew" etc.

*I turned the option on for my profile because I just learned that it exists thanks to you. I'm not nearly as interesting, so I doubt anyone will miss out by sifting through my posting record. You on the other hand...

  1. Is the goal of having "ideological comrades" to effect an eventual revolution (whatever the scale--local or global), or is it to vent in a safe space? I can't tell how much of your stated positions are genuine convictions and how much is a costly tide-pod-eating signal (see comment nearby) to fend off normies. Like, imagine your ideal version of Galt's Gulch manifested somewhere and everyone around you held your beliefs. What probability is there that you'll alter any of them reflexively?

The world is full of diversity. For every radical far left progressive, you'd expect an equally radical far, uhh, right (?) libertAryan monarcho-pedofascist and absolute androsupremacist (unironic), public choice appreciator. So I believe you exist. I just don't think you make for a very effective revolutionary (though I may be reading far too much in your choice of the word comrade). As the 2022 midterms showed, you need to wrap good policy with palatable presentation, otherwise you just win the primary and lose the general.

You could always take out the "(unironic)" to free up space.

You already confused me for being ironic even with it, so I don't imagine removing it would be productive.

Why make your profile private*?

For the moment I just really don't want people doing "I checked your post history and..." maneuvers on me. (If it were possible, I'd certainly allow you in particular access at the moment though as you seem benignly curious.) I'd rather be judged by my contribution (or lack thereof) to the present conversation.

I assume you've taken enough effort to make yourself undoxxable.

Sure. I'm behind 7 proxies (or rather multiple onion nodes and a VPN).

And you're hardly making an effort to evade bans with "femoid, the Jew" etc.

I don't consider these banworthy as simple terminological reflections of my own ideology (and one is just a basic abbreviation, not inherently derogatory even if it's often used in that fashion), undirected towards anyone in particular and thus objectively not used in any particularly inflammatory fashion. The Motte is an open ideological forum, you see (and as an "Olmec" I am entitled to extra behavioral leniency in particular as well, not that I intend on abusing this), so the policing of mere diction preference in non-adversarial contexts is not in effect, I believe (otherwise the principles of neutrality and openness to a wide variety of viewpoints would be violated, and as we all know the trusty stewards of this fine garden would not violate their own expressed principles in any case).

Is the goal of having "ideological comrades" to effect an eventual revolution (whatever the scale--local or global), or is it to vent in a safe space?

Both, though the latter with much greater acknowledged probability. A man who gives up entirely on his dreams surrenders his soul as well though, so I can't fully discount the former.

For every radical far left progressive, you'd expect an equally radical far, uhh, right (?) libertAryan monarcho-pedofascist and absolute androsupremacist (unironic), public choice appreciator.

Yes, I am definitely far-right. But I will clarify that though my public choice appreciation would nevertheless contribute to my practical beliefs about how I think any monarcho-pedofascism should be run, it is also a separate, uncontroversial, and fairly outcome (as opposed to process)-neutral political modus operandi that I inhabit as a backup in the quite plausible case that my primary preferred political program does not achieve much traction.

I can't tell how much of your stated positions are genuine convictions and how much is a costly tide-pod-eating signal (see comment nearby) to fend off normies.

All of them are 100% genuine convictions, and I somewhat resent (for the courtesy of informing you that you may have mildly disturbed a boundary of mutual, thus far, respect, not in any feminine fashion) the comparison of them to "tide pod eating". That they fend off normies is a bonus though.

Like, imagine your ideal version of Galt's Gulch manifested somewhere and everyone around you held your beliefs. What probability is there that you'll alter any of them reflexively?

No more than 0.0001% seems reasonable to me, and again I'm confused by the question. Everything I describe as my preferred political beliefs/their contribution to the kind of polity they might create seems intuitively, unambiguously awesome to me, like if my political ideology were "free pizzaist everybody-has-lots-of-good-sex high GDP with advanced technologyitarian". I'm a far-right pedophile. Why would I reflexively be unhappy about getting my ideal world any more than anyone of any other political/sociological bent?

I just don't think you make for a very effective revolutionary (though I may be reading far too much in your choice of the word comrade).

Not yet. Maybe never. But the most important revolution for man is always yet in his mind. Is there no beauty in truth if it be cruelly confined to contemplation? I believe there still is. In this manner I am wildly effective.

As the 2022 midterms showed As the 2022 midterms showed

Luckily my nascent political movement is more in the "be (and maybe recruit) Internet weirdos" phase, not competing for any midterms. I'll be sure to count on your vote if we ever put candidate to ballot though.

and as an "Olmec" I am entitled to extra behavioral leniency in particular as well, not that I intend on abusing this

Not exactly "entitled." We tend to be more lenient to people who are getting piled on for unpopular views. But only to a point.

("Femoid" as a general reference to females is pushing it, btw.)

and as we all know the trusty stewards of this fine garden would not violate their own expressed principles in any case

Your faith in us is touching and I'm sure you'll remember this when/if you cross the line.

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You could abbreviate it to "pedofa" to save a few letters and really rustle some commie jimmies.

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You already confused me for being ironic even with it, so I don't imagine removing it would be productive.

I was definitely being facetious. Come on now.

For the moment I just really don't want people doing "I checked your post history and..." maneuvers on me.

Fair enough, though I can't say I've personally seen this maneuver being pulled on anyone else on this domain. If that's true for you as well, perhaps you should consider a change and see what happens. Although if you do do that and someone does pull the card, you would be ceding (virtual and unimportant) power and acknowledging defeat by relocking up your profile. This can easily get into many useless layers of abstractions of what is the higher/lower status move, so I'll just say that at the most fundamental level, I'd expect the most far-right action is to not lock your profile and let your enemy pull their hair out being outraged by what you write.

Sure. I'm behind 7 proxies (or rather multiple onion nodes and a VPN).

Hilarious. Do you ever worry that you may be doxxed not by IP but by your diction and syntax? Like how they analyze them Unabomber manifestos? This ties back to when I first asked you if you code switch in real life, though the answer is obvious in retrospect, because you have to if you want to keep a clear firewall between your unfiltered thoughts here and your avowed proclivity for being neither retarded nor suicidal.

and as an "Olmec"

I'm out of the loop. Do you go way back from before /r/themotte or something? I can't imagine your not being banned by Reddit admins though.

All of them are 100% genuine convictions, and I somewhat resent (for the courtesy of informing you that you may have mildly disturbed a boundary of mutual, thus far, respect, not in any feminine fashion) the comparison of them to "tide pod eating". That they fend off normies is a bonus though.

I'm not 100% certain I follow your parenthetical insertion, which by the way I expect an AI translator to struggle with. In any case, the comparison to tide pod eating was mostly in jest. The portion that wasn't mainly goes back to the use of "simple terminological reflections." I follow your stated logic for why you do it, and am obviously fascinated by this exchange as it does not occur on the regular with my unflaired social circles. It's just that, well, it's really quite provocative to just go out there and proudly declare yourself a pedophile. I'm sure you can appreciate the idea that if you gather up 100 internet shit posters who say in a text forum that they are pedophiles, that the odds are something like 50 are edgy teenagers for whom the definition isn't meant to apply, 25 are FBI sting operations, 10 are GPT spam bots gone wild awry, 10 are actual pedophiles who may or may not be behind Tor looking to trade material, 4 have psychosis/schizophrenia, and 1 is a libertAryan monarcho-pedofascist and absolute androsupremacist (unironic), public choice appreciator. The base rate was to assume you're a troll and not take you at face value, no matter what you say.

more in the "be (and maybe recruit) Internet weirdos" phase

In recent months, Progressives have been famous for rendering their parent organizations ineffectual in achieving their actual stated goals thanks to purity tests, struggle sessions, in-fighting etc. Without knowing if/when you plan to rebalance your ratio for "Both, though the latter with much greater acknowledged probability", I'll state the obvious that your revolution will be severely set back by imposing purity tests that select only those who are as openly zealous about your values as you do. You already know this, of course. I just mean to note for the record that your revealed preference seems to have more or less "fully discount[ed] the former".

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Yet celebrities have personal brands to protect, and rationally one expects the most famous ones to have teams perform some level of due diligence on what they are endorsing. Furthermore, expensive endorsement deals signal a basic level of liquidity and financial strength in the brand,

But the products aren't better. The Mr Beast burger isn't a better burger than a (ew) mcdonalds burger. Makeup endorsed by a random celebrity isn't better makeup than what people usually use. There are a lot of ways to do things that have partially-correct motivations yet are still wrong. The due diligence is usually only a bit above 'is this a popular product and not literally sex-ponzi-mlmcoin', and sometimes not even that. Is it 'rational' to buy Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop products? Purchasing those partnered products is in a broad sense, a mistake, and "is the heuristic rational or not" is ... kind of irrelevant, because the products themselves are generally worse, and more expensive, than the alternatives.

Kind of reminds me of The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption

Also, this doesn't affect your iphone point, but the $99/$199 iphone is tied to a phone plan ("starting at $35"/mo?), making it not that cheap.

I think you're conflating two different product selection strategies, here.

While maximizing value is a good strategy, it requires investigating every product on the market, which is a huge investment of time (a very precious resource). Another strategy, filtering out the absolute worst with the minimum effort, and going with any of the remaining options does potentially involve paying a premium for a worse product in exchange for time savings, but it's not obvious that his is an irrational move.

In addition to status for visible brands, celebrity endorsements do signal that the product is not the literal worst. To take Gwenyth Paltrow's make-up as an example, I'd be reasonably sure that they contain relatively low levels of skin permeable poisons (at least ones that have an acute effect). Beyond that, if that assumption is violated, they probably have enough money to pay out in a lawsuit.

Those are things I can't be sure about for random things off amazon (or worse, bought in bulk off alibaba, though this would be a probable way to maximize value for my money).

Celebrity endorsements are a strictly less-useful filter for 'the absolute worst' than just googling the industry and picking the most popular product, though. So that doesn't really make sense. Also, i'm pretty sure people who are moved by celebrity endorsements already knew of several 'not-literal-shit' products in the industry the endorsed product is in.

Celebrity endorsements are a strictly less-useful filter for 'the absolute worst' than just googling the industry and picking the most popular product, though.

Sure, but it requires slightly more effort (that is to say, more than literally none).

The filter when you go from no effort -> some effort seems to be roughly proportional to when a website goes from no payment -> some (that is to say you lose about 80% or so).

But the products aren't better. The Mr Beast burger isn't a better burger than a (ew) mcdonalds burger.

McD has its own celebrity endorsements, including collaborations with Saweetie and BTS in recent years. For a fairer comparison, whatever white label burger chain MrB is built on top of, I would guess that the quality of the MrB version is higher than the no-name version. Now, I'm willing to concede that the MrB version tacks on a price premium that may or may not make it less of a deal vs. the no-name, but it'd be like how some Porsche model is built on top of a Volkswagen, but even if it costs a lot more as a result, the product should be higher quality because Porsche has a brand to protect so can't just deliver a Volkswagen with a Porsche hood ornament.

I also wonder if we're mostly agreeing with each other very loudly. I realize a celebrity endorsement doesn't magically improve the underlying design and manufacturing of goods and services. I'm mainly pointing out that a general statement that "people are irrational to become more favorable toward one product or service over others by virtue of a non-professionally-aligned celebrity endorsement" is overly simplistic, incomplete, and sometimes flat-out wrong.

Kind of reminds me of The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption

Fun take. Maybe Tide should advertise that it's adding trace amounts of estrogen to its pods. That'd shut down any status boosting element among boys.

Also, this doesn't affect your iphone point, but the $99/$199 iphone is tied to a phone plan ("starting at $35"/mo?), making it not that cheap.

True, but I assume anyone buying the $700+ iPhones are also on the hook for phone plans starting at $35/mo. I didn't look into the offer closely but the link's commentators referenced something about the phone becoming unlocked after 1-2 months, so anyone really pinching pennies would only have to overpay by maybe $20 or so if they can otherwise find a provider that only charges $25/mo.

but it'd be like how some Porsche model is built on top of a Volkswagen, but even if it costs a lot more as a result, the product should be higher quality because Porsche has a brand to protect so can't just deliver a Volkswagen with a Porsche hood ornament.

I need to push back on this, because, while I'm no expert, I assume Porsches haven't been built on the same steel/frames/bodies as Volkswagens for decades, unless you count the Cayenne and Panamera models. If anything, the 911 was probably the point at which Porsche's engineering started to diverge from the Kafer et al. To build better sports cars and race cars(!), you need to start with more bespoke underpinnings, and the rear-engine VW frames were likely not enough for Porsche come the 1960's or 70's (especially with their front-engine models like the 924).

If anything, you could have used Maybach as your automotive example--those were practically just gussied-up Benzes, and they failed to take off for likely the very reason you point at. (In fact, the Maybach nameplate was recently revived, but now more akin to a trim or special edition of the S-Class.)

I was thinking of the Cayenne. You could dismiss it 10 years ago but not now. It's their most popular model in NA in the most recent quarter!

But I admit I don't know too much about this. I just used it because I was talking about Rolexes and Porsches :D

Perhaps the most egregious example, a white cotton shirt that says "Supreme" across the front is not any better at 'being a shirt' than one pulled from a five pack of Hanes I got from Wal-Mart.

The price is all based on the logo, which is itself only a signal. And its a signal that reads very differently depending on who receives it.

I had never heard of this before.

In my circles, I tend to hear complaints of people being on their phones too much, and it seems to be low status to have a lot of apps, or even a phone that lets you install a lot of apps, probably including iPhones. The priest was recommending $200 phones that were basically like iPhones that wouldn't let you install apps on them. These were advertised as being clean or simple or pure or some such virtuous sounding thing.

Anyway, at the $80 - $500 mini computer range, I doubt it's about conspicuous consumption to any large degree, but more about signaling adherence to community values. I'm not completely sure what those values are among those who care, but probably something like good taste and conventional aesthetics.

Orthodox crunchy-cons. Rod Dreher is one of the better know representatives of this subculture, at least around these parts. (Ha, I went to look up his blog, and there he is with a substack and writing about Aella. He has the capacity to write about one good piece a month, but unfortunately blasts out up to a dozen blogs a day instead).

The priest was recommending $200 phones that were basically like iPhones that wouldn't let you install apps on them.

$200 will get you a perfectly functional smartphone. Whoever is selling a $200 dumbphone must have great profit margins.

(I do know a few people who intentionally chose to not use smartphones, but not many.)

Two examples that guide my thoughts on status items.

One I'm really trying to track down but I remember too few details, but in one of my dad's car magazines (Road and Track or Car and Driver type stuff) there was an article some years ago where two reporters got a press-car Rolls Royce Phantom or something like that, and the gag was they were going on a road trip with no money and no identification, and they were going to try to trade on the fact that they were driving a $400,000 car to get people to spot them hotel rooms, restaurant meals, gas, etc. They drove down to Louisiana outside N'Orleans and tried their bit a few places. The punchline? They failed completely at higher end places, but got free food at several out of the way diners and such, not because someone recognized the car but because people didn't recognize the car (unsophisticated rubes!) and gave them a free meal because they felt sorry for them thinking they were poor! Bless their hearts! (I do hope the magazine went back and paid)

The other is personal, my mother has fakes of almost all her diamond jewelry. My mother is a wealthy woman, she has some bangin' diamonds, but she wears the moissanite more often than the diamonds because who wants $20,000 on their fingers? No one ever thinks they're fake, because it's on the finger of a woman they know is rich, and everything else about her reads as rich older lady, why would the diamonds be fake?

Moral being, it's the gestalt rather than any individual item that gives the status item, real or fake, its power. The combination of all aesthetic choices and symbols are necessary to really get a signal out of any item. Consider a legendary fashion items with the strongest associations in our culture: The Schott Perfecto Double Rider. @KulakRevolt and friends might look like brave and independent rebels; others will look like gay hustlers; others will look like pathetic old men trying desperately to hang onto a vision of youth that hasn't been relevant since they were teenagers.**

Of the status symbols you list, all are easy to fake in this day and age, but they don't get you very far on your own, you have to fake the whole bit. The watch, the car, the penthouse, and the ivy league degree all go together, and it helps if you're tall too. But if you have the other elements down, no one will suspect the last is faked. Even height, as the old Jewish proverb tells us: So what if he's short, he can stand on his wallet! If you have the appearance and the clothes and the mannerisms and the money, no one will suspect you never went to Princeton. If you have the appearance and the clothes and the mannerisms and say you have the money, people will assume you have the money.

So examining...

And to be honest, among women I know (who literally ALL have iPhones), at least half own ones that are 2 or more years old, and like a quarter have cracked screens. This doesn't exactly scream affluence.

It signals a certain kind of class to own something good quality but destroyed, it shows you value taste over showing off shiny new objects, that you don't waste money on new things if the old things still work, that you're the Right Sort. It also probably signals among a certain type of young woman that they're from bourgeois money, but don't have money themselves* right now, grad students or art hoes or whatever. They're showing that they have taste, but not money, or that they have taste but don't waste money.

In addition, at any price point, you could get an Android cheaper with better "specs," as many posters have noted. From what you're saying will be a $99 SE up to the $2,000 16 Pro Maxxxxxx whatever. Before I thought it was all signaling, but I just got my first iphone after four or so Androids, and I have to say, I get it. I consistently buy one-two year old used flagship phones on Swappa and decided to try an iphone on a whim, so I'm on an 11 Pro Max, and I see where the experience is better in certain ways than on Android, even if it is worse in others. It is more aesthetic, more pleasing to use. Getting an iphone at any price signals that you are prioritizing aesthetics and status over performance and price, which is appealing to other people who are doing the same, even if it isn't a generically appealing trait to everyone.

So I'd guess that using an iphone as a status signal requires that you dig into all the other symbolic status items that are being used in the relationship before you can really get any useful signal from the phone on its own. The iPhone owned by a Columbia grad student is communicating something different from that owned by a Fresno realtor.

*Been there, done that, I've been up and down and over and out, and when I was slumming it with people who grew up poorer and we met in the middle, that was one area where differences really showed. Durable goods I had, even if I had to cut corners to make rent and tuition this month; and I've developed a durable preference for buying high quality goods second hand over buying poor quality new stuff. I'd sooner own a handmade leather shoe MiUSA secondhand and beat, he finds used shoes disgusting; I'm proud of myself for my taste for finding a vintage jacket, he finds shopping at Goodwill degrading.

**Mine makes me look like whichever you think is worst.

Point taken, but I can say to a fair degree of certainty that a great many people are taken in because people will tell me "wow your mother's ring is spectacular that must cost a fortune." And often I've told people about the fakes and that it might be the fake, and no one has ever said "Oh! I knew it! They looked a little dodgy!"

Where they have reacted that way to, say, a fake Rolex I've owned. I mean, not perfect, but it works.

They failed completely at higher end places, but got free food at several out of the way diners and such, not because someone recognized the car but because people didn't recognize the car (unsophisticated rubes!) and gave them a free meal because they felt sorry for them thinking they were poor!

Hilarious, but call me a skeptic. I'm willing to believe this happened maybe once, but it's reminiscent of those video compilations of an influencer asking people on the street to answer simple questions like pointing out Ukraine on a map. It's all very selectively and deceptively edited.

On a related note, some beautiful young woman in China made global news a few months back by pretending to be the concubine of some tycoon by wearing fancy clothing and just lounging at expensive hotels and whatnot for half a week. I think she was comped a bunch of free meals and more, and it was expressly not because people thought she was homeless. The entire thing sparked commentary about class and pretty privileges, but I believe none of it particularly interesting so I didn't really pay much attention.

no one will suspect you never went to Princeton

Unless said "no one" actually went to Princeton. I know this is contrary to all the Mission Impossible movie plots, but it's very hard to pretend to be someone else in real life among actual insiders who have a brain. Maybe you can pull it off in a 5-min chit chat at some random convention, but not if you work together or socialize often. You trip up on very minor details to anyone who's paying attention.

It signals a certain kind of class to own something good quality but destroyed

Very interesting link, thanks. I can assure you though that said women in my life were not Boston patricians. They just dropped their phones frequently.

A broader comment I have is, I wonder how much interesting nuance exists beyond Americana. What's the equivalent of your anecdotes, but for someone in China, India, UAE, etc.? This is something we lose by having too many languages and not-yet-perfected translation; I'd love to read more about these nuances, but sadly feel limited to English speaking quarters.

See e.g.

I think she was comped a bunch of free meals and more, and it was expressly not because people thought she was homeless.

I think you misunderstand the example, the point is that because they otherwise looked like schlubs, the car alone didn't count for much status, they just seemed weird or maybe like a put-on. She had every aspect of the "billionaire's concubine" vibe down, so they assumed she must have the money coming and comped her. Like Anna, who I cited below, or Ripley. If the journalists had gone more all-out with their prep, they might have been able to pull off their scam with the Phantom as the capper of a full rich-guy outfit.

Unless said "no one" actually went to Princeton. I know this is contrary to all the Mission Impossible movie plots, but it's very hard to pretend to be someone else in real life among actual insiders who have a brain. Maybe you can pull it off in a 5-min chit chat at some random convention, but not if you work together or socialize often. You trip up on very minor details to anyone who's paying attention.

No one is paying attention, if you otherwise blend in, most people operate on the heuristic "When you hear hooves think horses not zebras." If it otherwise seems realistic that you went to Princeton from context clues, they're going to trust you pretty far. You're confusing "Could you hold up under questioning by someone looking to cross you up and prove you are lying" with "You will drop enough evidence in casual conversation that someone who doesn't suspect you of lying will catch on." Which are very different standards of difficulty. In Bayesian terms, it just depends what your prior is that he is telling the truth about his affiliations.

This is the importance of thinking about (possibly fake) status indicators as a whole picture rather than individually. Credibility for one comes from the others. If I met some guy in a wal-mart tracksuit parked on the side of the road on my land, and when I went up to ask him what the fuck he was doing he pointed to my hat and said "Oh, I went there too, go [MASCOT!]" I'd be suspicious and maybe ask him a question like "What dorm were you in?" and think he was lying if he didn't have a good answer.

But if I met some impeccably dressed lawyer who said "Oh, I think we share an alma mater" and I replied "Oh, man, remember [Campus landmark]" and he said something noncommital and nonsensical like "You know I never really went there when I was in school" I'd probably think he was weird before thinking he was lying. To be honest, I don't remember my freshman dorm building come to think of it. I remember the complex, but not the small pod building precisely. And I've forgotten a lot of professors, even ones I liked. And I'm pretty sure I was there, so, tough to pin down. It takes really solid evidence to get past a high prior level of certainty.

I have actually called out an imposter in public before, come to think of it, a Kosovar who was whirlwind engaged to a friend of my wife's and was introduced to us. And I have to be honest, long before I started wondering if he was lying about the Physics PhD he was pursuing, I was judging him for a half dozen other things like the obvious green card marriage, his chain smoking cigarettes in the host's house despite being asked not to, his rudeness etc. And that was what got my brain to pick up on things like "Isn't he a little young?" and "How many years does a PhD take anyway?" and "I'm not a physicist but I don't think that's what relativity means." If I had liked him, or he had lacked the credibility anchor of the green card marriage, I might not have noticed those things, or cared about them. Instead we asked him point blank what was up with that, and he wound up confessing to his fiance that he lied three days later. She still married him, of course.

She still married him, of course.

Reminds me of this fun story of the ages, in case you haven't read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath-georgetowns-worst-marriage.html

I believe people can be far more naturally vigilant than you describe. I don't recall meeting too many pretenders recently, but can say that I find poorly written and/or acted dialogue (for specialized vocation that I'm familiar with) immediately and obviously unbelievable. Succession is extraordinarily reviewed and is a great show, but parts of its intense board room scenes are just silly, because no independent (as in, someone without Roy for a last name) director of a F100 company, or C-level execs, would come across as so stupid and ineffectual. In real life, these types of people have a certain look, yet in the show, many of them (who have little to no screen time) are clearly background actors chosen for some superficial demographic reason who are simply missing the vitality and intelligence that should be obvious from their eyes, body language, and even speed of reaction to the latest dialogue around them etc. All very NPC like, and immediately obvious that they didn't go to Princeton followed by Goldman and then HBS and then Blackstone.

I don't recall meeting too many pretenders recently,

Maybe you have, and you haven't detected them! Maybe you're expecting the pretenders to have obvious tells, but they don't, so you miss them entirely. They're out there, more than you think, so many people have secrets you don't suspect.

FWIW, I work in a field full of pretenders and fakes, and my experience is that proper fraud avoidance is to understand that the optimal fraud avoidance strategy does not result in never getting tricked, just in never committing enough money/resources before being certain you aren't getting tricked. I probably waste a lot of time on false leads and fakers every month; but because I know my radar isn't perfect I'd rather be unfailingly polite and follow up on a false opportunity than risk missing out on a good one. At the same time, I don't trust anyone past the contract terms, because I know I might be wrong about them.

((Which is Taleb's real message in that other thread. Not that education makes you dumb son, but that you should have humility about your ability to anticipate everything.))

I’d be curious to hear an effort post from you examining different status signifiers etc. You sound pretty confident here.

What were you curious about?

What are some other examples of 'gestalt' social status for rich people? What about influential/intellegentsia type folks? Hipsters or counterculture people?

How do these social status signifiers play into online culture, if at all? Does it become more based on verbal signifiers or specific knowledge?

How have the importance of these cues changed over time?

Even the MP Jacob Rees Mogg, the upper middle class son of a newspaper proprietor who went to Eton and was himself descended from minor gentry (and iirc married into it) is roundly mocked for basically putting on an aristocratic LARP.

I get the sense most of the people mocking him would do so whether or not he had genuine aristocratic 'cred.' He's not mocked for acting as if he has an aristocratic background when he doesn't really have one, he's mocked for acting as though having an aristocratic background makes him superior.

And America wipes its tears with 25% of Global GDP as Europe further descends into oblivion in just about every dimension.

Meritocracy as a terminal goal gives you real power not pretend power. Its cheapening should be viewed with the utmost of contempt.

I think we are probably talking past one another. Your OP was making the case that wealth (meritocracy) as a terminal status defining metric creates the infamous rat race; And that things would be more stable if there were impermeable floors and ceilings to status. I more or less agree, that's probably an accurate assessment of the situation.

I said that the upside to that is so overwhelmingly massive, that it would be pathological for a Nation/Culture to model its propaganda any other way. I don't feel the need to back up this claim.

Subjectively, Being able to induce a population wide grindset with a minor adjustment to the social status mechanism is a thing of beauty on its own. Much more beautiful than more vacation and croissants by the river during your lunch break; at least in my eyes.

It is hard to explain how unique this is. In England, everyone can tell from the second you open your mouth whether you are in the 93% of the population that are often euphemistically called the working class or in one of the two classes that (with few exceptions) actually run things.

I realize this is more tangential to your point, but I'm curious how much of what you describe is confounded with intelligence? I don't think I've really consciously tested this, but I believe I instinctively categorize people into competent/incompetent buckets very quickly upon meeting them. I'm not always right in this effort, but it generally helps me minimize interactions with incompetent people--they are both less interesting to talk to and more likely to cause problems as your relationships deepen. I expect wealthier families tend to have more intelligent children, but the variance must still be quite large, especially when you're talking about 7% of the population. Am I unusual in this regard? I would think that if you had to pick one thing, it's far more rewarding to evaluate based on perceived competence than perceived class. As you say later on, America is comparatively more meritocratic, so while networking still matters, it'll be relatively more important to surround yourself with competent people who come from little than incompetent people who come from much. Well, now that I type that last sentence out I'm less confident, but I think I'll stand by it by drawing a bit of a nuance: if you're looking for a sinecure, having access to dumb people with aristocratic families is great, but if you're looking to truly excel in America, better to stick to actual merit, or ideally find competent aristocrats.

liberate people from having to pretend to be something they’re not, or from being tempted to make ridiculous efforts to appear higher in the scale than they are.

Seems like an eminently useful problem to solve with good ol' American entrepreneurship. How can Silicon Valley / Austin create a service whereby people can signal class expensively but also productively? Spending a hundred G on gold-leafed burgers and Petruses at Salt Bae's restaurant is expensive but idiotic. Donating to charity is more productive, but still not the best use of capital if we're solving for growth. Suppose the answer is some kind of more public venture capitalism? Let's ramp up Shark Tank to 11 and modify accredited investor regulations so the up-and-coming can proudly and publicly buy up equity stakes in the latest startup?

This is why, by the way, perfect white teeth don’t carry the status in Britain that they do in America.

I find this interesting but a bit unpersuasive. Would you argue the same is true for being fat and frail? Just because a high class Briton can never lose their class status even if they never exercise doesn't make a lack of physical fitness high status in and of itself. It's not like teeth alignment requires invasive surgery or carries some trashy stigma like breast augmentation. I know I'm speaking out of my arse here being an American and all, but give me two high-class Brits, ceteris paribus, I'd figure the one with aligned and whitened teeth to be ever slightly more competent for being able to take care of themselves. Note that what I'm saying is not the same as claiming a perfect-teeth working class Joe is superior to a crooked-teeth aristocrat. We're all talking about ceteris paribus here, after all.

Should that be the game, though? I don’t know that it should.

Let me throw China into the story very briefly. Its governing party is supposedly pro peasant and anti landlords. But reality is those in power tend to be predominantly princelings, or children of Communist revolutionaries. You could argue therefore that China has a class that cannot lose status either. But if we look at what's been happening to it, I think most would agree that its rapid rise in GDP and living standards was not due to its princeling class system, but to the economic opening up and fierce meritocratic competition led by Deng Xiaoping. Now that Xi is back to suppressing the landlords in favor of "common prosperity" with the metaphorical peasants, including abruptly shutting down tutoring nationwide (which is highly anti-meritocracy given it upends the national entrance exam system that more-or-less singlehanded determines college admission, a far more important ticket to moving up a class than even the West), it's no surprise that growth and innovation are both slowing (more than otherwise as an economy becomes larger).

So from my vantage point, America's meritocratic rat race is a great system, because it encourages growth and innovation. What motivation is there to do anything if you are born privileged and can never lose it? Perhaps it's no big deal 500 years ago when a genius has no other way to entertain themselves than to throw themselves into solving hard problems, but nowadays with all the optimized dopamine-hijacking goods and services, you really need motivation to excel.

teeth

A comment on the status of teeth in Britain (at least where I am): I'd say that having teeth, not having any fillings, is better than having unhealthy teeth. But when it comes to teeth whitening, it's a cosmetic procedure that doesn't make your teeth any better at anything you want your teeth to do, so having it done implies you're vain and a bit frivolous, like getting a fake tan. Very white teeth look uncanny valley level to me. I understand they're the norm in America, but they're really not the norm around where I live.

This doesn't apply to being fat, because being fat implies you're too lazy to exercise or control your diet and affects your health negatively. Having aligned teeth might make them slightly better for biting, but having them whiter doesn't help at all.

For two people, one with missing teeth (or other obvious flaws) and one with all their teeth, I'm more positively inclined towards the one not missing teeth. But two people, one with "natural" teeth and one with the perfect American smile, I'm more favourable towards the former.

In my experience, whitened teeth are most definitely not the norm in America. In American media, sure, but not Americans in general. Most people aren't going to spend the money on something frivolous like that.

So many of America’s problems, arguably even large aspects of the culture war, are the product of a culture in which traditional class systems that have worked for thousands of years around the world have been replaced by economic stack ranking, leading to desperate competition and resulting in often bizarre or hard-to-predict consequences via things like elite overproduction.

And so many of America's strengths.

What I'd give to see a European operating system or a dingy social network that can compete with Russian ones. Or, hell, a decent internet banking application.

What OSes are popular in Russia? Do they resignedly use Windows, or has Linux adoption been higher there?

There's a lot of fuss with «certified OSes» and an attempt to force a Linux distro Astra, and a few others, on state employees and those working with «personal data». This is the entire list of «sovereign software».

In practice it penetrates to the most manageable ones, like doctors (who got locked into a distro+some database management tool, and constantly rant about the way this system freezes and crashes like it's 1999; I am not sure which part is more to blame. You can also hear about the kickbacks involved in its development). Others, bureaucrats and such, are still content with Windows; at least it's not pirated XP from VovanUltraCDrepack now. I don't think common people are more Linux-literate than in the West.

We have good web infrastructure though. VK at its peak was qualitatively far superior to Facebook, and holds its own even now. Yandex ecosystem is probably peerless, Amazon < Yandex.Market, Alexa < Alisa. Tinkoff Bank app has no serious competition. Telegram isn't legally «Russian» of course, but that's where it began and the spirit is the same; you're free to compare it to Whatsapp (which has been copying features, as of late).

Euros seem to take American dominance as a given, a function of wealth and talent, and do not appreciate just how unreasonably they underperform in the IT domain.

I'm being a little facetious though. Europeans have a number of good services and great distros. Chiefly, KDE – my pick whenever I'm not using Mac. It's a shame this isn't a bigger deal. The talent is there; and the market, the Regulatory Superpower can provide.

my pick whenever I'm not using Mac

How are the bathhouses in Istanbul, I hear good things

Occam's razor: they do it because people are, in fact, irrational. I'm not saying this smugly (I'm irrational too despite my best attempts to resist it), but simply as a statement that that's how people are. You've already dismissed the best, simplest theory that explains this behavior, the same as you did with people valuing celebrity endorsements.

Similarly, a signal being totally worthless is also a type of costly signal. Certain religions 'make' their followers do needless rituals, for various obvious reasons. I don't think the religion of TikTok is above doing that to its adherents.

As for people finding certain coloured text blobs low/high status. That is in my opinion, the product of an infohazard. A signal that encodes for nothing positive or negative, but is not classified as noise. It's a memetic mutation in the literal evolutionary sense. I don't think it will stick around because its evidently "unfit".

I think there are two main forces contributing to this:

  1. Signalling being "hard to fake" is not just about the physical/financial difficulty of sending the signal, but also the knowledge of how to send it, or that the signal even exists in the first place. You have to know who the fashionable celebrities are and pay attention to them, and avoid paying attention to the wrong celebrities (doing so signals you have good judgement, or more likely know the right people who inform you about who is cool and who isn't). You have to keep up to date with new information and new products as the fashions shift, and not be stuck with yesterdays fashion (doing so signals you still know the right people and aren't getting your information second hand as fashion slowly propagates). And most importantly, you have to actually care enough to spend your time and money for pure signalling, indicating that you are committed and loyal to this signal and not just sending it out frivolously. Anyone with a few hundred bucks can buy an iphone, but only someone who actually cares about being cool will willingly sacrifice the superior quality/price ratio of android devices for an overpriced apple product just to look cool. It's a costly signal not just in money but in time, knowledge, and dignity. (The last two sentences are exaggerated for comedic effect, but hopefully you get the point)

  2. Signals are more diverse than a one dimensional quality slider that you want to maximize. A lot of signals are about belonging to a particular group. You might wear lots of dark clothing and makeup to signal that you're a goth, or conspicuously listen to Taylor Swift music to signal you're a fan and belong to groups which tend to like her, or go to church every Sunday to signal you're a good Christian, or wear giant ear gauges to signal... I'm not even sure what those signal, probably nonconformity and a rejection of normal beauty standards. And while people in each group will see these as good qualities, people outside the groups may consider them weakly positive, neutral, or even negative signals if they dislike that group. You can't send signals favorable to every group simultaneously, so choosing one demonstrates some level of solidarity, loyalty, camaraderie with those people in particular.

Personally, I think Apple products are decent-ish but overpriced relative to their quality (or equivalently, low quality relative to their price), and have unfriendly business practices such as making all their stuff incompatible with other brands when it would be trivial to have otherwise, especially when they do petty things like change the shape of their usb cables so they won't plug in to non-Apple devices (and normal usb cables won't plug in to Apple devices). As such, I consider ownership of Apple devices to signal some combination of uninformedness, susceptibility to advertisements, and hive-minded prioritization of signalling over substance. A person who buys things because they're cool instead of because they're useful. So I treat it as a (weak) negative signal and respect people with Apple devices slightly less. But also I'm a weird nerd and I am neither cool nor popular, so people who send those signals are in fact successful in signalling that I am not one of them, they are part of a different group, and that's probably the signal they want to send. If everyone wanted to send the same signal then money would be the only hurdle, and you're correct that it's not all that much money so not a strong signal. But by choosing an arbitrary product that's worse in some aspects you select for people who care about the signal strongly enough to make arbitrary choices in exchange for status with the group, and exclude people who just choose the best product and don't know or care about the group. And that becomes part of the signal and its cost.

wear giant ear gauges to signal... I'm not even sure what those signal

Ha, yes. I myself would go farther and say I think the same for any kind of modification like tattoos, piercings, or nose rings, but I realize that's more objectionable than just making fun of giant ear gauges.

But by choosing an arbitrary product that's worse in some aspects you select for people who care about the signal strongly enough to make arbitrary choices in exchange for status with the group, and exclude people who just choose the best product and don't know or care about the group. And that becomes part of the signal and its cost.

I hear your logic, but I'm still skeptical if it applies to more than just the margins. My belief is that people in aggregate tend to be fairly rational when it comes to their self-interest, and I stated as such at my original post. Take two examples. One, it may seem irrational for WEIRD voters to support BLM riots when doing so threatens safety, which should be more fundamental than any other value, but the reconciliation is that the riots don't tend to take place in the suburbs where said voters live, and so all the smashed stores can be safely written off as someone else's problem. Two, look at ESG investing. Even though universities and unions are avowedly in support culturally, socially, and politically, their endowment and pension funds don't blindly go all-in on ESG, because when money is on the line, people tend to stick to maximum returns.

In other words, while I see many of the same problems in iPhones that you've outlined, I wouldn't go so far as saying that their users actually think they are inferior to Android, but that it's a trade-off they're willing to make for status reasons. I think the vast majority genuinely believes iPhones to be superior, and anti-features like incompatibility with Androids or the closed ecosystem are seen as pros.

Don't forget that popularity within a group is itself a source of value, otherwise nobody would ever spend any money on it, so it's entirely consistent for a rational individual to pay more for a functionally inferior but socially superior (for their social environment) device if the sum of both effects end up positive. iPhones aren't massively inferior to android devices, they're close enough that the functional difference can be outweighed by the social component without too much pressure. So I would consider this comparable to the BLM supporters: there is a negative effect but the actual effect on the individual is small enough to be outweighed by social forces.

Now, I don't believe that all or even more iPhone users explicitly believe that they're inferior but use them anyway because they're cool. That's not how signalling usually works, usually there's some element of cognitive bias (halo effect?) going on such that individuals rationalize the behavior as being actually superior in all aspects. Even in cases where two products have genuine tradeoffs where one is good at certain things while the other product is good at different things, rabid fans will incorrectly attribute all good things to their thing and all bad things to the other thing. Or in some cases dismiss the faults of their thing as unimportant while the superior thing is what actually matters.

I don't think people are perfectly rational, or perfectly irrational, but instead are some mix of both. If tides somehow magically shift to make Androids cool and iPhones uncool, without any of their functional qualities actually changing I expect more than half of existing iPhone users would eventually switch to Android, and simultaneously convince themselves that Android is superior. It would take some time, as habits and built-in biases can be slow and stubborn, but I expect it would happen. And others would stick to iPhone devices because they genuine prefer them (and others genuinely prefer iPhones but would switch anyway out of conformity).

I guess the way I'm modeling it is to assume that everyone is mentally doing a weighted sum on all the evidence in favor of each side, and coolness increases the weight people place on evidence in favor of the cool side. So if one side is massively superior according to the evidence, people will side with it regardless, but if there's a small change then enough coolness on the other side will outweigh it, and the smaller the difference in evidence is, the smaller the coolness needs to be to make up the difference. But all of these calculations are done implicitly and in the end the person mostly just ends up concluding that one side is "better" without a full rational understanding of why they believe that.

Best thing is I have no idea what bubbles you are even talking about.

I've only seen them discussed indirectly like in this thread, but this is about iMessage which supports both normal SMS/MMS (displayed in the app with a green background) and Apple's iMessage protocol (display in the app with a blue background), effectively making it very clear which people you're texting are using an iPhone because iMessage is iPhone-only.

As you said, if people just use another messaging app that's cross-platform, this doesn't come up.

Btw before I believe that girls reject guys based on the Android phone, I'd want to be sure that there's no astroturfing/submarining involved from Apple.

In the current dating market the right kind of messaging of this type could be seriously potent guerrilla marketing.

I generally err greatly on the side of free speech but advertising encoded in infohazards is a steelman for the "ban advertising" camp.

iPhones are far from pure signaling items, they give a lot of real utility too. Personally I think Android's are better on a practical level, but it's something you could have a real debate about, it's not cut and dry.

A comedian made a joking observation about that ages ago, and it stuck with me, that Bill Gates (at the time the joke was made the richest man in the world) and he (a touring comic) had the same phone despite him not being able to afford similar cars, clothes, houses, or other conspicuous consumption items.

As a long time android user, I find the higher end android phones to offer better value than a similarly priced iphone. If an iphone user judges me as poor or unsophisticated as a result of the color of my text bubbles, that's part of the cost I suppose.

If an iphone user judges me as poor or unsophisticated as a result of the color of my text bubbles, that's part of the cost I suppose.

On the contrary, I think that's a benefit and not a cost. Anyone who rejects you because you don't have an iPhone is, to be blunt, a bad person. That behavior is shallow in the extreme. So if that happens to you, then it has saved you the time you would've wasted on that person.

The iPhone people are the only ones that had a crack at that new and short-lived Elon Musk Twitter blue check thing. I think their blue checks remain though yes? That's an enduring iPhone-driven status thing.

tl;dr:

iPhones really aren't a very useful signal in terms of conspicuous consumption, because they have a huge price range.

Welcome to signaling, where everything's made up and the substance doesn't matter. Ease of fakery is only the first criterion. Any signal which becomes too legible ceases to be "useful" and will be replaced by a reversed or obfuscated one. We are many, many iterations into this game.

More importantly, the groups doing any such signaling are nebulous and ever-changing. It's not even trivial to tell who is imitating whom. Maybe there are West Coast trendsetters who bought the iPhone before it was cool affordable, but have moved on to five more levels of irony. Are the women you know all-in on keeping up with the Joneses, or are they trading off with petty concerns like fiscal responsibility? Are people actually relying on iPhones and blue bubbles, or is that your brain drawing lines between the pretty dots in the sky?

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