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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.
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...
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.))
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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?
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