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No, not at all. Why would I care if someone thinks that?
You are typical minding then. Every interaction on the internet is a status game, and the vast, vast majority of people are insecure enough to let statements like 'you sweet summer child' or 'ok boomer' or a picture of captain Picard holding his face modify their behaviour. Not from a celebrity, from a nobody - maybe a friend of a friend on Facebook or Twitter, but usually just a complete stranger - and all they have to do is drop a meme that makes them feel stupid for saying whatever they said. If you couldn't change a stranger's behaviour with shame, cyber bullying wouldn't be a concept. Kiwifarms would never have existed. Gamergate wouldn't have happened. Tyler the creator wouldn't need to tell people to look elsewhere.
I think you're missing the possibility of "telling people they're wrong and they suck mysteriously causes them to dig in and say they're not wrong and don't suck"--posting a reaction image at someone on the Internet is just as, if not more likely to be met with a negative counter, the other party digging up something on you that looks cringey, or just blocking you altogether.
If (if!) every interaction on the 'net is a status game, then the gameplay clearly has room for "the other player is allowed to shoot back." If anything, my recent post outside this thread should have had a section about websites like ED, Kiwifarms, Bad Webcomics, etc., because another thing that has changed about the Internet from what I considered The Good Old Days (2005-2011-ish) is how every website that was dedicated to roasting strangers online for being weird has basically been forced into obscurity.
Maybe I'm using status game wrong and I mean something else? I mean any interaction between people in which their status is raised or lowered. Digging in and claiming you don't suck, digging up dirt on your opponent to take the focus off you and put it on them, and even blocking is modified by your reputation and can modify it in turn - remember when Trump wasn't allowed to block someone? Would you block your boss if you were friends on social media? Digging up and digging in are defensive reactions to a potential besmirching - why would you refuse to admit you were wrong when you know you are wrong, unless you are afraid of a hit to your reputation?
Furthermore, while that is a great thread and I am glad you linked it, status games don't have level playing fields. I mentioned your boss before, but anyone in power gets moves and advantages not afforded those not in power. That doesn't mean you can't fight back, but the options available for you to do so are much more limited and harder to use.
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That's... certainly a take. I think it's an exceptionally poor take, but I don't suspect I can convince you. The idea that every interaction on the internet is a status game is... just wildly incorrect IMO.
Are IRL interactions not 'status games'?
No, not at all. Only a fool wastes time on status games, and I don't believe that people are that foolish.
what?
It doesn't have to be a 'status game', not necessarily the best term, but most peoples' actions are very influenced by the opinions and hints of others, and aimed at e.g. fitting in, looking better than someone, etc, as opposed to rationality, accuracy, usefulness, etc.
How do you explain the existence of ... expensive fashion?
Only a minority of people chase fashion. Most people just wear what they think looks good, or what is comfortable, or what is durable. I hardly think that the actions of a small number of people prove something about people in general.
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You could try, I engaged with you specifically to understand your perspective - if I wasn't interested I would have just left it like I normally do when someone other than jiro doesn't get a joke I made. I also think it's really shitty behaviour on this forum to tell someone they have an exceptionally bad take but you can't be bothered explaining why you think that.
Perhaps you didn't mean it this way, but I interpret this post as you attempting to imply that I am so far beneath you in intelligence that you don't know where to start explaining why I am wrong. Perhaps instead you only want to convince other readers that I am so far beneath you in intelligence that you don't know where to start explaining why I'm wrong. Perhaps you realised you were wrong, but didn't want to admit it, and this is an attempt to avoid having to do so.
But what I would really like, is for there to be a completely different reason you wrote that post that way - starting off by implying my post is so wrong you had to search for an inoffensive way to describe it (pausing before calling it 'certainly a take', a format which has been used for decades to imply something is stupid), calling it exceptionally poor but not in a way you can explain (using convince to imply the agency is mine and therefore implying it is me who isn't up to the task of being explained to), then narrowly focusing on the one part of my post that doesn't prove that you absolutely can change a stranger's behaviour with shame and calling it incorrect with no explanation - a reason that doesn't involve status, and one you can explain to me now?
Fair enough. I'm sorry that I came off that way, and I was definitely somewhat rude in my earlier post which you didn't deserve. I don't think myself superior to you (albeit I do think you're wrong about this). In actuality, I don't think I can convince you because I am a middling writer (which by the standards of this forum means I'm a very poor writer), and have very little ability to persuade. Since our perspectives seem to me to have little common ground, I doubt very much that I can persuade you with my skill. But I'll at least attempt to lay out my case.
First, I think you're seriously mistaken that every interaction on the internet is a status game. For some people, sure. But in my opinion they are a small minority, because I think most adults are going to have better sense than that. Children on the internet may not have more sense, but well... they're children. Children are foolish, so one expects foolish behavior from them. But for most people, I do not think they are foolish enough to care what some stranger thinks, or to try to get status in the eyes of said strangers.
But since that seems to be the very foundation of your argument, the rest just kind of falls apart. Like yeah, if you think everything is a status game, then (for example) Kiwifarms makes sense as people gaining status by laughing at low status people. But there are other explanations for Kiwifarms that don't rely on it being a status thing. It just plain feels good to laugh at something you think is funny. It also feels good to enjoy the companionship (even the fairly ephemeral digital companionship) of those who have similar viewpoints and interests as you. You don't have to care one iota what the other Kiwifarms posters think of you, for both of those things to be true. So in the world I propose, where things are not actually status games, there's still a reasonable explanation for why Kiwifarms acts the way it does (quite contrary to your assertion that it wouldn't exist, IMO).
So basically: I think your foundational premise (that everything is a status game) is wrong. And your other arguments, which seem to rest on that, are rendered false as a result. If my interpretation contradicted the facts on the ground, then that would be a good argument against my POV. But I think that the examples you pointed out are actually pretty easily explained by other causes (more easily than saying it has to be status games, IMO). To be honest, your argument seems to me like when a friend in college once told me that every interaction between people is laced with subtext you have to figure out, or when art critics insist that there is deep meaning hidden beneath the surface of some book. You're looking for a layer of meaning that just isn't there.
Thanks for the serious reply. I don't think the internet was always like this, and I don't think this is how it should be, but it is what it is. I think you are right that it is childish behaviour, but you are neglecting that western civilisation is in the grip of arrested development, and perpetual teenagers outnumber adults 100 to 1. I think the turn happened with the advent of social media - Web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. You can still just kind of march through it all ignoring all the petty bullshit, but when status gamers dominate, not playing is refracted into just a different - dramatically disadvantaged - style of play.
But I also might be using status games wrong. I don't mean to suggest everyone is neurotically analysing every thing they say for how it will affect power relations - there are quite a few people who do that, but I don't think most people think about it at all. You don't have to think "ooh, this will boost my cred with the in crowd", or "I have to agree with this because I want to impress that person" or something like that. It doesn't have to be your primary motivation - it doesn't even have to be a concious motivation. Someone they don't respect tells them something and they become skeptical, but if someone they do respect says it they change their mind. Or laugh at your boss' joke harder than it deserves because he's the boss and because everyone else is laughing. That's what I thought a status game was - and everyone does it, even animals. I was pretty obsessed with reading about animal behaviour when I was a teen, and I thought those things were described as status games, but I might have mixed the term up with something else.
But I would also like to point out that you apologised to me, a stranger, and modified your behaviour.
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