# Explain status symbols to me **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 5, 2012, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789 "2012-03-05T05:34:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/81 "2012-03-08T03:50:08Z")
Expensive status symbols let other people know that you can afford expensive status symbols that they can’t. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/82 "2012-03-08T04:03:51Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Expensive status symbols let other people know that you can afford expensive status symbols that they can’t. It may be an attempt to communicate that, but since expensive status symbols can be gotten with a credit card followed by bankruptcy…it isn’t an accurate measure of that. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/83 "2012-03-08T04:08:28Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > It may be an attempt to communicate that, but since expensive status symbols can be gotten with a credit card followed by bankruptcy…it isn’t an accurate measure of that. Don’t over-rationalize these things. Our instinct to admire the guy who can get the best stuff goes back to our days as hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/84 "2012-03-08T04:18:27Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > But a suit in itself is not a status symbol. It is a societal convention to “dress up” for an interview, just like it is a societal convention to wear clothing _period_ when you go out in public. But status symbols go above the “convention”…hence why they confer status. I think people are kind of forgetting this point. That’s the thing- what looks like a needless excess to you probably looks like a perfectly rational and justified decision to the other side. Nobody thinks _their_ stuff is a status symbol, but they feel free to pass comment on other people’s stuff. The house-builder looks at an office full of people in $1,000 suits and laughs, wondering why the heck they spend such an absurd amount of money on some social mandate that they wear a rather arbitrary uniform for no good reason other than that’s what they expect. Meanwhile the office worker drives home and looks at the house builder’s decorative rims and laughs, wondering why they would spend such an absurd amount of money on a rather arbitrary car modification for no good reason other than that’s what they expect. When your options are “The guy who is doing something I don’t understand is being irrational” and “The guy who is doing something I don’t understand probably has a reason behind what he is doing, that I just don’t understand” the latter almost always win. Very few people outside of the insane make decisions based on criteria other than “this seems like the best of my options at the time.” The real trick is understanding their circumstances and why idea X might seem like the best of the options, not figuring out where their thinking went wrong. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/85 "2012-03-08T04:49:20Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > It may be an attempt to communicate that, but since expensive status symbols can be gotten with a credit card followed by bankruptcy…it isn’t an accurate measure of that. That’s a good point. I’ve got a bro-in-law who buys sports cars, huge TVs, and a house that’s twice the square footage of ours… but he’s got twice the mortgage, too. And he’s making hefty payments on ALL of it. So even though my wife and I together make half of what he does, we have more “spending money” (disposable income) than he does. And a lot more in the bank. He has to sweat making his huge CC payments each month; we pay off our boringly small balance. He stops by this trendy “vodkatorium” after work, but has to leave before he has to order dinner; we go out to eat a lot (at humble but tasty spots). Oh, and we’re happier, too… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![vix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a88e4f/32.png) [@vix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vix)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/86 "2012-03-08T04:53:25Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > That’s the thing- what looks like a needless excess to you probably looks like a perfectly rational and justified decision to the other side. Nobody thinks _their_ stuff is a status symbol, but they feel free to pass comment on other people’s stuff. Maybe people don’t actually think, “My expensive car is a status symbol,” but they are aware of the impression their car creates. My friend drives a relatively new Lexus SUV. To your point, I’m sure she did a lot of research and decided to buy that car based on rational factors, such as safety, comfort, trade-in value, etc. I don’t doubt for a second that she also chose that car because it’s one of the nicest cars she can afford, and because it affords her a certain status. She knows she will look better in the school parking lot in her expensive car. I doubt she would choose an equally safe and comfortable car that was uglier or less of a status symbol. You’ll never find her behind the wheel of an ugly, old minivan like mine. Do I wish I could trade with her? Hell, yes. And certainly part of the reason is that I’m jealous of her pretty status symbol. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/87 "2012-03-08T04:56:22Z")
**even sven** the moment you start comparing wearing standard attire for a given vocation to decorative rims, you have well and truly gone off the rails. Now, if you compared suits worn by office workers to trucks driven by builders you would be making a more useful analogy. But trucks and suits are not status symbols, they are just vocationally necessary and useful. Very expensive showoff suits are status symbols, as are very expensive showoff trucks. There is needless excess by some in every group, but that doesn’t mean that every single thing from which it can be deduced that you are in that group is a status symbol. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/88 "2012-03-08T07:31:09Z")
I totally don’t get the expensive suit thing, and luckily I’ve never been in a work situation where that mattered. I’ve been hired for jobs based entirely on a phone interview, where I could have been a brain in a jar for all they care. The fanciest place I’ve worked was at a highly respected tech opinion company, and apparently my not being a carefully coiffed Ivy Leaguer made me a part of the regular tour. I apparently provided “geek cred”. It helped that the department that consisted of me, my boss and one other person was responsible for nearly 50% of all corporate income. I’ve worked for some other really big companies, but always with the proviso that I’ll only work for one boss - no dotted-line bosses. That’s helped keep the bullshit to manageable levels. The boss wears a suit, and he or she is welcome to it. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/89 "2012-03-08T12:34:56Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > That’s the thing- what looks like a needless excess to you probably looks like a perfectly rational and justified decision to the other side. Nobody thinks _their_ stuff is a status symbol, but they feel free to pass comment on other people’s stuff. And I’m saying that some people are mistaking “societal convention” for status symbol and using this as an argument that “everyone does it!” Everyone _may_ have status symbols, but citing things like interview attire is not a good example. Also, just because an individual owns an object that is specifically associated with their status does not make it a “status symbol”. I own a Kindle Fire. It is not communicating anything about my middle-classdom because no one knows I have one. If the mail man happens to look in through the window and sees me farting around on it, he would be incorrect if he assumed I was playing around with my “status symbol”. A suit _by itself_ is not a status symbol, as I said. Just like shoes are not a status symbol. The intention of the wearer drives the whole thing. If my mother buys me an expensive suit that I reluctantly wear only because I have no other suit and I have to participate in a event requiring one by societal convention, I am not wearing a status symbol. I am conforming, yes, but only in the same way that a person who wears shoes when they go to the Kwickie Mart is conforming. If I go out of my way to wear a Wal-Mart suit just so that I can fit in with my friends in the “look at how apathetic I am” department, then I am wearing a status symbol, even though I may look like a slob to an outsider. Intentions do matter. So when a person says, “You know, you are wearing a status symbol and you don’t realize it!”, I would be tempted to say, “Unless you can read my mind, you cannot know this.” Sorry, but I’m not totally buying the “everyone does it but claim they don’t!” stuff. I know when I have played the status-seeking game (see my first contribution to this thread) and when I have not. This isn’t as hard as some of ya’ll are making it out to be. > [@](#): > > The house-builder looks at an office full of people in $1,000 suits and laughs, wondering why the heck they spend such an absurd amount of money on some social mandate that they wear a rather arbitrary uniform for no good reason other than that’s what they expect. > > Meanwhile the office worker drives home and looks at the house builder’s decorative rims and laughs, wondering why they would spend such an absurd amount of money on a rather arbitrary car modification for no good reason other than that’s what they expect. > > When your options are “The guy who is doing something I don’t understand is being irrational” and “The guy who is doing something I don’t understand probably has a reason behind what he is doing, that I just don’t understand” the latter almost always win. Very few people outside of the insane make decisions based on criteria other than “this seems like the best of my options at the time.” The real trick is understanding their circumstances and why idea X might seem like the best of the options, not figuring out where their thinking went wrong. I must have missed the posts where people are being ultra judgmental. I don’t think anyone in this thread have said that status symbols are irrational. Just that they, personally, do not have any. (Which may or may not be correct). ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/90 "2012-03-08T14:29:31Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Now, if you compared suits worn by office workers to trucks driven by builders you would be making a more useful analogy. But trucks and suits are not status symbols, they are just vocationally necessary and useful. Isn’t that the core of this issue? There’s a fine line between “I need that as a tool/part of the job I do” and “Yeah, this example of that tool makes me badass.” As a guitar player, I always think about Jimmy Page, playing that (let’s be honest) ridiculous double-necked Gibson on Stairway. But he had a genuine need - playing 12-string picky stuff at the start and getting all rawk at the end - and other solutions (e.g., rest a 12-string on a stand and toss your electric over your shoulder while you pick the 12) look just as complicated. You’re playing in front of tens of thousands of people, and you need to figure out your tools. But when guys I knew got one of those double-necked guitars? :smack::smack::smack: 'cuz ya never know when you’ll need to switch guitars mid-song in front of 20,000 people. No different than a Range Rover in the suburbs… ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/91 "2012-03-08T14:36:45Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > I totally don’t get the expensive suit thing, and luckily I’ve never been in a work situation where that mattered. I’ve been hired for jobs based entirely on a phone interview, where I could have been a brain in a jar for all they care. I suppose that’s the difference. I wear $1200 suits because I like working for the sort of places where people wear those sort of suits (because they pay me enough to afford those kinds of suits). But I also have a couple of cheap Mens Warehouse suits for day to day sitting around the client site grinding through work suits. Although we are super-casual at my current employer I still need a nice suit for meeting with clients from time to time. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/92 "2012-03-08T15:03:56Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > … Intentions do matter. So when a person says, “You know, you are wearing a status symbol and you don’t realize it!”, I would be tempted to say, “Unless you can read my mind, you cannot know this.” > > Sorry, but I’m not totally buying the “everyone does it but claim they don’t!” stuff. I know when I have played the status-seeking game (see my first contribution to this thread) and when I have not. Thanks for stating this so clearly. I totally agree. > [@](#): > > This isn’t as hard as some of ya’ll are making it out to be. Could you go around the whole board and post this to every discussion? Thanks. We’ll wait here for you, and save your place. [(I remember a simple physics question that went on for hundreds of posts…)](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=643892&page=3) ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/93 "2012-03-08T15:43:26Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > And I’m saying that some people are mistaking “societal convention” for status symbol I think some of us, rather, are arguing that there’s very little difference between the two in any practical respect. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/94 "2012-03-08T18:41:03Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Are you in the position to make my life easier when selling me a car or jewelry? Are you my broker or seating me in a restaurant? If not, then you aren’t the person I’m carrying the purse for. If you are, then you probably need to make sure your assumptions regarding my shallowness don’t translate into worse service. That’s the thing about status symbols. You got to take the bad with the good. If you just installed some some sweet 22’s on your hoopty, then for every bro that recognizes a nice ride, there is someone else that thinks you’re a hoodlum drug dealer. If you want to have a Coach handbag, for every jewelry seller that thinks you have a sense of style, there is someone else that thinks you are shallow mindless consumer. As long as you are impressing the people that you want to impress, that is what matters. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/95 "2012-03-10T14:09:50Z")
Okay - I got one: what if you buy something that has status, in part \*because \*it has status - but more due to how that status affects its resale value? What if you need a high-quality item, and you could pay $x for a new one that loses 40% of its value once you leave the store, or you could pay $2x for one that has status - maybe collectible, maybe made with a design that is no longer available but valued - and therefore you can recoup your costs, or even profit, should you decide to sell it? The buyer is focused on status as a criteria, but not for “what this says about me” reasons…kinda. What do you think? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/96 "2012-03-11T00:42:46Z")
The way I see it, status symbols are advertisement. Let’s see…supposed some bum with urine soaked clothes came up to you and asked you for a ride somewhere. Then, supposed a man in a brand new Armani came up to you and asked you for a ride somewhere. You only have room, time, inclination, etc… to take one. Who would it be? OK, the likelihood of this happening is pretty far-fetched, but, it is the same thing, only to a more subtle degree. People want to advertise their worth, because in whatever market they are dealing (Human relationships, jobs, social situations, ad infinitum…) they understand that the greater the perceived worth of the individual, the greater the respect/treatment accorded to same. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789/97 "2012-03-11T00:48:23Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > … yeah, the duct tape was on the inside. 🙂 Scores for employment: 100 Scores for cool: 0 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-status-symbols-to-me/614789.md?page=4)