Me too. No television, thousand of books on mostly academic subjects. But they are all in my apartment. Most people who meet me casually never see the inside of my place. My friends certainly do. And sure enough, most of them are also academics, for whom having thousands of books is hardly odd.
It is hard to characterize something as a status symbol if no one who might conceivably be impressed ever sees it.
Interesting breakdown. Would you say there are two “buckets” and folks fall into one or the other, or that there is a spectrum, with “Full Classicist” on one end “Full Romantic” on the other?
I would argue that it is more of a spectrum, and where each individual falls on the spectrum can vary from item category to item category. Some folks filter decisions about watches in a completely different way they decide about cars. Or clothes vs. wine, etc.
There was a thread a few weeks about about articles related to Stradivarius violins. One article showed that in structured blind playing and listening, expert listeners and players often preferred newer models. Another article was about a worldclass cellist and his relationship with his Strad, and the relationships many top players have with their instruments. There is an acknowledgement of the “placebo effect” of top vintage instruments - getting inside some artists’ brains just a bit more for not-strictly-categorizable reasons.
So even at the high end of status symbols, there is more of a spectrum and differing schools of thought…
Just kinda thinking out loud about the topic. We seem to come at variations of this topic pretty regularly here on the 'Dope…
It’s a characterization of “can be”, not “must be”. See digs’s response as contrasted with Princhester’s.
As a fan of Robert Pirsig, though, I imagine that Princhester shouldn’t quote him until he gets the name right. 
Snark aside, I do find it somewhat hard to believe that anyone is a pure classicist or pure romantic by those definitions: I gave an example above in which I chose a set of features I wanted for a car, and then the selection within options that met those standards was purely based on aesthetics/status indicators. I find it hard to believe that there is anyone on this planet who would just randomly roll the dice between two functionally identical but aesthetically divergent choices, and one of the main things that defines a status symbol is the aesthetics of it as related to the culture(s) the owner interacts in.
Flip this on your head. Would your status be reduced if you had no book in your home other than one paperback copy of “The DaVinci Code”?
I bet if that were the case, it would be laughable and embarassing if your friends came over. You would never heard the end of it, absent a “valid excuse” like “I converted them all to ebooks!” Or, “my books are in storage because I just got back from teaching in Uruguay!”
Every social group has its codes. Accumulating books is something your social group is “supposed” to do. It’s just easy to conform, because you actually really enjoy the behavior you need to conform to. That makes you comfortable in your social group; it doesn’t mean your books aren’t status symbols of a kind. Without them, you would experience a decrease in status; people might even question your bonafides as an academic (depending on what you teach).
I think clothing is a rather loaded example because people can look good without wearing trendy brands, but there is a huge difference between not wanting to be a brand queen and being a total slob. Example:
Wearing off brand sneakers while playing a pickup game of basketball: non conformist
Wearing off brand sneakers to a formal wedding: slob
In this example, its not the brand thats an issue, but the setting. People overstate how important brand names are, and I would argue people care way more how you are dressed than what brand you have on. To use the excuse of, “im nonconformist” or “i’m a geek, therefore attire protocols are lost on me beeep beep boop” are simply excuses for being too lazy to even try. The sad fact is the same guy who can be focused and determined to farm demonkitties in some online game for 12 hours hoping for a rare demonkitty pet cant be bothered to find clothes that actually fit him properly and are appropriate to his setting.
Yeah, but it’s a status symbol to you. A lot of status based consumerism is to fill a need inside the buyer. In a basic sense, they make the buyer feel good because they can purchase it, not because it impresses other people.
Yeah. You and every hipster in Williamsburg.
There is a bit of a vicious (or virtuous if you prefer) cycle (or circle) when it comes to status symbols. Does a person wear expensive suits in order to enhance their career or are they trying to enhance their career so they can wear expensive suits?
It’s rare that you find someone who is completely status conscious-less. People have different motivators and drivers and the things they do and collect reflect that.
Yes and if you do find such a person you would likely think something was “off” about them mentally, I’m like that but not in a stylish way and I could certainly be diagnosed with Asperger’s if I wanted(I also have trouble with “unspoken rules” which is what status symbols really are.)
Someone who doesn’t get status symbols at all has a problem, not a virtue.
Indeed. And just to hammer the point one more time - conforming to your group is not a bad thing, and having things that enhance your status doesn’t mean they’re only for that purpose or inherently shallow. I like WordMan’s suggestion that people fall on different points of the romantic vs. classicist specturm for different purchases as well. It’s not really something that can be teased apart from every day life, as fun as it is to try.
Do you own a suit or other “interview” type outfit? If you lived alone on a desert island, would a suit be anywhere on your “must have” list? Do you walk around saying “I’m really going to blow them away when they see my expensive high-status suit?” Maybe 10% of you is thinking that, but mostly you are thinking “I’m have an interview, so I’m going to wear a suit, because that’s what you do at interviews.”
It’s the same thing. Go to an interview, wear a suit. Go to the crazy car party, have a crazy car. Most people don’t think “Oh, I’m going to get a status symbol to impress people.” They just do what seems like the appropriate thing for the circumstances- be they Barack Obama, Andy Warhol or the guy down the street with the big rims.
Yes, of course the people around you have a lot to do with it. A lot of Chinese people love Chinese opera. Almost no non-Chinese people love Chinese opera. Culture is basically what determines how much you enjoy Chinese opera- and culture is just people. But that doesn’t mean that all these people in China don’t actually enjoy Chinese opera and are just pretending to do it to show off.
Lazy? As I said, it’s harder to find a good quality t-shirt that isn’t emblazoned with some logo crap.
Why is it important?
I mean, if I’m going to an event or something where I know friends would appreciate me wearing smart clothes, for an interview or if I’m on the pull- sure I’ll dress up a bit. Apart from these sort of situations, where people will look down on you if you don’t conform… well.. I’m not lazy, I’m perfectly capable of putting effort into things which interest me, I just don’t care. I have some ‘nice’ clothes for special occasions- mostly of one brand, because I’m a weird size that they specialise in.
Even in school, I remember one of the other kids telling me my tracksuit looked like pyjamas, and me looking down, going, ‘Huh, yeah, it does a bit!’ smiling happily and wearing the same thing again the next day. It was comfy. Why should I have cared? I wasn’t flashing my bits, I didn’t smell bad- I’ve never heard an explanation that didn’t just come down to ‘Well I care!’.
I like wearing costume, but otherwise I have things I would rather spend my money on than clothes. The closest thing to a status symbol I have is probably an LED hula hoop, and that was a present I asked for partly because it looks awesome, and partly with a vague idea of performing with it for money.
Mind you, I also have humongous breasts, so according to the OP I probably don’t exist anyway. 
Now you just gotta find a man wirh an awesome car… romance! 
This reduces just about anything to being a status symbol. There is no good one owns or consumes that doesn’t somehow signal that the owner is part of some group. This is very different than the kind of conspicuous consumption or vanity that we are talking about here. It’s a status symbol when the first order reason for acquiring the good is either projecting an image or seeking access to some group.
Plenty of my colleagues don’t own books. Book ownership is highly correlated with my field but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to be taken seriously. It’s just a dysfunction that many of us have in common. Without them, there is pretty much zero chance I would experience a decrease in status. I have more than most just because I have lived in my home city the longest, but by no means do I have the most status. Not even close.
So any good that fills some need or desire is a status symbol? I disagree.
Yeah. You and every hipster in Williamsburg.
There is a bit of a vicious (or virtuous if you prefer) cycle (or circle) when it comes to status symbols. Does a person wear expensive suits in order to enhance their career or are they trying to enhance their career so they can wear expensive suits?
It’s rare that you find someone who is completely status conscious-less. People have different motivators and drivers and the things they do and collect reflect that.
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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.
I dressed up for my job interview because I wanted to communicate that I have “enough common sense to do this job”. Not “I have really great tastes.” I say this because the outfit that I wore was really really cheap (Target discount rack), with the pants hemmed with duct tape and everything. And no, I wasn’t intentionally trying to look cheap. I am just a very pragmatic person (who is not above other trivialities, FWIW.)
The line, however, is not one which is hard and fast. In your profession, a Target discount rack suit may be fine, in mine, I might as well show up in jeans to the interview, and in digs case, it might be pretentious overdressing. So what externally may look like a status symbol, within the culture might just be “the minimum for convention.” And since most of us move between groups during our day (at work, the suit might be conventional, out with my girlfriends, its overdressed), it may be hard from the outside to judge if something is a status symbol or if something is convention or if something that you wouldn’t think of being pragmatic is a really pragmatic choice for the individual in question (my iPad, which I bought as a desire, is turning out to be a really pragmatic choice for the way I do my job.)
Now, were the pants hemmed with duct tape on the inside? 'Cause if not, you’re my hero. Hope you got the job!
I don’t lack all common sense, so yeah, the duct tape was on the inside. 
But did you get the job?
(or did your duct taped pants make a whooshing sound when you walked in?)
I try to be empirical and I am not about to condemn the population to being strictly one or the other without damn good research to back it up. Further, throwing empiricism to one side, my feeling is that is very much a continuum. Mostly I just find it a useful way of referring to different probably competing and overlapping worldviews that I seem to see.
As to the suit thing, what Monstro said. I’m a lawyer, of course I have suits. I can’t go to court without one. And I have to wear them at work because that is the minimum dress code according to policies that weren’t written by me. But to say my suits are a status symbol is to give that phrase a meaning way wider than what it is usually used to mean.
If you use the term to mean simply anything that could be a clue to one’s wealth or vocation or whatever then the term becomes almost meaningless since there is almost nothing that isn’t a status symbol.
For the term to be useful and meaningful, in my view it should be defined as referring to objects or behaviours one chooses to have with the intention of influencing others to believe that one has a social status to which one aspires.
Yes, I got the job. It’s the one I have now. Either I was just that awesome or that pitiable. Or maybe government people just like Target discount rack attire.