You buy a bottle of wine for $100 instead of one for $20. are you excited splurge? you are guilty spent five times what you needed? Wondering why your brain told you to do this? So obsessed with figuring out the perfect way to share vino with your followers that you don’t notice your date already scrolling on Tinder at the dinner table?
These are strange times for status, prestige and the increasingly complicated concept of “privilege”. Thanks to social media, we all now have a chance for worldwide fame. But when everyone has the ability to achieve status, no one is quite sure what that means. Walk in men’s diary editor Chuck Thompson. As readers of his previous books know, Thompson is prepared to ask tough questions. For instance, Better Without Them: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession thought, “Can we get rid of some states yet?”
The Status Revolution: The Unlikely Story of How Lowbrow Became Highbrow is a very fun and surprisingly ambitious attempt to figure out what status means, with help from everyone from famous neurologists to the “inventor” of the rescue dog phenomenon to Rick “Jesse’s Girl” Springfield. Some of Thompson’s findings are troubling. His section on philanthropy for the ultra-rich shows how too often “charity” is just another word billionaires use for “tax shelter.” You’ll never look at the name on the side of a building the same way again. “Jets, yachts, and jewelry are fine, but the ultra-rich really care about buildings,” Thompson writes. “They are the most important way for the wealthy to fit in.”
Ultimately, the book is a reminder that we should all ask ourselves two crushing questions from time to time: How do I want the world to see me…and why do I want to be seen this way?
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