Social Media - Virtue and Dominance

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Social media gives us an easy way of earning status, you know, dominance, virtua and success. Instant gram is all about success, as far as i can see. I'm always tweeding reviews and stuff in, annoying peopletweting reviews. And virtue signa is a completely standard human behaviour. Is what we do. We all do it. In complaining about virtue signaling as a form of virtueo sinle, it's sillysis, banala criticism. Ambathing twitteris is virtue and dominance. You knowpr its id success too.

In this episode we welcome back author Will Storr whose new book, The Status Game, feels like required reading for anyone confused, curious, or worried about how politics, cults, conspiracy theories communities, social media, religious fundamentalism, polarization, and extremism are affecting us - everywhere, on and offline, across cultures, and across the world.

What is The Status Game? It’s our primate propensity to perpetually pursue points that will provide a higher level of regard among the people who can (if we provoked such a response) take those points away. And deeper still, it’s the propensity to, once we find a group of people who regularly give us those points, care about what they think more than just about anything else.

In the interview, we discuss our inescapable obsession with reputation and why we are deeply motivated to avoid losing this game through the fear of shame, ostracism, embarrassment, and humiliation while also deeply motivated to win this game by earning what will provide pride, fame, adoration, respect, and status.