How to Become a Virtue Signaller in a Perfect Storm Moment

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Social media is like a slop machine for status. Everything you put on social media, you don't t e going to get back. You might end up with a kind of internationally vl mem and the bottom y being cancelled af losing everything. It feels like something created by an alien entity that studied us and said, ah, this will be great. O, whatch this? I'll put them in the situation. And then now you really have something new. This werer in a dangerous hall of mirrrs, infinite recursion theme,. because telling people that complaining about virtue signalling is itself virtue signalling, is itself Virtue signalling. That becomes now it's doubly easy and

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.