Summary:

This interesting piece looks at how the human brain is wired to seek popularity, and what the long term effects are.

Body:

Being Popular: Why it Consumes Teens and Continues to Affect Adults

Read between the lines, and the author is describing how women view status in social situations. We have status (Chad) and likeable (Beta).

The type of popularity that brings back memories of the middle school pecking order is related to status. Status, said Prinstein, “is not a measure of how well a person is liked.” Rather, it reflects a person’s visibility, dominance and influence on the group.

They make the distinction between being likeable, and having status:

Unfortunately, one of the fastest ways to get attention from peers is to exercise “dominance, aggression, and power, and that is where the second form of popularity — status — is formed.” Prinstein likens status-seeking to a primate beating its chest to show dominance: “The non-human part of our brains — or rather the part of our brain that resembles other animal species — makes us attuned to that type of popularity.”

The lizard brain, which is oft talked of here. If you want to know why Chad is so popular despite being a douche, the above is the answer.

But high-status popularity also carries with it long-term risk factors. People whose popularity is grounded in status “grow up and believe that the way you get what you want is to be aggressive toward others and constantly attend to your social status,” repeating patterns that seemed to work in high school, said Prinstein. High-status teens are less likely to have satisfying friendships and romantic relationships later in life. They are also at higher risk for substance abuse problems, including DUIs.

That's pretty much a description of 99% of college age girls nowadays. Some of the guys too. There's a tad of jerking off about how teachers can promote 'likeable popularity' vs 'high status popularity.' A teacher desperately trying to figure out how to put kids into balanced groups isn't going to override the basic design of the human brain in four years. I'd also point out, though, that this helps explain why a reasonably attractive high school teacher would feel the need to get one of her high status students to plow her. In high school she learned that status is a shortcut to popularity, and it still turns her on.

Social media feeds our primal desire for peer attention, said Prinstein. Likes, followers and retweets provide what feels like measurable data about one’s social status.

Most redpilled guys will tell you this is a no-brainer.

“We are in a status-seeking crisis as a society. There are kids who feel that their experiences haven’t really happened until they have shared them and seen how many responses they get. It erodes our ability to make our own judgments in alignment with our values.”

Again, nothing new here to redpillers. There are also a shitload of people who intentionally inflate their social media presences for all the reasons explored in this article.

Instead, he said, “Spend your time learning how to be empathic and forge genuine relationships. Connect with people. Become a better listener. Focus on developing good friendships and being likable — caring and connected with others.”

I agree, to a degree. There's likeable, and there's a doormat. Don't be a doormat. The difference is learning where and how to draw a line with people, and doing so in jovial manner. There's also an element of ruthlessness there in needing to just cut out people who don't bring much value to you.

In the end, he said, “you may be better off if you are not the most popular teen in your school.”

Sounds like the author wasn't popular in school. Just saying.

The element the author misses is that status is situational. Recently I read a short story about a guy who was an upper-class Englishman in the 1800s. He was doing a social experiment on how he was treated while wearing his nice, clean, and obviously fine clothes and walking down the street to how he was treated when he went incognito and wore some cheap secondhand clothing. The same guy walking the same route through the same neighborhood on two different days got treated like shit just because he didn't have his nice clothes on. So expanding on that, he could have worn his ratty clothes on hat street for years, gotten to know everyone, and eventually built up some influence. But as the article suggests, status is a shortcut. He could have done the same in a day, just by going home and putting on his nice clothes again.

Lessons Learned:

  • To women, status is the shortcut to popularity in any aspect of life.

  • Social Media is both a validation wank bank for most women.

  • The author of the article is trying to come to terms with how to explain that she's stumbled across some redpills, while also trying to explain how her panties get drenched when Chad walks by. Must be because he's likeable right?