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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. Acting higher-status when you're really not is a sure way to make people take a very strong dislike to you.

A student comes into a professor's office to ask for help. What's going to happen to the student if he starts acting like he's got higher status than the professor? Nothing good.

Likewise, if I start lording myself over my friends (who are supposed to be my equals) then they're gonna stop being my friends pretty soon.

The number of social situations in which artificially attempting to raise your status is a good idea is pretty limited. The only really useful part of all this is in making sure you don't give off an artificially low status.

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Useful social situations for artificially raising yous status:

1. Attracting a good looking girl.

2. Communicating to your boss that you will not be pushed around without resorting to words. I used this a lot (maybe a bit too much). But I never had to do shit work that I didnt want to do.

3. Communicating to others who are not in your reporting hierarchy, but still senior to you, that you "get it". IF this is coupled with actual execution capability then you'll gain a lot of credibility pretty fast.

And yes I do agree that if you want to learn something from someone then you do have to assume a slightly lower status.

But the most interesting insight is that status is something that you give to someone else and not something a person can create on their own. Ie, someone elses status requires your active participation.

Just wanted to add that if you pull this on a manager who has a slight inferiority complex then he will think your brilliant, regardless of the quality of the work that you produce. This is in turn is something you have to stop from affecting your psyche.

Very strange. :)

>... status is something that you give to someone else and not something a person can create on their own. Ie, someone elses status requires your active participation.

The pitfall here is the words "your active participation". Huge amount of people have parts of their minds which are out of control of their consciousness. It is often that reacting to someone status signs happens automatically (subconciousnessly). Some people stop doing it after some time passes by, some never stop these uncontrollable reactions.

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