I was thinking about utility and futility of status symbols recently, in relation to the Andrew Tate controversy, so let me share my thoughts here.
First of all, status symbols are useful when you interact with new people, because you want them to properly identify your social position, in order to avoid the slow and impractical process of introduction, and in order to get to the point where they react to you appropriately. For instance, if you don’t dress appropriately for your social status when you try to buy something expensive, you might find yourself in an awqward position where they don’t believe that you have the money to buy what you want to buy, and if they don’t take you seriously it might require excessive effort on your behalf to convince them. Dressing appropriately is not as essential as behaving appropriately, but it helps. Status symbols are, in those cases, the equivalent of a uniform for a doctor, fireman or a policeman; if you don’t have a uniform, you might be as qualified for your job as ever, but people might not believe you without some convincing, and an appropriate uniform makes this tiresome step unnecessary. Note that this step is only necessary in the environment where people meet you for the first time. If everybody knows you’re a doctor or a policeman, for instance if you live in a small town, the uniform is nowhere near as important, which might be why people pay more attention (and money) to status symbols when they live in big cities. If people don’t know you, the kind of car you drive, as well as your suit and watch, are something that tells people something about your level of social success and standing. Certainly, there are people who fake this by wasting all the money they don’t have on status symbols, and they can “hack” the first impression, but it will only get them so far, and if they make a poor impression later on, it will all backfire on them heavily. So, status symbols are useful, but also “hackable”, and thus not reliable.
The second point is that status symbols can backfire if you don’t know what you’re doing. For instance, if you live in a small town, where everybody knows you, wasting money on status symbols doesn’t add anything to the impression you’re making, because everybody already knows what you do and what kind of money you’re making, so if you behave wastefully, they won’t think you’re wealthy, they’ll think you’re an idiot. Also, status symbols put pressure on your environment to try to match you, and this might financially strain them, so they will subconsciously blame you for putting such pressure on them, which won’t make them like you very much. You basically motivate people to alienate you and think poorly of you, because that’s a less expensive way of dealing with the pressure you are exerting.
The third point is that in a small environment, where people know you, they will judge your social status by the most expensive thing you own, for instance your house. Spending money on an expensive car or a watch doesn’t do anything after that point, because everybody already knows you’re rich because you own a big house. Also, if you don’t own a big house, but you own an expensive trinket, they will think you’re an idiot, so that is counterproductive. In a big city, however, that might work, but as people get to know you, it will backfire later. It is always better to surprise people positively as they get to know you better, because otherwise the positive first impression will backfire on you. A normal car parked in front an expensive house in a good neighbourhood makes a much better impression than a fancy car parked in front of a shitty house in a cheap neighbourhood, because if your primary status symbol is less impressive than secondary and tertiary ones (cars, clothes and trinkets), you will leave a very poor impression, because such behaviour is usually associated with people of low class. People of high class, however, usually have their priorities straight and they feel comfortable with their status, and so don’t spend excessively on trinkets.
Also, status symbols are not necessary if you are famous. For instance, if someone is a famous musician, actor, politician or something, everybody who recognizes you will already know your social standing, and spending excessive money on status symbols will do nothing for your public recognition; it might, however, leave an impression of gaudiness and wastefulness, so acting appropriately means that you have to present yourself according to social norms for decency. For instance, if Bill Gates goes somewhere dressed cheaply, and people recognize who he is, they won’t suddenly conclude that he’s poor. If anything, they might like him more because they won’t feel he’s signalling his enormous wealth in ways that make them feel like losers, thus making it a preferential choice for them to isolate and reject him.
So, basically, the status symbols are sometimes useful, for instance when you need to present yourself to new people in such a way that the first impression you make is useful for them to assess your social standing correctly. For instance, I told my son that he has to present himself more formally, because people would otherwise underestimate him, because he’s young; he is a competent young professional and needs to present a public persona that conveys a correct impression. If he dresses like a broke loser, people will tend to treat him as such, and that’s neither pleasant nor useful. That doesn’t mean he has to overspend on clothes and trinkets, but a nice shirt and a clean looking watch can already do most of the work. However, status symbols very quickly reach a point where people feel as if you’re rubbing it in, and exerting pressure on them to act wastefully, which is basically why Andrew Tate pissed me off; he actively tries to set a standard of wasteful behaviour, to which I react with “how about ‘no‘”, and he achieves the exact opposite of his intentions, despite the fact that I actually like him quite a bit. There is obviously a line of propriety regarding status symbols; you need to look like you belong there, but you also need to avoid presenting in such a blatantly ostentatious way as to intentionally make other people feel bad, because that tends to end badly, and especially so when ostentatiousness is combined with arrogance and haughtiness.
What I don’t like about Tate is that he does not acknowledge how much pure luck had to do with his financial success, which makes a lot of his other deductions invalid. For example I know a guy from payments industry who earned shitload of money with very little effort; he spends it on buying horses for his wife and other show-off bullshit, but he readily admitted to me that huge percentage of it all was just pure dumb luck. Same thing as those guys trading CFDs (forex) online; 95% loose, but there is always those few guys who think that they win because they are extremely competent, and not because their “competence” just happens to be aligned with a thing called luck, or actually with some karmic predisposition. So once these kinds of guys show off their hot girlfriends and talk how they have a new one in every city they visit (which I did not hear from Tate but from some actual similar guys nobody heard of), it all sounds potentially interesting to other men, but what they forgot to say is that they also have a broken marriage with fucked up children, cops on their ass all the time and other things which those other men might not find so interesting. In the end, it is a matter of choices and compromises. Tate is a smart guy, he has chosen a path which makes him a dumbass in some area, but because he invested all the “energy” he has into something in which he is good at, he became disproportionately better at it compared to other men: he has more money and more pussy. But his life philosophy is like that of many “professionals”: doctors think that medicine/health is the most important thing in the world, whores think that all women are actually whores just don’t want to admit, politicians think that everything revolves around politics, and Tate thinks it all revolves around money and so that is the thing to which he committed himself fully (and successfully).
But if you put him next to some calm, collected, deep thinking physicist for example, he will look like a primitive imbecile. Also if you put him next to a physical labourer or a standard guy who does not really know what he wants and is putting meagre effort into everything he does, Tate will look like a demigod.
What I like about him is the attitude that he has some ideas about how things work and he organized his life like that, regardless of what the “polite society” says about it, and for that hats off to him. But emulating him I think is a dangerous sport.
That’s true; all kinds of things have to align just right in order for the things you’re doing to have a really good financial effect; all kinds of super-stupid people managed to get rich on crypto, for instance. It’s not all luck, of course, we ourselves had situations where we did everything right and all hell conspired against us and it all failed; and then the most unlikely thing worked and money started pouring. Sure, luck usually happens to people who invest the effort, but claiming it’s all you would be dishonest. Also, behaving like a damn fool and wasting the money on trinkets and boasting would be serious hubris.
I agree with everything you say, but also:
Tate said he owns several million dollars. I do not believe that he is primarily giving instructions on how everyone should make money, but that he is gaining more fame and access to money as a more famous, respectable person.
I think, everything we are looking at is Andrew modus operandi and a perfectly planned activity. It is not all luck because this world and people are susceptible to this level of excitement and mutual exchange. He knows how and is prepared to deal with the storm that he personally produces. This phenomenon is created by him alone and he must now take advantage of it to become planetarily known and a business/socially desirable person.
He has good genes from his African-American father, he is clever, he has a quick brain, a strong will, a well conditioned young body at the peak of its strength, he has been poor- knows what poverty is like, and these resources make him naturally self-confident.
As I perceive it, practically all his videos are planned and professionally made. He probably is what we see on videos, but the videos are part of a propaganda campaign. I do not know whether this is true, but there is information that he is sending them to youtube from a ponzy-like generated scheme. He offers people to take a small amount of money and post a video of him. I saw a video where he said that he had gained he’s first million dollars from what he saw already working in real – he put people together and organize a live sexy webcam broadcast. His father was an African-Amreican chess player. Andrew saw as a seven year old kid how four Mexicans attack his father and his father handled the situation so the Mexicans escaped and were injured. Andrew father said to the police officer, “My unmatched perspicacity coupled with sheer indefatigability makes me a feared opponent in any realm.”
Wikipedia: Fellow Air Force veteran and 2003 U.S. Armed Forces Chess Champion Leroy Hill said: “All the players had street names. Emory’s was ‘extraterrestrial’ because we thought his play was out of this world.”
Andrew father line is helping a lot and give pretty solid guarancy to Andrew picture and of his brother too.
https://cobratate.co/who-is-andrew-tates-late-father-emory-tate-jr/
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ESC2milzPJU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo07flsQcRw
Tate brothers make their show and make more money AD 2023.
I don’t know whether Božo has the same definition of “luck” as I do, but let me explain what I mean by it.
Luck can be happening to have idiotic idea of money at exactly the time when a significant number of people have the same idiotic idea of money, so you buy bitcoin or dogecoin or some other shit when it first came out, for instance you buy bitcoin for 50c, all 1000 dollars of it, and when it grows to $50K, you sell it all for $100M. You are lucky by happening to be just the right kind of stupid, at the right time. The same kind of stupid but with Bitcoin at $60K, and you lose $1000 instead of becoming rich.
The other version of luck is happening to be good at the exactly the kind of thing that is hugely profitable in your society. Warren Buffet, for instance, is great at making money by investing in the right companies, and he himself said that he couldn’t do anything with his talent were he, for instance, born 500 years ago in Ethiopia or something. He could probably earn a few shekels by trading goats. I, for instance, am the opposite of being lucky that way; my primary talents are in the field where people would confuse me with every false guru who ever lived and did something shady, and blame me for all of it, so basically I’m the kind of lucky that gets you hanged for something somebody else did, while that person made millions defrauding people. I don’t mean “lucky” by just stumbling on a billion dollars; that would be too trivial, and in fact rare. I mean lucky by having a shady enough character to convince your girlfriends to be camwhores for you, and being at just the right place and time for that to be hugely profitable. I, for instance, have a different combination of character and circumstances, so I couldn’t do that, and the things that I can do just don’t happen to be that profitable. It’s not that I’m poor or anything, I just have more money than Tate did before he lucked out fifteen times in a row, before he happened to outrun his winning streak and ended up in a Romanian jail.