Sexiness And The Rise Of Status
Onlyfans, airpoints and what do you do for a living?
“It's been a good eight days lads. Good crew and we smashed out the job.” The mood was jovial as myself and my two workmates were ten minutes from the airport, ready to catch a late afternoon flight back to civilisation and exciting plans ahead that had been made. My phone pinged with a text message:
FLIGHT CANCELLATION - please note due to cancellation of VA1894 this afternoon you have been placed on the next available flight tomorrow morning QF1805 departing 09:30am.
“Faaaaaarrrk!” Was the collective war cry from the three of us in the dusty work ute. We kept on to the airport hoping for a miracle, but our flight had indeed been cancelled. There was a line of people who had been bumped from the cancelled flight on to the last two flights out of town for the day. We weren't included. Casual contractors aren't priority in this instance. If you were a worker who was closer to the top of the pyramid, you got priority due to your ‘better’ position. Welcome to 2023 where the class system is well and truly alive and kicking.
People love to have smoke blown up their own asses. Buy a Rolex and be part of a special club. Get the car and experience better. Here is the diamond platimum credit card only for our elite customers. We live in a world of status. People generally don't ask you what you do for a job because they are genuinely interested in you. They ask so they can then assign you to where you fit into the food chain in relation to them. If you've got a 'shit' job, that's a below me. Doctor, pilot, business owner? Whoaaah! That's above.
I've not really played the status game too much. I aim to treat the janitor the same as the CEO. Many people do. Many don't though, judging by how they treat service staff. More as lowly servants than equal human beings.
There is a famous sketch on the class system from 1960s British comedy show The Frost Report.
Man on left: I look down on him because I am upper-class.
Middle man: I look up to him because he is upper-class; but I look down on him because he is lower-class. I am middle-class.
Man on right: I know my place. I look up to them both.
Growing up in NZ and spending much of my adult life in Australia I've often heard that it's different here. We don't have a class system. I used to believe this. I don't now. I mean, the beauty of Australia is that you can get a job as a janitor and make $130 000 per year working in one of the many remote mining or oil and gas work sites. Conversely, there are managers in the big cities on less than $100k per year. Status in this instance is a little muddled.
Technology has also added a grenade to the mix. A twenty year old woman can sign up to Onlyfans and take her clothes off, gain a million drooling, simping men as paying subscribers and become an empowered influencer with lots of fame and money. She may even be asked her opinion on topical news stories. Her status initially a lower class nobody, now a somebody. The woman in question is sexy (and willing to degrade or empower herself depending on which angle you are looking at it from) and hence worthy of high status.
I think the class system has never really gone away. Go to university or college and get a good job is advice that also means: get some of that sweet high status too. I hear it in conversation. “The guy is an alcoholic and overweight, but he's got a good job.” “He's boring, but rich.” “She's crazy, but her husband is a finance guy.” Character flaws often overlooked if somebody is a somebody.
I find that where status becomes irrelevant is when you catch up with genuine old friendships. I have friends who are doctors, teachers, carpenters, boilermakers and truck drivers. We like and respect each other, so status doesn't matter.
As much as I can say status doesn't matter at all to me, I'd be disingenuous somewhat. It does to a degree. Working in a restaurant in a lower position, I saw how some workers treated people in higher positions. Young girls fluttering their eyelids to managers - men of status. I have membership of frequent flyer programs where I'm aiming to get to the next level and unlock extra benefits and entitlements. The system may not be fair, but it's here and to operate in the world you will be judged by the masses on your position on the layer cake, which leads me to a neat quote from English gangster movie, Layer Cake…
“You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like.”
You can opt out and live in the bush no doubt. You can move to a commune where everyone is supposedly equal. Otherwise, to be part of the world is to be part of the status game.
Do you want to be a player with a 95% status rating or a 5% one? We are born with a certain level of status. Where we end up depends on how well we play the game. The choice to play is yours.