Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio talking with writer Chuck Thompson. The new book
Speaker 1: is The Status Revolution, the improbable story of how the
Speaker 1: lowbrow became the highbrow, and I just before the bottom
Speaker 1: of the hour, I sort of blurt it out. It
Speaker 1: used to be that a luxury brand got that reputation
Speaker 1: because it was handmade. You know, it was hote quotur.
Speaker 1: You would go in and get measured, it was a reels.
Speaker 1: It was a representation that you had the money to
Speaker 1: spend on getting something made exactly right for you. Now,
Speaker 1: I would say almost everything that has a luxury brand
Speaker 1: logo on it is probably made more poorly than any
Speaker 1: of the other brands we buy. I don't know where
Speaker 1: are you with that? Well, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I mean what I feel like is it. I mean
Speaker 1: brands like you know, Gucci, product, whatever, name your name,
Speaker 1: your favorite, they still indicate some monetary advantage because they
Speaker 1: are expensive by and large, but they no longer convey
Speaker 1: this sense of status or elitism or excellence. And a
Speaker 1: big reason that is the consolidation of luxury brands over
Speaker 1: the past quarter century has changed the luxury industry considerably.
Speaker 1: I mean, for one thing, when you're a small family
Speaker 1: owned you know, artisan house, you're not worried about pleasing
Speaker 1: shareholders and expanding your market reach to every country on
Speaker 1: the planet. So what were once these small family run
Speaker 1: entities are not part of large corporations lvmh Louisaitan Moayhannasty
Speaker 1: owns what seventy five or eighty brand? They own, Tiffany,
Speaker 1: they own Bulgari, Richmond owns Cardier and mount Block and
Speaker 1: Ralph Lauran and so forth. And one of the big
Speaker 1: conundrums facing these contemporary status marketers is reconciling the fact
Speaker 1: that while a product's prestige is often based on scarcity
Speaker 1: and cost, in order to attain the scale necessary to
Speaker 1: remain globally competitive, a consolidated brand now has to attract
Speaker 1: a mass following. Right, But the concepts of scarcity and
Speaker 1: mass production are totally at odds, And so the scarcity
Speaker 1: part of the game is over right, And people people
Speaker 1: like you who have recognized that, yeah, well, and I
Speaker 1: was told that once. I was totally if you want
Speaker 1: to look like I was figuring how old I was.
Speaker 1: But somebody in my church or somebody told me, said,
Speaker 1: you want to look if you want to look like
Speaker 1: a success, don't advertise somebody else's product. Have something custom made,
Speaker 1: custom made by a tailor. There's gonna be no big
Speaker 1: label sticking out, but you will. It will be what
Speaker 1: the original concept was. It's made just for you. You are,
Speaker 1: then you're not somebody else's brand. You're not walking around
Speaker 1: with somebody's sandwich boards logos all over You're You're just
Speaker 1: you are who you are and it fits you well.
Speaker 1: And that's given rise to this phenomena known as counter signaling,
Speaker 1: in which you know, very wealthy people, your your CEO
Speaker 1: of your company will show up to the boardroom in
Speaker 1: you know, as baggy jeans and a San Diego Padres
Speaker 1: T shirt or something. It's sort of to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going at this point, you're better off
Speaker 1: rejecting those kind of traditional brands for that very reason
Speaker 1: that you just outlined. Right, yeah, okay, but that's again
Speaker 1: this speaks to when this goes back to your CNN days.
Speaker 1: You know, ilsa clinch would be covering something on the
Speaker 1: CNN Fashion thing on Saturday, and you know, within two
Speaker 1: months you'd see people wearing it and and I just
Speaker 1: I always kind of challenge that notion that there are
Speaker 1: there's a select few of people who decide how the
Speaker 1: world should be dressing, and I that all of that
Speaker 1: individualism or expression goes out the window and suddenly people
Speaker 1: are getting in lockstep behind something that looks terrible on them.
Speaker 1: You know, I did a whole lot of research for
Speaker 1: this book, and I ended up leaving a lot of
Speaker 1: it on the proverbial cutting group floor, and a whole
Speaker 1: chapter on fashion was one of them. It's a really
Speaker 1: trick you want to get my head around. In the end,
Speaker 1: I kind of decided that trends fashion trends don't necessarily
Speaker 1: equal status. I get that there's a zen diagram overlap
Speaker 1: there that you know, you dress it a certain way
Speaker 1: or you have a certain no matter what community you're in,
Speaker 1: whether you're a mafia don or a hip hop artist,
Speaker 1: you know, the way you dress does matter. You are
Speaker 1: what you dressed to some degree. Still, I never quite
Speaker 1: could put my head around this end, to be honest,
Speaker 1: where where trends stop and fashion stops and status begins.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's another point I make in the book,
Speaker 1: which is status is such a massive and sprawling concept,
Speaker 1: I mean other you know, apart from economic payoffs, you know,
Speaker 1: social status seems to be about the most important instead
Speaker 1: of motivating force or social behavior in the world, certainly
Speaker 1: in Western society. And it's really tough to get a
Speaker 1: grip on. I'm not com claiming to be an expert
Speaker 1: on this. In this book, I tried to seek out
Speaker 1: sort of the people who I thought were influencing that
Speaker 1: we're thinking about in different ways and highlight what they
Speaker 1: were telling me about status. Well, even the concept of
Speaker 1: influencers this you know, I don't know if you know.
Speaker 1: I teach it at Case State Kansas State University, and
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of talk from gen z media
Speaker 1: obsessed students who, you know, they want many of them
Speaker 1: want to be influencers. It just sounds great, Oh, when
Speaker 1: I'm going to be an influencer, Well, okay, influence. What
Speaker 1: an influence based on what I mean? Why why should
Speaker 1: somebody say, oh, yeah, so and so said I should
Speaker 1: try this, and so I'm going to go out and
Speaker 1: buy it. That's fine, that's a recommendation. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a horizontal experience. Somebody you like on the online did that.
Speaker 1: But this this concept of who's moving culture. That's also
Speaker 1: sort of fascinating for me for the idea of a
Speaker 1: status revolution, because even the concept of what is considered
Speaker 1: to be a status item changes really fast. What would
Speaker 1: you say, other than fashion, then, are the status must
Speaker 1: have these days? Or what are the former ones, or
Speaker 1: what are the ones that are coming well in terms
Speaker 1: of products. Look, what I always say is that status
Speaker 1: is a reflection of social values, and our social values
Speaker 1: are changing, and that's why status is changing. Our society
Speaker 1: is becoming really Balkanized at this point, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so there is there's no uniformity of status across the
Speaker 1: culture anymore, and I think that's part of this. Social
Speaker 1: media certainly plays a big part of it. You know,
Speaker 1: you talk about influencers, influence equals power, and that that
Speaker 1: can equate to status. One of the other points I
Speaker 1: really try to get across in the book is that
Speaker 1: I think we need to divorce ourselves from this idea
Speaker 1: that money always equals status. And it's true that wealth
Speaker 1: and status also do go hand in hand, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways that people attain status aside
Speaker 1: from money. Some of the obvious ones are religious leaders, right,
Speaker 1: the Pope the pope that no salary. Right, officially, the
Speaker 1: pope is takes a vow of poverty, and yet the
Speaker 1: pope clearly has a great status, not just within the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church, even around you know, world leaders. The quarterback
Speaker 1: of a high school football team might enjoy terrific status
Speaker 1: and yet not really have any money to show for it.
Speaker 1: I like to say writers often get a decent measure
Speaker 1: of status conferred upon they get asked to come on
Speaker 1: shows like this, and yet there's a very good reason
Speaker 1: that they often say of writers, he died penniless, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: It actually probably proves that he was a good writer, exactly.
Speaker 1: But but but to get to the back to your point,
Speaker 1: which is, I think there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways that status is being reflected and that people are
Speaker 1: seeking out status today that they wanted. Social media's an obbi.
Speaker 1: I mean social media didn't exist whatever twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, and so um, you know, within that community,
Speaker 1: there's become this new currency of status, and that is
Speaker 1: at the moment to be an influencer or a disruptor,
Speaker 1: right is the other big ones, Yeah, a disruptor. It
Speaker 1: let's favor for people that is there. That is one
Speaker 1: overused term. And when originally when something was a disruption,
Speaker 1: it's because it came on and it was it was
Speaker 1: so popular and so revolutionary, and it changed the game
Speaker 1: so strategically for a business that it literally killed off
Speaker 1: a sector. And the best way to look at that,
Speaker 1: as I as we talk about in class, is you
Speaker 1: look at Netflix killed off Blockbuster, the idea of the
Speaker 1: corner videotape store, just that that industry has gone. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't exist. Whereas at one point you know that
Speaker 1: they were getting these uh, they were getting these draconian
Speaker 1: penal teams, and you were like, it's almost like it
Speaker 1: was almost a court when you would go into return
Speaker 1: something to the guy in the blue shirt the behind
Speaker 1: the counter and they'd look at you and you'd have
Speaker 1: to plead your case and why you'd have to pay
Speaker 1: forty dollars for a two night rental and so but
Speaker 1: then you compare that and now that's a that's a disruption.
Speaker 1: But people say, oh, well, Left and Uber, you know
Speaker 1: they disrupted the taxicab industry. No they didn't. They expanded
Speaker 1: it and taxicabs still exist. And the concept. In fact,
Speaker 1: what's happened is Uber and Left are now more expensive
Speaker 1: than getting a cab. The idea of the ride sharing is,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a dynamic pricing thing that people in
Speaker 1: taxis don't have. There's a set price in when you
Speaker 1: get into a taxi. There is a price that can
Speaker 1: go up two three times depending on how many Uber
Speaker 1: drivers are on the road at anyone given time. So
Speaker 1: it didn't disrupt it, it just changed it and expanded it.
Speaker 1: But taxicabs are still there. And you bring up a
Speaker 1: point that's really important to me, and that I think
Speaker 1: it's important about this status revolution, and that is that
Speaker 1: status is no longer, or should no longer be considered
Speaker 1: a zero sum game. Right. Status has widely been considered
Speaker 1: this finite commodity. Right, if I had status, that meant
Speaker 1: you had less. And this is the paradigm that ultimately
Speaker 1: is what the status revolution seeks to over. That's great.
Speaker 1: Status is not just for the guilded elect it's not.
Speaker 1: It's for everyone. It's an imperative being driven by a
Speaker 1: lot of different on a lot of different levels. So
Speaker 1: give me an example then, of other things which have
Speaker 1: become part of the must have list as you see it,
Speaker 1: and the things that people are being peddled and that
Speaker 1: whether it's some of these could have come and gone already,
Speaker 1: and I could think of a few that were at
Speaker 1: one time they were told was a status symbol, a
Speaker 1: symbol of your achievement for whatever group you are in.
Speaker 1: That now we kind of look back on it and
Speaker 1: we kind of like that was quaint. Well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take exception with one of the what I think
Speaker 1: is an underlying um, you know, idea of that. But
Speaker 1: I answer the question first. I mean, I opened the
Speaker 1: book with a chapter on rescue dogs, right and for
Speaker 1: the for the research for this book, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to find examples of status and movement within a status
Speaker 1: hierarchy in sort of unexpected and surprising places, right and
Speaker 1: right now, you know. And I opened the book, but
Speaker 1: there was a random woman I met at Wyoming while
Speaker 1: I was on a fishing trip kind of rushed up
Speaker 1: to me and my buddy Chris and started bragging to
Speaker 1: us about her rescue dog and saying it was the
Speaker 1: same dog that was used in the bin laden raid
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. And and that wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time that that had happened to me on
Speaker 1: some level, right that people were sort of presenting their
Speaker 1: dog as this um, as this item of status. And
Speaker 1: the interesting gas found out of it was, you know,
Speaker 1: I started reading books like like Thorsten bebl in The
Speaker 1: Theory of the Leisure Class, which came out in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine and was kind of the potemic book of
Speaker 1: people studying status for more than a century. Second Veblan
Speaker 1: bitches about dogs and dogs use to status symbols back
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties, right, So I really thought it'd
Speaker 1: be fun to kind of track this whole idea of
Speaker 1: how dogs have played a role in sort of status.
Speaker 1: And I started to wonder about the whole rescue dog
Speaker 1: phenomenon and you know, within the within the dogs. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about virture signaling right now, which is a
Speaker 1: sort of a sibling impulse of this thing, but within
Speaker 1: the dog community, thirty or forty years ago, rescue dogs
Speaker 1: had no status whatsoever, a zero. And how do they
Speaker 1: make such advances in the canine world. I mean they have,
Speaker 1: they have legal protections. Now they're a whole class of dogs.
Speaker 1: And what was the catalyst for their you know, ascension?
Speaker 1: And so that's one of those things that to me,
Speaker 1: UM was really interesting in a way that a pure
Speaker 1: bred dog that somebody might go to a kennel and
Speaker 1: seek out a pure bred dog thirty forty fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: Now the going to the pound, they're going to dogs
Speaker 1: that you know, when you and I were growing up
Speaker 1: the end guys drove around and vans and picked up
Speaker 1: and you know euthanize, right. Right, So that's one. That's
Speaker 1: one example. But I've heard a couple of times in
Speaker 1: this conversation, um, right ahead, there's this go ahead, like
Speaker 1: there's this kind of mocking or caustic approach to people
Speaker 1: who are seeking status, who are are displaying status in
Speaker 1: certain ways. And I think that's part of what this
Speaker 1: status revolution is all about. Right, For more than a century,
Speaker 1: our understanding of status has been kind of rooted in
Speaker 1: this retrograde assumptions of religious institutions and judaeo Christian ethics
Speaker 1: and Enlightenment ethics and social science disciplines that were informed
Speaker 1: by Victorian era ethos. Right, I mean everyone from like
Speaker 1: vlin I much Grandma Moses. Right. They cast a long
Speaker 1: shadow of derision and disapproval on the this basic human
Speaker 1: drive for status. Right, Luxury is curtin issues, and status
Speaker 1: is sinful, it's a sign of moral weakness, or that
Speaker 1: you've been duped by Madison Avenue sharps. But here's the
Speaker 1: thing that's going on right now today, Like we're using
Speaker 1: these modern methods of research, and scientists and scholars are
Speaker 1: overturning these beliefs. Right if they're using functional magnetic resonance
Speaker 1: in the right MRI, we're using that, scientists can actually
Speaker 1: see activity in the brain's pleasure centers heightening at the
Speaker 1: exact moment that a person consumes let's say, like a
Speaker 1: high priced bottle of wine or some other product that's
Speaker 1: associated with elitism or prestige, And a lot of that
Speaker 1: pleasure center activity is created by this rush of dopamine, right,
Speaker 1: the brain's primary reward chemical. And what this means is
Speaker 1: that status seeking is neither. It's not a product of
Speaker 1: vanity or artificially created social anxiety. It's a measurable biological function.
Speaker 1: And people are social critics in years gone. But I
Speaker 1: had no way of knowing that. But we can see
Speaker 1: that stuff now. So rather than mock the pursuit of
Speaker 1: status and luxury, right, these emerging group of scientists want
Speaker 1: us to accept status and status seeking in the same
Speaker 1: way we accept our need for oxygen and sexual graphic
Speaker 1: lease right right, and in other forms of dopamine delivery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we understand that's not to say that we need
Speaker 1: to give into this and just because it's a biological function,
Speaker 1: that it's every part of it's good and we should
Speaker 1: overdo it. But I think there's a growing understanding that
Speaker 1: that status and status seeking is kind of an inevitable,
Speaker 1: if not healthy, part of animal existence. Right, Every single
Speaker 1: animal society arranges itself on a status hierarchy. They all
Speaker 1: do it, and so do we as humans. So rather
Speaker 1: rather than mock that pursuit or shame it, it's a
Speaker 1: lot better to understand it and accept it and work
Speaker 1: with it. Okay. And here's why I would say my
Speaker 1: point is about five degrees off of where you are.
Speaker 1: So my point is it's the actual objects themselves, not
Speaker 1: the pursuit. I'm I'm not looking down in some sort
Speaker 1: of calvinistic way of going, oh, you shouldn't want that.
Speaker 1: You should all life should all be about pleasure, of
Speaker 1: denying and all that. That was my dad. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean. It identified the one
Speaker 1: thing that would bring you pleasure and then he would
Speaker 1: be like, well, I can't do that, you know, And
Speaker 1: that was for whatever reason, that's where he got his
Speaker 1: dopamine rush, was in denying himself this you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of weird aestheticism. But I my point is this,
Speaker 1: and I think your dog analogy, I'll take it just
Speaker 1: a slightly different way. The idea of a purse dog
Speaker 1: and being able to go on to a plane with
Speaker 1: a purse dog was for a period of time perceived
Speaker 1: as the status symbol of the elite and that they
Speaker 1: would have a little dog and a person go and
Speaker 1: sit in first class. Well, now you get onto a plane,
Speaker 1: there are so many, you know, companion animals on some planes.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a Fisher Price see and say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just like the cow goes move. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like there's just and so I That's what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: is that the things that people pursued that thinking that
Speaker 1: would that's I need. That that was considered like that's
Speaker 1: the thing I need to have. When really do you
Speaker 1: And you have people then who are kind of gaming
Speaker 1: systems and applying for things and saying I need to
Speaker 1: travel with my menagerie of animals because then I feel
Speaker 1: better being on a flight. Well, we all feel better
Speaker 1: on a flight, and we can bring our dogs. But
Speaker 1: I think, by the way, what dog, What dog isn't
Speaker 1: a comfort dog? That's dog right exactly. Listen to more
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