We don’t have to signal to everyone—only in times of information asymmetry. Our friends, family, and neighbors know us well and made conclusions about our status level long ago. Most public individuals have a reputation based on past actions and interactions. (Fame maximizes these reputations to extreme degrees, with the mass media educating millions on the high status of celebrities.) But in modernity—the epoch that the anthropologist Charles Lindholm defines as “the condition of living among strangers”—most of us need to constantly claim status upon interaction with unknown parties.
