Status and Culture Quotes

“The cultural industry will always have the means and might to dominate our mind-space, and a major point of “indie snobbery” was to provide counterbalance.”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

“Game of Thrones was one of the “biggest” TV shows of the 2010s—but only around 5 to 6 percent of Americans ever watched it.”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

“According to the legends of publicity, those who lack the power to spend money become literally faceless. Those who have the power become lovable.” The actress and courtesan Carolina Otero put it more pithily: “No man who has an account at Cartier could ever be regarded as ugly.”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

“The long tail predicted utopian cohabitation of tiny consumer subcultures but, instead, the professional classes have all coalesced into a world of omnivore taste where nothing is great because everything is good.”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

“sycophancy”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

“The video game industry is now larger than sports or films, and a 2020 study found that 68 percent of male Gen Zers considered gaming a key ingredient of their identity.”
― W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change