General working assumption: Males want to mate with females (and are not very selective - compared to females - because there are fewer costs to child raising) and to do so males are in a (never ending) status battle with other males (from puberty to old age). Women want to mate with males (but becasue of the larger costs of pregnancy and bringing up a child through to at least 16) women are much more selective on mates and the way they select is by status of men (women create the conditions for the status battle between men by showing favour and giving out sex). Actions of men (whether on social media or otherwise) tend towards creating status. Actions of women tend towards creating desirability (and watching men battle it out). In modern times women desire men of high status, who can convert the status in to money to assist the raising of children (in simplified terms that is the how modern society functions). This starting assumption is a mega-theme or fundamental theme from evolutionary biology that dominates our daily lives and explains our behaviours.
Pre-reading
I see the actions of certain persons on social media as a simple outworking of these broader themes. Let us say a particular person is the "real deal" and has made a large amount of money (a great status marker), created software, sucessfully markets and sells that software and has loyal followers - that person is of a very high status person within the particular community. Another person has not made as much money (and has not done the other things) but is in a similar community of men and wants to otherwise project sucess or status within that community. One way of getting status is to tear down a person of higher status and seek to "take" their status. Thousands of years ago (and sometimes now) that was (and is) done by physical violence alone. More often in modern times where there is less (but not zero) physical violence, this is done in a form of quasi-intellectual battle (sometimes its a mix of intellect and threat of physical violence). In any case, all we are witnessing on the part of the "influencer" is an attempt to gain status within the tribe of the exchange and gambling community.
PS by definition I am not immune and understand my own part in the world of status (pnl screenshots, asking people if they like apples and indeed everything else I have ever done
).
