Member-only story
Unstatus: How to Stop Playing a Game You Don’t Want to Win
On a rainy, winter evening in Sydney’s Potts Point, I found myself seated at a dinner party next to a woman who had recently divested herself of a waterfront home on the North Shore. She had traded it for a modest apartment in an unfashionable suburb. Her former neighbors were baffled. Her friends openly wondered if financial ruin had befallen her. The truth, as she told it to me, was more interesting: she had grown weary of the weight of her possessions, the burden of maintenance, and most of all, the social expectations that came with her address.
“I feel lighter,” she told me, brushing back a strand of silver hair. “I’ve never been happier than I am since I stropped trying to be somebody.”
A colleague of mine has been using the same laptop for seven years. When I asked why he hadn’t upgraded, he shrugged and said, “It still works.” It’s not frugality or technophobia — he’s a successful software developer who simply, consciously stepped off the upgrade treadmill. What struck me wasn’t the choice itself — a good Thinkpad will do that to you — but the confidence behind it.
It was a crystallization of something I’ve been noticing more and more; after decades of relentless status-seeking, something has shifted. A backlash is taking shape against the traditional markers of success and social…
