Mark Dolliver's Takes

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The phrase “status symbol” has a musty flavor to it, recalling bygone brands of whisky and big-finned ’50s Cadillacs. With traditional notions of hierarchy having faded in recent years, we may imagine status symbols no longer animate people’s ambitions. But we’d be wrong! For all its air of jeans-and-T-shirt egalitarianism, the Internet age has not extinguished these old notions. People may be more circumspect in pursuing emblems of status. On the other hand, they don’t feel obliged to achieve a status before displaying the symbol.

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