"Social Currency"
The Great Fiat
“Social Currency” is a phrase you hear very often in political discourse. Most commonly, it is used by so-called “Elite Human Capital” types who use it as an identifier for the intangible benefits acquired by high social standing. According to EHC types Social Currency, like an actual currency, can be “spent” and “earned” in order to change one’s position in the social hierarchy.
It is also used, with roughly similar frequency, by “class-analysts” on the Left who seek to quantify and measure socio-economic status, generally for the purpose of some sort of Marxist analyst of contemporary society.
Both of these camps see Social Currency as purely transactional. It is bartered between individuals, sometimes groups of individuals. They also use an inherently materialist, and ostensibly capitalist, framework for this analysis, which is best illustrated by the overwhelming monetary symbolism.
Politically, it is also an inherently Libertarian nomenclature, perhaps unsurprisingly. It is only the Lib-Left [champagne socialists on Twitter] and Lib-Right [techbro EHC crypto traders] who really take part in this discourse. Auth-Lefties are much more likely to use a collectivists framework and discuss the Class as a whole, while Auth-Rightists are much more likely to refer to the(ir) Race as a whole.
This political distinction is also not surprising when you consider the roots of Social Currency as a phenomena. It is deeply rooted in modern academia. It has all of the hallmarks of the “higher” education system as we now know it:
Replacing real-world, tangible, intuitive understandings with deeply abstract descriptions which are almost mechanical and anti-human.
Materialist framework.
General Leftist sheen and association.
Naturally, the idea of Social Currency first came to use [at least in a modern context] among sociologists and economists who sought to explain human interaction in materialist terms, generally as part of their [Leftist] worldview. This also explains why it’s primary the TechBro/WokeRight camps “on” the Right that regurgitate these talking points; virtually all of them are so-called post-liberal Millennials1 who are more concerned about preserving their personal status than Race Consciousness issues that generally define the Right today. Their academic upbringing as liberals still shapes their worldview, whether they admit it or not.
That is to say, TechBro/WokeRight types only oppose issues like immigration insofar as it threatens their socioeconomic position, rather than the threat it poses to the cultural and ethnic makeup of their homeland. And, as many of you probably know first hand, their positions on immigration are also fickle. They may be pro-immigration if they see it as a potentially lucrative stance, or they may be anti-immigration if their livelihood is personally threatened. The H1B Visa discussion has probably been the best example of this. This is, ultimately, because they are not “Right-wing” in any meaningful sense. They failed to abandon their Leftist origin, which is why they still carry the baggage of Leftist discourse (such as Social Currency) and fail to take stances which are consistent with the broader Right.
But, back to the topic at hand. Does “Social Currency” even exist? Specifically, does the popular understanding of Social Currency serve as an adequate analogue to real-world experiences? I.e: is it an accurate explanation of how individuals move through society, or how the ultra-powerful attained their station? The short answer is no, not really.
I am most often given the sense that the sort of person who uses the term “Social Currency” is very naive to how these things actually play out in the real world. They most often describe Social Currency in a way that is reminiscent of some sort of video game mechanic. Sometimes Social Currency is like your speechcraft skill, where you can bluff your way past skill checks for skills you don’t actually have, without consequence. Sometimes it's more like a faction affinity system where you can get away with most anything, so long as your affinity remains high enough, and of course social faux pas lower it. This is a natural consequence of the mechanical description of Social Currency that effectively reduces social interactions to numbers on an Excel spreadsheet. I think it’s also due to a not insubstantial amount of these types only having social interactions in video games.
On some level I’m sure that it’s true, for at least a few elites, that their relationships are this transactional. Career fixers like Jeffery Epstein of course make a living off of highly transactional relationships, but these types are also not really the in-group of elites, and are instead viewed as a means to an end or parasites depending on the person.
However, most elites aren’t willing to just welcome anyone into the fold simply because they have traded enough Social Currency or whatever. This is most evident by the fact that there still exists a clear divide between the Tech Elite and the already established Elite.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise either. You can’t expect to schmooze your way to the top and not been seen as at least somewhat untrustworthy. What’s more than that, however, is that most people who rise through the ranks in this manner are actually looked down upon and generally viewed as expendable. Probably the best example of this would Kamala Harris, especially after her disastrous campaign.
It’s difficult to imagine that anyone in Washington, aside from Kamala and some of the more naive members of her campaign team, actually believed that she would win the 2024 presidential election. Not only was the election simply not in her favor, with Biden dropping out so late, but she simply was not a good candidate. She was a nobody on the national political scene, and by Biden’s own admission she was a DEI hire. Her only real claim to fame was being extremely tough on crime, especially for a Democrat, but this was actually just throwing the book at people for simple possession of marijuana, a crime most prosecutors don’t care about and one that most leftists don’t think should even be a crime. The reality is that she only got to where she was by either schmoozing the right people, or just straight up having sex with them (as some believe).
It didn’t matter how much social currency Kamala was able to barter, she simply could not make up for the fact that she was utterly devoid of charisma and actual political acumen. She couldn’t stop herself from nervously cackling at any question asked of her in front of a camera/crowd. She was deeply out of touch with the voter base (Wakanda Forever). Most importantly, she didn’t actually have a history as a serious politician. Biden was able to stumble through his presidency for so long primarily because he could bank on his past accomplishments as a Senator and as Obama’s Vice President. At one point, he was a reasonably competent politician, and people did at least remember that (at least until his mental decline was unavoidably obvious). Kamala couldn’t bank on that, because she was essentially a talentless hack who knew enough people to get her nominated for VP.
And this brings me to the central point of this post. To the extent that social currency exists, it cannot make up for your short comings nor can it be a substitute for real talent. At best, social currency exists as a vessel by which you may project your skill/talent. It is an indicator of how many people you can expose to your skill. After all, if you have all the skill in the world but nobody knows this, there isn’t much you can do with it is there? And so you need to network so that people can see what you are capable of. However, if what you are capable of is extremely unimpressive, maybe you would be better off not networking with these people.
Finally, I would urge you to notice that most of the people who harp on and on about “muh social currency” and “elite human capital” are not only talentless hacks themselves, but also ugly and slobbish. Many of them are straight up Indian, as the Twitter “account based in:” feature has revealed. Many more are just clearly autistic people who think socialization is something you can figure out with an excel spreadsheet.
Others are fat slobs who have nothing particularly impressive going on in their lives. Their greatest claim to fame is writing giant textwall screeds about some topic where they give their retarded and bad opinions, but nobody really cares enough to actually read. They convince themselves that this is an example of their “high verbal IQ” which is coincidentally also the most important trait for the exchange of social currency and for qualifying as elite human capital, o algo.
TL:DR be attractive, touch grass, and stop using loser pseudointellectual wordvomit.
Yeah this sounds right
“You’re not “Elite Human Capital” if you’re skinnyfat btw.” -true
Funny how elitism used to entail a mixture of mental and physical acuity coupled with a capacity to inspire one’s lessers. Now it conveniently coincides with the singular notable quality that the EHC types can muster.