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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

> Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again.

No they don't! Is my point. This is almost entirely a story made up by this bizarro world of smart people who think themselves into circles (and aren't working at pizza hut). Nobody cares how someone gets themselves to their job at pizza hut; the other people working there aren't thinking about this, the person riding the bike there isn't thinking about this. This is just people like us with too much time on our hands to write substacks and debate silly things on internet message boards constructing castles in the sky.

> Articles (and comments) like this one are describing what's going on, not prescribing it.

I recognize that it is attempting to describe what's going on. I am saying that I think it is failing to accurately describe what's going on.

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You seem to be in denial that this phenomenon exists. I’d suggest reading _The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are._ Quite insightful. Status matters more than you’re letting on, and the perception of it is subconscious. No one (hopefully) is actively making an effort to look down on someone for riding their bike to their job at Pizza Hut - but many subtle things get registered by humans around us every day whether you or they are aware of it.

Thank god I‘m not living in a city with money as a first value. People would look down on you here for taking a car to your job if you can use a bike.

Which is the exact same phenomenon with the signals reversed.

So cycling is high-status because most people do it? I can assure you that has nothing to do with high-status. You just can‘t break down everything into status-games.

Missed the point by a mile.

Because?

From my perspective, it looks like you are in denial that this phenomenon doesn't exist. (Actually what I would say is weaker than that: what I think is not that stuff like this isn't a thing at all, but that it is ridiculously overblown by clever people who find it interesting to have this weird perspective on human nature.)

Check out the song "No Scrubs" by TLC for another angle on the same topic. It's a real phenomenon, not just something made up by nerds on substack.

Some people are blissfully checked out enough from social competition dynamics that they don't notice it.

Yeah. Off the top of my head I can think two pieces of popular media - The 40 Year Old Virgin and Cobra Kai - that had a scene where a guy lucks out and meets an attractive woman, asks her out on a date, the woman asks when he'll pick her up, he awkwardly tells her he has a bike and not a car, she makes a "what the hell?!" expression and then says how she guesses she'll be the one picking him up.

We can say that society exaggerates the importance of some of these things, or that they're less of an issue in certain circles. Or that it's easy to psyche yourself out about those issues and miss many of the opportunities around you. All true. But the issues actually exist, and aren't just from the imagination of a small group of people that overthink things.

Equally, it's possible to go even further in the "bicycle" direction to end up ahead of those with cars. Here's a delightful example: Rubberbandits "Horse Outside" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8 (NSFW at one point if you are listening closely and can understand the Irish accent, but unlikely to actually offend). The beginning might be boring, but it's short, so stick with it.

Riding your bike to work (what OP is talking about) and not having a car to pick up your date (what TLC were singing about) are two pretty different things. Coworkers don't care how you get to work. Dates care bacause they don't want to have to take the bus home afterwards.

Haha this is the only illuminating reply so far :)

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