Status Pyramid Schemes

Ideological movements are fashions. Ironically, even “traditionalist” movements are fashions. They are like pyramid schemes, asset bubbles and passing trends. They arise by crowd dynamics, and they eventually collapse due to crowd dynamics.

People are conformists, but they don’t just follow the herd. They want to be at the front of the herd, not at the back. Also, people don’t form one huge herd, culturally. They clump into different herds, and those herds compete. People want to be part of a herd, but they also want to stand out. Crowd dynamics emerge from those individual desires.

When a fashion starts, it only appeals to a few people: those who really want to stand out from the crowd. As more people adopt the fashion, it appeals to more people. This is an amplifying feedback loop.

Most people want to be part of a group. They need social validation of their beliefs and behaviors. They aren’t comfortable being total weirdos. But even a small group can provide social validation. And if it starts to grow, then it builds momentum, because the barrier to entry decreases as it grows. It slides along the weirdo to normie axis.

The fashion could be an ideology, such as MGTOW or the alt-right. It could be a style of dress, or a new type of music. It could be an asset class, such as dot-com stocks or bitcoin. The same dynamics apply. Early adopters are weirdos who are willing to stand out from the crowd. As more people adopt the fashion, it becomes easier to adopt.

Also, a growing movement looks like “the next big thing”. People join it because they want to be at the front of the herd, not at the back. It is an amplifying feedback loop. People are attracted to a fashion that is increasing in popularity, which causes it to increase in popularity.

The fashion could have some underlying basis or rationale, but that isn’t necessary. Fashions can be generated purely by social feedback from cultural noise, in the same way that audio feedback can turn a little static into a scream.

While a movement is growing, it has credibility, and it attracts new members. Once it reaches its natural limit, however, the process reverses. Every movement eventually exhausts the supply of people who might join it. Once it stops growing, there is no longer any reason to join it. The appeal was based on being part of a growing movement, and being ahead of the herd. Nobody wants to join a shrinking movement that will soon be cringe. So, people start leaving the movement. The more people leave, the greater the incentive to leave. The movement collapses by the same feedback loop that created it, running in reverse.

That’s why ideological movements tend to go from based to cringe. There are other reasons, such as purity-spiraling, which tends to occur in ideological movements. Purity-spirals are also caused by crowd dynamics: by the competition for status within the movement, which drives it to become more and more extreme.

See The Rise and Fall of the Alt-Right.

Recent joiners and low-status members are the first to leave, because they have the least invested in the fashion. They quietly head for the exits, disassociating themselves from the movement, and then pretending that they were never really part of it. High-status members are the last to leave, because they have the most invested, and they can’t easily jump off the band-wagon. As the movement collapses, the remaining members (who previously validated each other’s delusions of grandeur) now start casting blame at each other for the failure of the movement. This in-fighting reveals the absurdities that were hidden by the crowd delusion before.

Humans are strangely blind to social feedback loops. Those who jump off one band-wagon often jump on the next one that comes along. Each time, they say “This is the next big thing!”.