Admiration vs Respect

Early in life, we're drawn to scale. We want to be liked broadly, admired widely, seen as successful by anyone who might be watching. This makes sense—we're still forming our identity, and the crowd serves as a kind of aggregated mirror. If enough people approve, we must be doing something right.

Culturally, we accept and encourage this. Young people are meant to grow visibly, and older folks are meant to encourage them. The masses are supposed to clap.

But as a person gets older, something should shift. The applause should matter less. This is obvious when you imagine the inverse: an adult who remains chiefly concerned with the opinions of strangers—people they don't know, will never meet, and whose admiration has no material payoff. There are archetypes here that might come to mind: the person who can't enjoy a vacation, a meal, or an achievement without immediate external validation; the person who posts Instagram stories of their gym visits too often; the person who name-drops constantly, turning every conversation into a highlight reel of their associations; the adult who treats every dinner like content, every opinion like a political position that needs to poll well.

To me, this is a sign of not maturing well. These folks are seeking diffuse approval as a proxy for self-worth, rather than seeking direct respect from those who matter. And I think this is more common today than it has been in the past. Why are we so stunted in this sense?

Reason 1: It’s the internet again

I think the internet (oh boy, he's talking about the internet again), social media, and algorithms have made it easier to be stunted in this sense. The constant barrage of feedback loops—likes, shares, view counts—has made it easier to achieve quick admiration, and these systems have systematically rewarded people with small hits of dopamine in the vehicle of Instagram likes and Story views.

As a result, we are slowly but surely seeing the emergence of a new type of person, chiefly propelled by (but not exclusively created by) the internet: the Status Game player. These folks are chiefly interested in how they're perceived and tailor their persona toward admiration.

They also naturally associate with others playing the same game. There’s a kind of funny interplay between these parties: they both feign admiration for one another's attempts because they implicitly acknowledge they value the same things. They do not respect each other—they're participants in a shared performance.

Reason 2: Real life has been deferred

The internet isn’t the only force keeping people in adolescence; structural changes in adult life also play a large part.

In previous generations, the major inflection points in life came earlier and more forcefully. A person would graduate, get married, have kids, buy a house—all in rapid succession, usually by their mid-twenties. Each milestone created accountability structures that made the Status Game less appealing and less feasible. (Your wife doesn't care about your follower count; your mortgage isn’t affected by IG Story views; a crying infant at 3am doesn't respect your LinkedIn endorsements.)

Today, the median age for marriage has crept into the late twenties and early thirties. Homeownership is deferred or abandoned entirely. Children arrive later, if at all. Graduate school, career pivots, "finding yourself"—these extend the period where you're accountable primarily to yourself. There are structural and economic reasons for all of these decisions, which I don’t mean to discount. But they result in a delay, meaning the natural corrections that forced earlier generations toward maturity arrive late (or never).

Without these forcing functions, the Status Game becomes the default organizing principle for many young people transitioning into adulthood. Your peer group is still playing it, so opting out feels like falling behind. The metrics are clear and immediate—followers gained, invites to the right events, reputation earned. Whereas our parents had their own concepts of “making it” and “falling behind” based on materially important metrics (relationships, homeownership, parenthood), we have instead invented our own trivial replacements.

To be clear, achieving these milestones doesn’t guarantee we break out of adolescence. In media, we see examples of absent fathers, shallow mothers, or otherwise disconnected parents or partners—people who achieved traditional milestones but never made the internal shift. Adulthood introduces the guardrails that should pull us out of adolescence, but the onus still falls on the individual to make the shift.

This creates a problem that's both structural and personal. Structurally, we've built systems that reward adolescent behavior well into adulthood. Personally, we've internalized those rewards as markers of success.

Note: it might be Letterboxd, not Instagram. Nowadays actual social media “likes” and “story views” are of less importance, but there is still a palpable need among many of my peers to be “cool,” “in the know,” or part of some semi-exclusive social group. The general point here is not that quantifiable metrics associated with popularity are important to immature people, but rather that they are intentionally crafting a persona as “cool” for an audience that doesn’t matter.

Admiration vs respect

If the Status Game keeps us immature, what does maturity actually ask of us?

Mature people pursue the same things as immature people—excellence, beauty, and success—but their reasons change. The difference lies in why they pursue them, and in the type of validation they seek. While immature people seek diffuse admiration, mature people seek narrow respect.

A mature person might chase success at work—not because the title will impress old acquaintances on LinkedIn, but because they'll earn more to provide for their family. They might pursue beauty—not for vanity's sake, but to remain attractive to their partner and honor their body. They might build something ambitious—not to accumulate followers, but because the work itself matters and the few people whose judgment they trust will recognize its value.

Juxtapose a mature and immature person in two examples:

First, building a company. Both work 80 hour weeks. Both pitch investors, hire teams, and invest deeply in the company. One does it because success will prove something—to old classmates, to parents who doubted them, to an abstract audience of "people who matter." The other does it because they've identified a problem worth solving, assembled a team they respect, and want to build something that lasts.

Second, investing in physical fitness. Both people at the same gym, following similar routines. One films their workouts, tracks their visible progress, times posts for maximum engagement. They're sculpting their body as a public statement. The other trains consistently but privately—not because they're humble, but because the audience that matters (their partner, their future self, their own standards) doesn't need documentation. The first is maintaining a brand; the second a body.

In these examples and many others, the outcomes are similar but the reasons are different. Diffuse admiration and narrow respect can both be powerful motivators.

So, why choose narrow respect over diffuse admiration? One could argue it's more sustainable, as admiration is easily manufactured and fleeting. You could also argue that it's tiresome to pursue admiration from strangers, as the threshold for what impresses them keeps rising. Yesterday's "in the know" becomes today's baseline. The crowd is never satisfied because it has no memory and no loyalty. You're only as good as your last performance, which means you're perpetually working for an audience that will forget you the moment you stop entertaining them.

But more fundamentally I think pursuing broad admiration is a losing game. Although dopamine pathways would have you think receiving diffuse approval will fill some void, our deepest need is not for approval or admiration, but for respect. We want to be known and appreciated, not just liked. And respect is surfaced through consistent behavior over time, not virality in a moment.

As you get older, your surface area of earnable respect increases. You encounter major decisions alongside people who you care deeply about. (And often times your decisions will affect those very people.) And that's why as you get older, you should mature—by pursuing narrow respect over diffuse admiration.