Something is late stage when everything is done for perception first and foremost.

The kayfabe overwhelms the ground truth.

Everyone is hyper aware of how everyone else perceives everything.

A Stanford ish late stage vibe:

"I need to be a Google APM or I'm going to die"

"I started 5 clubs in high school" (but didn't love any of them)

"I've got a startup on the side" that they never actually do anything with and then when they get into McKinsey they "shut it down".

When you live in an area with an egregore you don't resonate with, it's easy to not engage, to see it for a petty status game.

But if you're fully embedded in the system, that petty status game becomes significantly, existentially real.

And if you aren't yet embedded in the system but are next to it, and it's an egregore that is roughly aligned with what you value, you'll over time get sucked into it and fully captured by it.

When you are captured by a system and compelled to optimize for perceptions within it you cannot be fully authentic.