The status games you're powerful in tend to be invisible to you.

With status games you aren't high-status in, you can intuitively feel that you're at the bottom of the totem pole.

You can feel the frustration of running into a hurricane-force headwind.

Maybe you give up and say "this is a silly status game that I don't care about" and decide to ignore it.

But in some cases, everyone else will compel you to play that status game, and you'll have to escape the context if you can't play it well.

Caricatures of industry/city dominant status games:

Finance / New York: money

Media / Los Angeles: fame

Academia / Cambridge: citations

Tech / Bay Area: impact

When you move to a city whose status totem pole aligns with your own, you'll say "this one doesn't have a status game, it's just good people doing good things"

When you have a strong tailwind, it just feels like you're a faster runner.

It feels totally natural, like you're floating.