I'm no exception to your rule, but are you really so confident that all of humanity shares the same appetite for status signalling? I'm not a particularly social person, but even I can think of some counterexamples in my personal life. Obviously, we can also consider most of the extremely wealthy (Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc) as well.
My income has recently 5x'd and I already was making over 6 figs.
I'm doing the opposite of status signaling. I'm hiding my wealth. I don't need people to know I just bought an expensive computer or 3D printer. Heck, that makes me a target.
It also alienates friends who are insecure. I already ran into this when I graduated college, got a real job, and my blue collar high school friends got weird about it.
Heck, I knew I was going to be very well off. When I had my home built, I made sure the front-most peak of the house was on the first floor rather than the second floor. I didn't want my home to appear grand.
I want to object to what GP says, but whenever I think about it, I realize that I too am evidence in favor. Different methods, different groups. Some spending more of effort than money. Some substituting an idea for a group. But the need to belong somewhere - that is common to all.
I'm confident that all humans enjoy status. I suspect this is an innate characteristic of social creatures. Less than basic desires like food or reproduction but significant nevertheless.
The hypothesis about status signalling is more difficult because many individuals acquire status by rejecting conventional status objects. Many people respect Socrates, AOC and Gandhi in large part because of their modest lifestyles. It's possible to describe their behaviour as buying status via the opportunity cost of other consumption, but I worry the opportunity cost approach makes my theory too overpowered to the point of being unfalsifiable.
