Is social status a real thing?
Why is it real?
Particularly, since some people may claim a status system of a different kind, but then again some may (through argumentation) recognize same status systems, then can social status systems be held as "objective"?
Whether social status is "real" would depend on the sense in which you think, say, rocks and stars are "real". There are important debates between realists and anti-realists in these questions, and there are people who occupy all four quadrants: both natural physical entities and social objects are unreal, both are real, natural objects are real and social objects are unreal, and vice-versa. In between these positions are the (perhaps more common) view that both are real, but one depends on the other and thus is "real" in derived, non-fundamental sense.
John Searle probably has the most robust realist argument; I think he gets to status in the more recent of his two books on the topic, The Construction of Social Reality. Searle's title refers to Luckmann and Berger's The Social Construction of Reality which in a sense also argues that social systems are objective although perhaps in a more radical sense than you have in mind. Ian Hacking's books are a good general introduction to the shape of the social construction debate in general.
Social status is an example of a 'language game', or a 'consensus construct'. You can claim such things are not real, but then you need some way to account for their effects.
The motivating example of a language game is a language. Is English real? Well, it exists only because people use it. It is a thing only because of its effects, and not because it has any other objective status. It is a set of rules with power. Clearly it has no power over speakers of some other language (on some other planet?) that have not encountered the English-speaking world. But that does not remove the reality that it has for us, as people who are currently using it to communicate.
Social status, had in various ways, has power over people. It gets them to do something and not something else, to respond to some demands and not others. The fact that some folks don't acknowledge the same ways of attaining or holding status is like the analogy with language.
Not all rules apply everywhere. "Down" is not a thing in space, which does not remove the reality that it has for us. To claim that 'down' means nothing attempts to ignore the power the concept has when it does apply.
Social status is very real. It is also subjective. These are not opposites.
Thoughts and beliefs are real because they affect the real world. Status is a belief, an opinion. (Anybody who argues that the real world is not real can go play somewhere else)
Status is always relative in the sense that person A only has status in the opinions of a different person, B. (Which is why it is called social status)
Person B is perfectly free to make their own rules about status or just hold opinions without considering any rules. Person C (or even person A) need not agree.
If you want to recover a semi-objective status you can say that overall social status is the SUM of everybody's individual opinions. Though this is not without its own problems.
From a biology perspective, Dominance Hierarchy is a real, objective thing.
Alpha male monkeys, their mates, and their children get the prime feeding and sleeping spots. Other monkeys defer to them to make group decisions. Lower status monkeys are picked on and harassed if they step out of line. It's possible for a monkey to improve their rank through social bonds. A great documentary that illustrates this is Monkey Kingdom.
Depends on your definition of "real".
If you follow a more theoretical branch of philosophy, the point is indeed a matter of debate. You can't touch, feel, smell, see social status.
However, if you follow the argument that what is real is what can affect other things, then social status for sure exists because it affects (e.g. your career). It is the same argument as you would use to determine if things such as "love", "honour" or even thought and plans for the future, or even memories are "real".
I haven't seen any poor person who has less than a thousand of the followers in some social network. Most of persons who has tens thousands or more followers in some social network usually are the rich and / or the powerful ones.
There is a very old research, which estimated that only 15% of the salary / income comes from the knowledge, and about 50% from the social status.
As I am always struggling with the social interaction and do not have major income, I know that well from my own experience.
But a high social status of course is more than just "pretty look", pretty looking gives only average medium status. There are the communicative people with high level of leadership, who can explain their points very well, to get a lot of the followers.
Another level comes when someone grows from the social network blogger to the media person / politician / businessman. Social network serves as a "jump start" for that. Not many are able to achieve that, though.
You cannot "opinionate" social status away, even though any individual is free to disagree with anyone's status. Consider the following social experiment: send a letter to Buckingham Palace and ask Elizabeth II. of England to reply and address you as "Your Royal Highness" in her response. Do you, or anybody else for that matter, expect there's a chance in hell she'll abide?
White privilege is status (in some circles). The feminists are fighting against lower status (seen in some circles). College education adds status (in most circles but in many revolutions the educated are killed). Love breaks down barriers, hate and insecurities enforce them. The more you love everyone as yourself, the less status will mean to you and the less it will matter to others living in a community where love prevails.
I had an English friend tell me that in America, if he wanted to go to school and get an education, everyone would encourage him to better himself. In England everyone would discourage him and shame him by saying "Don't you know your place?" Hindus have a caste system where everyone's status is determined. It is believed by a huge percentage of the population and socially enforced. I had a teacher once say that if you had to pick a HR manager, and wanted him to be unbiased, you should pick an American. They are the most likely to judge someone by that person's abilities/skills/experience instead of race, religion, sex, and other factors.
The more people believe status matters the more it matters in society as a whole. The less people care about status the less it matters.
