I think it is worth breaking down status into wealth, political power and popularity.

The last can be seen as zero sum in some situations. Consider a party there are N people you could try and talk to, but only time to speak to N/2. So you have to decide which half to talk to. If you had a strange mash up party of functional programmers and 16 year old girls. I doubt you would find a linear ordering of who people wanted to talk to. You would do better to separate it into two groups, and you might find orderings there.

People want to be talked to at parties/in general because it opens up more business/research opportunities.