So if you want to have a group that does X, you associate with people who give social status to people working on X
You are glossing over the practice of giving social status. In real life, as you said, it is basically public displays of admiration (friendship is a bit different). So you are going to build a community with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people. Presumably if you stop admiring, you are no longer welcome in the community. That doesn't strike me as a way to build a healthy community -- there are obvious failure modes looming.
with the inclusion criterion of being willing to publicly admire a particular set of people
That isn't quite what Viliam is proposing. He says (emphasis mine):
you associate with people who give social status to people working on X
so what membership in this community commits you to is not admiring specific people but admiring people who do specific things, whoever those people are.
This still seems kinda dangerous, but I don't think it has the same failure modes.
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