A genuine, not sarcastic, question.

Why does this matter? Does it have broad or important implications?

Does it matter?

Two questions:

Assuming that we would want to try to engineer societal changes to reduce stress related to status based inequality, would the goal be to reduce the inequality, or to somehow make that inequality less stress inducing?

And, to partially address that question while asking the second, don't we have to be concerned that moving too far in the direction of sub-cultural focus might encourage some skewed valuations? Shirky may be showing strength of character and charming insouciance in his preference for the Night Elf over Tiger despite the New York Times, but could we say the same thing if he showed the same preferential ranking of the WOWer over microfinance majordomo Mohammad Yunus, Nobel Prize and good works notwithstanding?

The fact that Tila Tequila and Grand Theft Auto exist is a corrosive thing brought about by online social networks. Gossip, scandal, and the lack of social boundaries (like this youtubing of "fire in the hole" soda tosses at fast food workers) is absolutely atrocious. We simply don't treat each other with much respect.

But when it comes to politics it's a plus. "Blissing out" on TPM or Kos is helpful for party unity, fund raising, and makes us more likely to "increase our sense of justice" and act on it locally.

At the end of the day, though, self-esteem is inextricably bound to being in groups of living, breathing people. No getting away from that.

I hate to go all Maslov on a thesis as entertaining as this one, but isn't the effect of multiple ranking structures going to depend crucially on the rest of the social and economic surround? If Tiger Woods ever gets high blood pressure, he's unlikely to die from it unintentionally, for example, but the list of well-regarded bloggers who don't have consistent access to effective medical care seems to get longer and longer. And if the night elf's company downsizes, all that expertise and social capital isn't so likely to translate into lunch and dinner on a regular basis.

The stress-reducing value of multiple ranking systems isn't entirely trumped by such prosaic concerns as food, health and shelter (see starving artists everywhere), but I'd hate to bet the other way, at least in a society as uncohesive as ours. Because I would rather claw my eyes ought than have dinner with someone whose crowning achievement was become a level 75 night elf rogue, and they would likely rather do the same than have dinner with someone who still hangs out on usenet. (Another way of saying that, more in Ellen's terms, is that meta-ranking of status dimensions is going to tend to align with the external social and economic ranks of the participants, so that with the usual few exceptions being poor and lower-class is still going to be damn stressful.)

This discussion seems to me in many ways a

I think virtual realities are over hyped. Many of our basic and necessary human functions and needs can never be virtual, like eating and breathing. These necessities and so on are also the neurogenesis of our essential nature. In our ancestral environment, which we are the product of, food gathering led to cooperation, kinship, and social structures and other derivative activities that have become "who we are". Certainly some of these elements can improvised and even replaced with virtual environments, but I think we'll hit a brick wall sooner or later. Already we see some "pathological" results of internet usage such as addictions, I'd say mood and learning disorders too.
It is accepted scientific fact that our brains have a high degree of plasticity, and when we jump from one stimulus to another on the web, we are employing new strategies of learning that encourage new neuro-circuitry which accommodates the new regime. This is really adaptive to an extent, and that extent or brick wall is when it conflicts with hard realities that will always be there. One way around this might be to hybridize the species with cybernetic components. This would probably come from military industrial R&D, to application, then handed off to a shell or allied production unit for mass consumption. My guess is that it would fall best into the purview of telecommunication producing entities as the early application might be reliant on wireless I/O interfaces.

If we have a way of increasing people's satisfaction with their activities in flexible social spaces, is that a net gain, because it increases satisfaction, or is it a net loss, because blissing out on our local social contexts lowers our sense of injustice, in a way that makes us less likely to fight against it?"

Seems that most of the comments above are still debating whether social software does increase satisfaction--which, granted, is yet to be proven. But if you take it as a premise that it does, then I think the next step is to find out what does make people fight against injustice. And, moreover, win.

It might be the case that self-satisfaction is a necessary condition for being an effective activist.