Impro — Status Tricks (book notes) (2026-06-14, 18:32)
Six short status-signaling cues jotted from [[Book Notes|Keith Johnstone’s Impro]]. The classic Impro claim is that every social interaction is a status transaction; these are the body-language tells the book uses to make that visible. Notes are deliberately compact — six bullets, no commentary — so the cues stay as a checklist the user can scan before a high-stakes social moment (interview, meetup intro, on-camera).
impro book - status tricks
- keep head still while talking: high status
- use “er” at sentence start: low status
- use “er” in middle of sentence: a bit stronger than low
- break eye contact & look back: low status
- touch head and face: low status
- slow movements: high status
Related
- Sitting in the audience and playing my part — the same playing my part axis the Impro book turns into a generative principle (every encounter is a status scene; you can pick a register); these tricks are the operational vocabulary that thought-page implies.
- 2026-06-02-Rubiks cube drop and social awkwardness on the train — the being read wrong worry the cube-drop names; Impro’s answer is that the read is built from these specific cues, not vibes, so they’re learnable.
- 2026-06-10-Barbers breakup advice - friends agreed with the joke — the joke-didn’t-land social-calibration thread; Impro’s frame would re-read it as a status mismatch between teller (high-status play) and table (low-status read).
- 2026-05-26-Job interview - tech skills, visa, salary expectations — concrete next moment to apply these (Japanese-recruiter interview register). Keep head still + slow movements are easy quick wins on camera.
- 2026-06-14-DevOps and incident management at LBBW - CV prep memo 1 — the CV-prep voice-memo set, recorded the same day for interview practice; pairs with these cues as the content layer to their delivery layer.
- 2026-06-12-Evolving beyond hangovers - becoming my best self — the social-presence-as-regulatory-system second-channel theory; Impro’s claim that status is played rather than had is the mechanical version of the level-X character aspiration.
- Book Notes — index of currently-reading / done books; Impro belongs in the Done / Currently reading slot once a fuller note exists.