Okay, sounds like this was less clear than I’d hoped. I added these paragraphs to the post. Not sure if they quite answer you or Dagon’s implied question, but hopefully help a bit:
I’m writing this post because I was writing another coordination/epistemic-norms post, and I found myself wanting to write the sentence “If you do [X thing], it should be considered a bit rude. If you do [X’ worse version of X thing], it’s more rude.” And then I realized this was resting on some underlying assumptions about coordination-culture that might not be obvious to everyone. (i.e. that it’s good to have some things be considered “rude”)
I come from a game-design background. In many games, there are multiple resources, and there are multiple game-mechanics for spending those resources, or having them interact with each other. You might have life-points, you might have some kind of “money” (which can store value and then be spent in arbitrary quantities), or renewable resources (like grains that grow back every year, and spoil if you leave them too long).
Many good games have rich mechanics that you can fine-tune, to shape the player’s experience. A flexible mechanic gives you knobs-to-turn, to make some actions more expensive or cheaper.
The invention of “money” in real life was a useful coordination mechanic.
The invention of “vague social capital that you accumulate doing high status respectable things, and which you can lose by doing low status unrespectable things” predates money by a long time, and is still sometimes useful in ways that money is not.
A feeling-of-rudeness is one particular flavor of what “spending-down social capital” can feel like, from the inside of a social interaction.
I didn’t comprehend your purpose
Okay, sounds like this was less clear than I’d hoped. I added these paragraphs to the post. Not sure if they quite answer you or Dagon’s implied question, but hopefully help a bit: