What I want to clarify in this post is tooling in a more subtle way, like constantly asking for compliance, feigning confusion, things like that.
That's definitely tooling.
Don't do that though. Build people up, not bring them down. If these friends respect you, then start checking them when they tool each other. And if they try and tool you:
"Hey man get me a cup of water"
"Maybe later, so like I was saying..."
Curiosity, I see this a lot in my immediate social circle. There's a friend of mine, he means well but isn't socially calibrated. He'll say something trying to tool one of us and we just clap back and double speed to counter. It ends up backfiring on him 99% of the time. I definitely see how this works out.
Teach him. Tell him sincerely what he is doing and teach him to provide value... And chill.
Zac and Ash, so are you saying that being of an "asshole" personality type, they have the leeway to tool others and still remain relatively high status?
Depends on the personality. It would be incongruent for a loud mouthed asshole to tool someone in a smart way and vice versa.
High status?... No. Someone who brings people down will never be higher value than someone who lifts others up.
What you're doing right now is getting sucked into cognitive dissonance. Take your time to read this:
https://www.girlschase.com/content/5-way ... situations - This will help you on how to react to any kind of social challenge.
https://www.girlschase.com/content/archi ... ial-ladder - This will help you understand how the highest valuable people socialize
Slay