I remember some stupid movie I saw back in the 90s. My son was like 12 and we sat through this thing about a volcano going off in Southern California. I *believe* the movie was called Volcano, but not interested in looking it up. This movie was one bad scene after another. I wanted to see total annihilation, and what I got was a continuous montage of 'every character gets a scene of selfless heroism'-type of bleh. The scene that actually made my 12 year old son laugh was at the end where they show everybody covered in volcanic dust and this little kid on screen says (paraphrasing here), "look...we all look the same now". That isn't what made my kid laugh...he looked at me like, "Huh?". So I told him it was a reference to race and status. "Huh?". "Black, White, Rich, Poor". He gave me blank look where I wasn't sure if he understood or not...then he rolled his eyes, groaned, and laughed for about five minutes.

Symbolism only works if you have the mindset to recognize a symbol as status.

For me, it's a star in my avatar. For others, it is a sign that the terrorists are winning.