Signaling, not signaling, or counter-signaling

Cowen has a blog on counter-signaling this morning:

The classic case[in counter-signaling] is the rich man who dresses like a bum - he has no one he needs to please. Casual dress signals the very high level of his status and his absence of a boss. ...... Top nerd programmers often don't wear ties. Truly beautiful women might deliberately dress down.

Usually the mid-level guys tend to engage in signaling by dress code or titles on their cards. The juniors don't have anything to show off, and there is no needs for the top guns to signal. That reminds me of a old Chinese saying: "整瓢水不荡半瓢水荡". This is meant to teach people to be modest, as it's intended this way by my Mom when I was a little boy. But I guess counter-signaling is much more sophisicated than that: they still want to signal, but knowing that the straight signaling would backfire, they choose to signal the opposite.

I wonder if someone can truely stay away from signaling, and counter-signaling.