You've been in AAdvantage since 1996, you've been on FT since 2001, and yet you have only ~750K lifetime miles?

You do realize that without spending much money at all, if you had been accumulating AA miles from non-flying as fast as you could (but only in cases where it didn't cost you additional money), I bet you could have 250K additional lifetime miles, be lifetime Gold, and not have this problem.

Until Dec 1 of last year, AA counted all miles from all sources (credit card spend, credit card signup, pudding, yogurt, hotels and car rentals and bonuses on same, subscribing and unsubscribing to AA emails, etc, etc) toward lifetime status.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps you didn't feel the need for any of the Gold benefits before this. (I'm 6', and thus wanted Gold as soon as MRTC went away, since only Gold let me reserve exit rows ahead of time.) But had you gotten to one million lifetime miles before Dec 1, 2010, you would not be having this problem right now. (And had you gotten to just under one million lifetime miles before Dec 1, 2010, you could still get to lifetime gold with a small number of flights once -- not repeating every year to requalify.) But if you've only got ~750K, then with the Million Miler program the way it works now, you won't get to lifetime gold unless you fly another 250K (no bonuses count!), which sounds like well over a decade of flying AA for you.

I've only been flying AA since 2004 (but on FT a couple years before that), and yet I already got to 2MM (I got to 1MM in 3.5 years, and 2MM in 7 years). But over half of that was on non-flying-related partner miles earnings, and another 500K or so was from bonuses on flying (rather than the base flying miles). I estimate at least 400K of that was just from applying for Citi AA cards over and over and over again (during the time that you could apply for 2 every 60ish days and get the bonus on each). Again, I came to that party late compared to many others, and still I was able to earn that much.

The point is, I started on the liftetime status quest because it was possible to do with non-flying activity, and because I wanted exit row seats. Then a couple years ago it suddenly meant that I wouldn't have to pay baggage fees while non-status people did. And now it suddenly means I can reserve most seats on the plane while apparently non-status people can't.

Unforunately, it sounds like you realized that status gets you a lot only after status became much harder to get.

That's why I feel FlyerTalk is best used if you inquisitevely look into what's possible to get the max out of your travel activiies, not just if you come here when you want to complain about how something works.