The Dark Side of the Internet — big fish/small pond syndrome

There are plenty of people in life who act like big fish in a small pond. Some really are, while others just act that way.

Pre-Internet days, all the real big fish in small ponds could do, a fair amount of the time, was "suffer away." Those around them might have to suffer to, and this was the case in spades for people who thought they were big fish in small ponds, while not necessarily actually being so.

Well, the Internet has changed all that and not necessarily or always for the better.

I think the evolutionary biologist cum Gnu Atheist activist P.Z. Myers is a good example of this.

To me, he seems like a decent academic biologist. That said, "decent" could be seen as damning with faint praise. It's not that, but there is an element of the scare quote to it, I freely admit.

I follow physics and cosmology/astronomy the most as far as academic sciences, so I'm not an expert, but, I think "decent" is about his level.

He's at the University of Minnesota-Morris, which isn't Harvard or even the UM main campus. And, he's old enough that he may now be facing up to the fact that UM-Morris is where the rest of his academic career plays out.

So, whether rightfully or not (and, I am thinking as much "not" as "rightfully") he's got a good case of the big fish, small pond syndrome. So what does he do? Gets more involved, and more involved, in Gnu Atheism, to a point of becoming one of its "Four Horsemen."

Some people may have legitimate new ideas they bring into play with finding or creating new cyberponds to stretch their fins and gills. Others, per the old bromide of "wherever you go, there you are," bring THAT to cyberswimming.