Ok, so what is Tall Poppy Syndrome?
It’s a commonly used term, particularly in Australia, but also in New Zealand and maybe a bit less in Great Britain.
tall poppy (NOUN, Australian, NZ, informal)
A person who is conspicuously successful and whose success frequently attracts envious hostility.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from an obsolete sense of poppy ‘a conspicuous or prominent person or thing’, probably with reference to Tarquinius Superbus, a king of ancient Rome who demonstrated how to deal with potential enemies by cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden (Livy 1.54.6).
tall poppy syndrome (NOUN, Australian, NZ, informal)
A perceived tendency to discredit or disparage those who have achieved notable wealth or prominence in public life.
Courtesy Oxford Dictionaries.com
Tall poppy and tall poppy syndrome are well-attested Australianisms and refer to a tendency in Australian society to try and cut down people who are considered to be too successful or prominent (cutting the tall poppies down to size). Australians generally don’t like others to do too well, or (to use another popular Australian term) to ‘big-note’ themselves.
Oxford Dictionaries, Blog.
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2017/06/21/tall-poppy-syndrome/
In a 2015 article titled “Crab Mentality, Cyberbullying and ‘Name and Shame’ Rankings,” Simon Spacey of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, calls it crab mentality. Spacey states,
“In modern day academia, secretly assassinating your peers is not necessarily performed the same way it was in king Tarquin’s day. The growth in importance of social media sites and the simplicity with which anyone can create an account that is not associated with their real identity makes it easier for an attacker to perform assassination through electronic rather than physical means. This form of anonymous electronic assassination is called cyberbullying (Li, 2007; NetSafe, n.d.) and like the assassinations of king Tarquin’s time, the harm caused by cyberbullying can include the death of young and old alike (e.g. Bailey, 2014; “Charlotte Dawson’s death throws spotlight on cyber bullying”, 2014; NOBullying.com, 2013) but does not need to actually kill for its perpetrators to gain advantage in their peer groups as discussed in Vance (2012).”
I have observed that ever since the Lawrence Krauss accusations of sexual misconduct, including a virtual condemnation of the entire atheist/skeptic movement as misogynistic, these social media attacks have ramped up. Some folks seemed to feel quite empowered to attack what some might consider the “old guard” of skeptics and atheists, demanding that they immediately denounce Krauss and disassociate themselves completely from him. (In fact, if they would go on YouTube and ceremoniously burn all his books, that would be even better.) I read an article which described how poor Matt Dillahunty (Atheist Experience) was relentlessly pursued and attacked on Facebook.
Similarly, people were attacking Sam Harris even though he made a statement at an event Krauss was supposed to attend and kindly said these are serious allegations and to give it some time.
These tall poppy trolls seemed to be out for blood. Nothing anyone said was to their satisfaction. Then they started attacking Krauss’s wife on Twitter. I don’t want to reveal her Twitter name here because she has been so mercilessly mistreated.
And lately people have been going after prominent skeptics like Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose and the attacks are not intellectual in nature—they are personal and nasty. Some of the attacks seem like little more than base jealousy, an attempt to attack a more prominent thinker to gain attention for themselves. But again… not in an intellectual fashion so much as in a, well… kind of creepy, kind of trash-talking, kind of overtly hostile, kind of demanding and four-letter-wordish sort of a way.
But it’s not just a single person– it’s a little online mob of like-minded “thinkers” that don’t like some of the criticisms they’re hearing from these rationalists, who, by the way, have earned their esteem through hard work, study and life experience. One fellow, for example, was blocked due to poor behavior, and kept making new Twitter accounts to harass these folks, feeling they were obligated to answer to him.
Well, I don’t know the answer here. Just an observation. I guess that old saying, “don’t feed the trolls,” fits here. The tall poppies will be fine and the block feature on social media still works.
For more about Lawrence Krauss and his personal response/statement:
Lawrence Krauss: Dissecting the Buzzfeed Article on Sexual Misconduct
A short video on Tall Poppy Syndrome I found interesting is here: