The more you rely on having power/control over others -- the more immobile, brittle and lacking freedom you have. This is the truly pernicious and corrupting part about power, as appealing and as promising its allure to solve all your problems and make you happier; it takes you away from truth, beauty, personal connection and freedom.
This is why the Allied Mastercomputer (AM) in "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" has all this ability, and yet instead of innovating auspicious realities, erecting cities and creating life, it focuses all its energies on tormenting the last five survivors of the human race.
I've had ex-friends who've placed me high on their totem pole of respect, with one in particular admiring how I "carried so much status and respect among peers." Later, it always turns out they were people I don't like and can't stand in the slightest, who leave me in misery. It is for this reason that I shy away from MrBeast and other "content creators" who are shallow by virtue of sucking up to their two zillion subscribers with the same zeal of an OnlyFans attention whore.
The kind of people who pay tribute and respects, honour a long line of established tradition and history, name-drop prominent friends and hang out in comforting cliques -- are the same retards who ex-communicate you for deviance, undermine your attempts to express real originality and generally repress your inclination to pursue the unexplored frontiers. Politics and bureaucracy and just a general low-level malevolence which emerges out of a tremendous, unspoken sense of insecurity.. a destructive competitiveness.
Life around them turns into a stage of sucking ass, kissing ass, wiping ass, slapping ass-cheeks and taking justified dumps on people. The more you are friends with these types, the more you end up slowing down.
If it seems like you're dealing with someone who comes off as stupid, and yet they succeed in frustrating you to the point of having your blood boil, the most effective viewpoint is to realise that they are far more intelligent than you give them credit for.. at least, when it comes to leveraging your frailties.
The fool's errand is to try winning arguments against these types of people, let alone contesting their power on their turf. When it comes to power and control, they are dangerously intelligent and shrewd -- when it comes to beauty, innovation and any notion of individuality, they are just blindly unreceptive and Stupid with a capital S. The battle between the rock that stays put for stability and tradition, and air rising to the heavens.
If this sounds like a paradox or a Zen koan, I have no better way to put it for now. Intelligence is not the ability to verbalize stuff (the paradox of nerds who are boorish in many other regards), it is the general quantum-like tendency to be receptive towards a given direction, whether it's in the pursuit of individuality, self-hood, and higher levels of life, or the more common route of conformity, hive-mindism, going with the current trends, etc. The former is going West, while the latter is East-spin.. the tendency of gravity to drag everything down to the ground; the will of Satan who wants to drag people down towards misery to share his pain. This is something that goes beyond conscious control, let alone biology and genetics -- it veers towards the unspeakable realm of probability, inexplicable freak spooks and twists of fate, etc. As if there were spirits beyond the visible, humanly-observable realm who have an influence on reality.
Anyways, what you do with fools who disrespect you when it comes to your personal endeavours is terminate them.. and keep moving at all costs, before you end up losing your sanity by staying put, trying to put up a futile fight against the Door of the Law. Whatever happens, you musn't hate those who really seek to hold you in contempt. Your emotional wounds can act as a doorway to the Dark Side, a foothold for the Devil to grab onto your soul and claim you as his.