'k, I just went and read the original post, or at least, the post you quoted from, and am blinking lots: And finally: there is a hierarchy in inter-actions which means someone who is well known to a group is facing a room full of strangers. You may see them as a celebrity. They see themselves as someone desperate for a familiar face. I have lost count of the number of 'arrogant' authors, editors and academics I have come across who turn out to be really lovely people when not surrounded by thirty people they have never met before.

Um, I can't speak for all others by any means, but I always viewed those thirty - or 300, or 3,000, etc. - people-I'd-never-met-before as either potential acolytes, cattle to be manipulated, or both.

Mind you, putting me in front of a room of exclusively female strangers would jam my circuits a bit. Women en masse are for the most part odd, empty creatures. And they smell funny. Ew.