Scott Sumner eloquently stretches the limits of our empathy:

[A]s you become better known, you don’t seem to have any more influence
than before.  I used to wonder why Krugman always seemed to downplay
his influence.  He’s got the best blogging gig in the world, at the
NYT.  He might be the favorite economist of the Democrats who now run
Washington.  He’s got his Nobel Prize.  He must feel like he’s on top
of the world, the James Cameron of blogging.  But as the Chinese like
to say, “Desire is a valley that can never be filled.”  You always want
more influence.  I can now see how Krugman would be frustrated that no
one paid attention to his argument that we needed more stimulus.  So
imagine how un-influential I feel, despite my minor success this year.

Which reminds me of my favorite symbolic academic victory: Quoting Denethor’s suicide oration from LOTR in Rationality and Society.

“I
would have things as they were in the days of my life,” answered Denethor,
“and in the days of my long-fathers before me: to be the Lord of this City
in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and
no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught:
neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.”