This is only very loosely related to your post, but the current situation somewhat reminds me of Scott’s Cyclic Theory Of Subcultures. In that model, the sudden loss of resources available to EA might push the movement from the Growth phase into the Involution phase, so there are suddenly new incentives to critizice one another and vie for the remaining resources and status:
During this phase, a talented status-hungry young person who joins the movement is likely to expect status but not get it. The frontier is closed; there’s no virgin territory to go homesteading in. The only source of status is to seize someone else’s—ie to start a fight.
Sometimes these fights are object-level: the movement’s art is ugly, its intellectual arguments are false, its politics are unjust. But along with the object level disagreements, there are always accusations that accurately reflect status-famine, ones like “the leaders of this movement are insular and undemocratic” or “the elites don’t listen to criticism”. These accusations may or may not be true. But during the Growth phase, nobody makes them, even when they are true; during the Involution phase, people always make them, even when they aren’t.
Someone with very novel and interesting criticism might start an entirely new subculture based on their ideas; their complaints might suggest a new research direction with unexplored vistas and plenty of free energy. But more likely, they’ll have more minor criticism, and end up vying for the same pool of resources and subcultural energy, only wanting it to be their pool rather than other people’s. This person is now a counterelite (or as they used to call it, a heresiarch).
This is only very loosely related to your post, but the current situation somewhat reminds me of Scott’s Cyclic Theory Of Subcultures. In that model, the sudden loss of resources available to EA might push the movement from the Growth phase into the Involution phase, so there are suddenly new incentives to critizice one another and vie for the remaining resources and status: