Every social collective has its own collective ego, and academia is no exception. Outsiders may idealize academia, but since I've already left it, I'd like to confess that one of the reasons, if not the main one, for deciding to leave it, was some manifestations of its collective ego.
The most unbearable one for me was mutual instant gratifications by its members. This phenomenon called mutual instant gratifications isn't restricted to academia. You can witness it on social media platforms such as Facebook, which is why I've stopped using Facebook for active personal purposes.
Mutual instant gratifications in Israeli academia as I witnessed them among linguists took several forms. Its two manifestations especially bothered me, and I even protested publicly to those who were their habitual "perpetrators". One of the passive participants in this collective "mental ***" was kind enough to warn me. Even back then I knowingly broke one of the "sacred" rules of the collective ego of this social collective.
The first of these two most bothering manifestations of mutual instant gratifications among Israeli linguists is to publicly send private congratulations for the academic promotion of some other fellow, e.g., on a professional mailing list. Then the same chain reaction immediately starts - joining in this celebration by publicly sending private greetings.
The second concerns what must be the happient moment for many researchers, including linguists, and not only in Israel - it's when their peer-reviewed papers have finally been published. Then many of them lose no time in sending electronic copies of their just published papers to as many fellows as possible, mostly by putting all of them on the To- or Cc-line instead of the Bcc-line as the netiquette requires. Then the same public celebration errupts immediately.
Since I left all the academic mailing lists immediately after leaving academia several years ago, I've been continuously haunted by the second manifestation of the collective ego of Israeli academia. But I never imagined I would still be haunted by it even after leaving Israel. Now I realize I totally forgot this collective ego would easily transcend any national boundary.
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