I love your post, TY. I once attended a coctail party for a retiring Penn Law School Dean. Every alumni and faculty speaker including the retiree did nothing but drop names of other people from Penn who had told them how great they were during their lives.
I was once at a deposition in which a penn graduate attorney with no prompting, went into a 20 minute story about how other great attorneys (who I’d never heard of) had once told him how great he was, even surpassing another great Penn attorney (who I’d never heard of).
These people are delusional but they use these connections to cash in big time.