It does seem to come down to the truism "if you have to tell people you're powerful, you aren't."
Like, speaking from experience both online and to a degree offline, that's... really the lynchpin here. Regardless of how all powerful you are (or think you are), you are still an individual surrounded by countless other individuals, all embroiled in their own lives and in charge of their own decisions. Making yourself feared is easy; but much like an abusive parent demanding unwavering respect from a child, doesn't actually net you anything more than the appearance of respect that gets dropped the moment they have a chance to get away from you. Online in turn, between adults, 'the moment they have a chance to get away from you' is right from the get go, and acting like a Saturday morning cartoon villain demanding worship from strangers is mostly going to get people to go away and not invite you to the next meetup.
Of course much of it is power fantasy. But if you can't break kayfabe from that to pull back and talk to people like equals, that's a weakness on your own part - in many ways it makes you far lesser than Joe Average who's perfectly content not being worshipped by a city full of people they don't even know.
Oh, but what would I know. My only claim to power is that some people call me countess. <3
it's up there with guys who make their character macro and also a cop for most shitty genre of macro to me but for that same basic reason, having no idea how to be respected besides trying to put in the (rancid) vibes of authority and demanding to be respected.
