Actually I have been living in a shell - schizoid personality disorder - boring, lonely, and mediocre ... and fine with it.
The closest thing to a "powerful and popular" person that I've ever met were my grade-school tormentors: rich jocks. They were everything that Pook described, but it made them into pure evil.
Thus, Pook's path of power, pride, and egoism seems, to me, to be a dark and dangerous one, of risking becoming the exploiter and tormentor myself.
I'm also a filthy hater, one of the angry and envious villagers from the post.