Why (if anything) is a planet clearing its neighborhood important?

[Peelee]

Frankly I hadn't even heard an American had discovered Pluto, not even ever reflected much about who discovered the other planets really. Admittedly am not American. I don't think I've ever heard a layperson express the unsatisfactory situation where maybe the "planets" aren't rigorously defined and how that interacts with other potential orbiting bodies. Literally only astronomers gave a damn and apparently they decide to flick everyone else's nose with it too. Yeah that will cause people to care more about your field, see if it does.

I think it's just the general ivory tower thing of it. Even the way it was framed here just now, "hey you laypeople, yeah you, you are too dumb to understand more than 9 planets so we made it easier for you dullards! Aren't we magnificently benevolent to you troglodytes?". Pluto was hurting no one except butt-hurt astronomers.

People are being constantly bombarded by messages experts can't be trusted anyway. Eggheads and authority are already loosing ground in today's world. So what do you do? You go full ivory tower on them. Smart move geniuses.

That is.... quite the reaction.

I personally don't care much about Pluto, or the rest of the big bodies, what winds me up good and proper is that in their haste to make Pluto not-a-planet, they rushed into a very silly definition of planet.

Let's assume, for the moment, this is accurate. So? Is it suddenly less interesting from a scientific standpoint? Is there any functional difference between calling it a "planet" as opposed to a "dwarf planet"?

Frankly, this is only an issue for some millennials and above. Something changed that some people didn't like and they got all up in arms about it. The old truism is going to comtinie as it always has: science advances one funeral at a time. No less so with public perception.