Magically, my friends and I have been transformed into The Little Guy this year.

We didn’t mean for it to happen. But somehow a lot of us have gone from perfect-toothed dynamic rising-star movers and shakers to hat-holding everymen, shaking our tiny fists at City Hall or corporate HQ. It took only a couple of months. But how?

What were the first signs? Well, the writers’ strike, certainly, which has so many of us marching in unbreakable solidarity and chanting slogans at people for whom this whole dispute just means a few extra hours in which to polish one’s polo trophies or ask the nanny to bring the kids down for an “audience.” [My conception of the very rich is weirdly frozen in some sort of 1930’s Monopoly-guy mode. I don’t know why.]

Or maybe it was my recent struggle with The Man, who turned out to be two very unhelpful women and only one actual man.

Whatever the reason, somehow my peers and I have contracted acute Lomanitis, and we seem to spend our days stammering impotently over mahogany desks at overfed figures puffing fat cigars while fiddling impatiently with their watch fobs (see above. Sorry.). Some recent examples:

My friend Todd had his work for Radar Magazine blatantly, unabashedly plagiarized by The Times of London. And then, rather than apologize, they removed it! Read the chronicle of it here, on Todd’s site, but only if you favor stories where the little guy not only trembles in righteous fury but also gets insulted for his pains.

At least we’re fighting back, we sudden lumpenproles (by the way, if you don’t have the Sudden Lümpenproles’ new album, “Predawn Mopfest,” you’re really missing something special). Oh yes, fighting back. My friend Chris recently edited this new book:

Chris fights back!

All the book’s proceeds benefit a charity called Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, whose aim is to stop developer Bruce Ratner from burying a perfectly good neighborhood under 17 new and unasked-for skyscrapers. It (the book, not the skyscrapers) features Brooklyncentric nonfiction from some of “today’s most celebrated writers.”

Though not, oddly, 10-year Brooklyn resident (and literary lion) Adam Felber. What!? Now that raises a conundrum - does that make my pal Chris simultaneously the Little Guy and the Man? Is that even possible? Is their a special yoga class that teaches you to lower your boot onto your own neck? And where do I sign up?

Chris’ class indeterminacy notwithstanding, I highly recommend the book. It’s got great writers, benefits a worthy cause, and anything that’s got Jonathan Lethem’s work in it is worth your time. And besides, through strike, fraud, and rapacious development, we little guys have to stick together - it’s our only hope for someday heartlessly oppressing other people while we laugh carelessly in our high-backed ostrich leather armchairs as we watch the good news pour out of the stock ticker through bejeweled monocles. [Again, sorry. I’ll work on that.]