throwaway876123

> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality

I would go one step further and claim that if you're not in some victim group nowadays, you just don't really "fit in". Be a victim instead and you will get all the virtue signals.

It's a devil's bargain, because being at the receiving end of virtue signals is actually pretty worthless, unless maybe you get to be a diversity hire. However, if you foster a victim identity you will underachieve because you will blame everything and everyone but yourself when things go wrong.

In the past, males in particular would be told in no unclear terms that pretty much nobody cares to hear about their problems and that they need to sort themselves out as part of becoming adults.

Today, they'll be given pills and a consultation with therapists whose education is probably nonsense.