9 ms·

The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About

57 points by bootload 11y ago

veddox 11y ago
> The authors of the paper assert that we are now in a culture that valorizes victimhood. An interesting observation. I have never thought about it that way before, but it seems plausible. What do others think about this statement? (Please make sure you read the context, though...)
- the-dude 11y ago
  I did not read TFA cause I hate this capitalization of a title.
- xivzgrev 11y ago
  I think that's too strong of a statement. Victims aren't considered heroes. Rather, social media enables broader transmissions of stories, and people connect with certain stories, so people playing victim card may receive sympathy, possibly empathy, but not made into a hero. Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero.
  - barry-cotter 11y ago
    > Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero. Asking an administrator to fire someone who "makes you feel unsafe" is definitely doing something. They're not a hero.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Well jezebel declared someone that read during Donal Trump rally a hero for the act of reading. I guess hero is not an extremely hard to obtain status nowadays.
- hliyan 11y ago
  I think it valorizes suffering. That's hardly new to humanity, but I think we've hit upon a new medium and a format to do it in the form of the micro-complaint. Edit: precisely this: "Irritations that the passage of time may have soothed can, in the moment, be immediately expressed to an audience."
- s_kilk 11y ago
  An interesting article on the topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...
zensavona 11y ago
I wonder if this (and other things like it) is just a product of human beings being very prone to ideological influence/groupthink and the internet providing an effective medium to transfer that? Consider a publication with 2m+ hits per month on their website that posts about how outrageous it is that people "Never Wonder Why Tampons Aren’t in Men’s Restrooms"[1] and the crowd cheers. The question I wonder is "How did these people get where they are now, to be outraged by this?", and I think the answer is incremental internet influence. [1] http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexism/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexis...
- eertami 11y ago
  >Cissexism is pretty much unchecked cis privilege or an otherwise shoddy awareness of the social monopoly on binary gender. rolls eyes Fuckin' Poe's law.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Hardly a satire - more probably markov chains CS101 homework ... Sadly EF is serious site and not affiliated with the onion.
  - kefka 11y ago
    I'd also think that it's also Sturgeon's Law. Except >99.9%
- vlehto 11y ago
  That particular example probably has lot more nuanced that this general phenomena of people complaining about petty things. Trans people have valid concerns. They also have huge problems with prioritization, awareness, organization of their movement etc. So they use feminist organizations as a way to get some of those. But feminists are not very good with most of that stuff either. And feminist want to use trans as excuse to further their own political agendas. Then there is this idea that sympathy is underplayed in society because it's womens strength and there was/is patriarchy etc. So the feminist movement is pouring elevated amounts of compassion to random directions, while being completely blind to others. Add some confused teenagers to that mix and voila.
chipsy 11y ago
Protest was once a thing that was mostly practiced on a local level, within the family and church, and subject to the constraints of small groups. It is now fully secularized and pushed into the hands of the masses. There is a subculture for everyone. And this works against "strong and silent". Strong and silent is not particularly noble in practice - it's a self-sacrificing game theoretical strategy. To take the upper hand in social situations, you avoid showing vulnerability and instead consistently display strength. For any problem someone cares about, you will show that you don't have to care, that you'll soak up the consequences rather than try to help. For any threat presented, you shrug it off or escalate until they cave in. Then everyone else has to bend to your wishes if they want your cooperation. The ideal strong and silent person is psychopathic. Most people trying to follow it tear themselves up to do so. The alternative is to allow the small complaint, to whine a little bit about how something wasn't right today. Because you have a subculture to validate you, your feelings become "reality" in that you can have an ongoing conversation about it instead of being told to shut up. On balance, a good thing for every underrepresented idea under the sun. What we don't know how to deal with yet is when this turns into a social media mob; the new face of the manipulator is someone who points the subculture at a target and says "their fault; go get 'em." But - my conjecture is that eventually, most people burn out on this kind of radicalization. So then, are we getting better? Will Endless September come to a conclusion? Stay tuned, I guess...
anon4 11y ago
My favourite hashtag this year is #NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay
jacquesm 11y ago
People even complain about complaining in the New York Times.
rtl49 11y ago
At the risk of "microcomplaining," I'd like to deride this as yet another thoughtless, substance-free article from the NYT. With an amusing lack of self-awareness, a non-issue is identified (as a "seismic shift," no less) and connected with unrelated social phenomena using misinterpretations of the available evidence, many of which, conveniently, have also been described in other hyperlinked NYT articles. If you believe this is a new phenomenon, I invite you to read just about any novel written during the Victorian era. If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class, I think you will take issue with the thrust of this article. As for the implications of social media, that it can amplify certain aspects of human behavior is such a humdrum, "middle-brow" observation that I'm surprised this wasn't written by Thomas Friedman.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  The letters columns of news papers have been fun of micro complaints since time began.
- hashkb 11y ago
  Sounds like a macrocomplaint about microphenomena? If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class I think this is a little different; a dinner party presumably is full of people who want to listen to each other talk. (And novels are generally more thoughtfully prepared than tweets.) I don't know if it's a seismic shift, but anecdotally I can say that my microcomplaints around the dinner table don't get likes like Kanye and Kim's tweets do. Edit: something about the fine line between comedy and whining.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    I agree the situation isn't directly analogous, though presumably one only reads updates from people whom one wishes to follow. I was trying to suggest that, with respect to this particular issue, social media has simply amplified a human tendency that has existed historically. In other words, it hasn't produced some "emergent" phenomenon that merits special consideration, as this article suggests.
- 11y ago
eep_opp 11y ago
This has been a strange year. Some people that pointed out "victim culture" were demonized for it earlier this year. It's strange to see that the idea has caught on. The 'victimhood' culture was only a very small minority of people found online that praised each other for things like being neurodivergent and handed out encouragement for not seeking medical help. It was crazy to see ideas like 'manspreading' being taken seriously outside of those (not so small after all) communities. Have they already overstayed their welcome? The terrible part is that some legitimate complaints are being mistaken for the usual whine.
- omginternets 11y ago
  > manspreading Was this really taken seriously outside of the communities you're referring to? I got the sense that an overwhelming majority of people rolled their eyes.
  - eep_opp 11y ago
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-manspreading-on-new-york-city-subways.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-mansp...
    - omginternets 11y ago
      These men are impolite -- I'll agree to that -- but how rich and decadent does a society have to become to waste public resources on impoliteness? Just ask a motherf*@&er to move. It's what we do here in Paris, and 99% of the time, people are embarrassed and compliant when you call them out. But noooooo, let's all act like babies and tweet about how the literally the whole world is oppressing us. I wish I could ship these people to Syria and show them some real oppression.
      - kelukelugames 11y ago
        One of my co-workers bragged about purposely siting next to manspreaders. She was really proud of it. I guess she thought it was part of the fight for equal rights? I don't know, I'm so confused by this world sometimes.
WalterBright 11y ago
When my father returned home from his combat tour in WW2, he was bemused by the trivial things that people complained about. He was like "you're not going to die tomorrow, what are you complaining about?"
- gadders 11y ago
  I remember a clip from The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch where he was complaining to his Mother about how hard his phd was and she said "Yes, dear, but at your age your Father was fighting the Nazis."
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Reversing the 'others have it worse' to 'others have it better' is fun to show why the reasoning doesn't hold. For example: Some people are born into wealth, so you can't ever say anything is easy to do because you aren't born into wealth.
- veddox 11y ago
  Having grown up in a Third World country, I am oftentimes amused/annoyed by the seeming insignificance of "problems" people in the West complain about. Although the longer I live here, the more I find myself doing the same... Raised standards lead to raised expectations.
forlulz 11y ago
Back in the UK, somewhat relevant: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/16/lets-not-whinge-at-waiters http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/16/lets-not...
moron4hire 11y ago
We are a society that is addicted to outrage. I don't begrudge people being outraged at things, but it's not a terribly helpful position and it does tend to amplify the exposure of the thing that is outraged over far beyond what it deserves to receive. For example, this stupid Starbucks "Red Cups" issue. It's probably just a handful of idiots who don't even understand their own ideology who are complaining about these cups. And I personally would never have known about the whole issue if it weren't for people in my Twitter stream complaining about people complaining about red cups. How many of those people who are now complaining about the cups learned about the issue from people they know who complained about people complaining about the cups? It's like some kind of hamfisted, Saturday morning special on intolerance or something, like one of those old Star Trek episodes where some people had half of their face black and other people had half of their face white, or vise versa. We've socialized ourselves into believing that we must social-media-comment on every issue to make sure everyone knows where we stand, to create proof that we still maintain our standing within our in-crowds. It's exactly like school-children jumping in to mob bully someone. We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work. We can't broker any level of disagreement, because that would call into question whether or not we're BFFs. It's nothing new. Remember people tying yellow ribbons around their trees during Desert Storm? Same thing. It's easier to retweet than it is to accept that you can't do anything about an issue.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work. That one sentence explained a whole lot to me about the culture of victimhood, microaggressions, and the like. Brilliant.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
It takes much less energy to be negative than positive.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Maybe to be mildly negative. To be outraged, though, takes enormous energy. Unless the offense is actually worthy of the outrage, it's a waste of time and energy.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    I have to disagree. When one is negative, one can find communities of other people just as negative about something. One can then feed on their energy, so one doesn't have to expend as much. Over time (even in a short period of time) there's a group of outraged individuals who've gotten there rather easily. You almost never see similarly charged, overly happy communities (outside of the potheads - just kidding). I think the reason is, it's way too easy for someone to come in and spoil everything by starting something negative. Negativity is like a disease that just spreads and consumes.
bitwize 11y ago
I think if you complain about "microaggression", it's automatically a microcomplaint and can gleefully be forwarded to /dev/null.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  One of my co workers wears a gray hoodie every day, but is the only person that constantly gets told that she doesn't look like a dev. Just happens to be a black woman. Seems pretty annoying to me.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    It could well be annoying, but if she produces good code and gets accepted as a dev (and gets paid the same, etc.) it doesn't rise above the level of annoyance. Me, I'm annoyed that I look like everybody's nerdy whiteboy dev stereotype. I'm a grown-ass man. Yes, I can see that R-rated movie; I actually remember when PG-13 wasn't a thing. No, I don't have a student ID; college was a long-ass time ago and I'm glad it's over.
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      Wow. Your struggles sound oppressive. How do you overcome these daily challenges to self-esteem and sense of belonging?
javajosh 11y ago
The real sea-change is a steep decline of self-restraint as a core value within power structures. The powerful, particularly on the right, have learned that self-restraint, shame, remorse, empathy are unnecessary and even damaging. They have learned to do something that came naturally to their aristocratic forebears: to actively eliminate such feelings as a weak distraction from the correct use of power. Stephen Colbert made a career lampooning this change. "If you are in power, and someone speaks up: Don't admit mistakes. Don't apologize. Don't defend yourself. This opens you up to unnecessary liability. People are self-interested sharks, and more often than not if you take any of these actions, this will just be like blood in the water. They will balloon their concern out of proportion and take a huge, unjust advantage of you. So just ignore it." - What GWB might have said with a straight face. When those in power start adopting this attitude, the powerless lose what little power they had to "shame" a leader into simply doing the right thing. The powerless lose all respect for the powerful, and it is only through the unflappable loyalty of security forces that the powerful remain in power doing those times. At least in a democracy we have a chance of occasionally flushing out arrogant, disconnected power-mongers without violence - but in many cases there is no such mechanism. Anyway, no it's not about victimhood, it's a (possibly preemptive) reaction to the loss of self-restraint among the institutionally powerful.

57 points by bootload 11y ago

> The authors of the paper assert that we are now in a culture that valorizes victimhood. An interesting observation. I have never thought about it that way before, but it seems plausible. What do others think about this statement? (Please make sure you read the context, though...)

the-dude 11y ago
I did not read TFA cause I hate this capitalization of a title.
xivzgrev 11y ago
I think that's too strong of a statement. Victims aren't considered heroes. Rather, social media enables broader transmissions of stories, and people connect with certain stories, so people playing victim card may receive sympathy, possibly empathy, but not made into a hero. Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero.
- barry-cotter 11y ago
  > Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero. Asking an administrator to fire someone who "makes you feel unsafe" is definitely doing something. They're not a hero.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Well jezebel declared someone that read during Donal Trump rally a hero for the act of reading. I guess hero is not an extremely hard to obtain status nowadays.
hliyan 11y ago
I think it valorizes suffering. That's hardly new to humanity, but I think we've hit upon a new medium and a format to do it in the form of the micro-complaint. Edit: precisely this: "Irritations that the passage of time may have soothed can, in the moment, be immediately expressed to an audience."
s_kilk 11y ago
An interesting article on the topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...

zensavona 11y ago

I wonder if this (and other things like it) is just a product of human beings being very prone to ideological influence/groupthink and the internet providing an effective medium to transfer that? Consider a publication with 2m+ hits per month on their website that posts about how outrageous it is that people "Never Wonder Why Tampons Aren’t in Men’s Restrooms"[1] and the crowd cheers. The question I wonder is "How did these people get where they are now, to be outraged by this?", and I think the answer is incremental internet influence. [1] http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexism/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexis...

eertami 11y ago
>Cissexism is pretty much unchecked cis privilege or an otherwise shoddy awareness of the social monopoly on binary gender. rolls eyes Fuckin' Poe's law.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Hardly a satire - more probably markov chains CS101 homework ... Sadly EF is serious site and not affiliated with the onion.
- kefka 11y ago
  I'd also think that it's also Sturgeon's Law. Except >99.9%
vlehto 11y ago
That particular example probably has lot more nuanced that this general phenomena of people complaining about petty things. Trans people have valid concerns. They also have huge problems with prioritization, awareness, organization of their movement etc. So they use feminist organizations as a way to get some of those. But feminists are not very good with most of that stuff either. And feminist want to use trans as excuse to further their own political agendas. Then there is this idea that sympathy is underplayed in society because it's womens strength and there was/is patriarchy etc. So the feminist movement is pouring elevated amounts of compassion to random directions, while being completely blind to others. Add some confused teenagers to that mix and voila.

chipsy 11y ago

Protest was once a thing that was mostly practiced on a local level, within the family and church, and subject to the constraints of small groups. It is now fully secularized and pushed into the hands of the masses. There is a subculture for everyone. And this works against "strong and silent". Strong and silent is not particularly noble in practice - it's a self-sacrificing game theoretical strategy. To take the upper hand in social situations, you avoid showing vulnerability and instead consistently display strength. For any problem someone cares about, you will show that you don't have to care, that you'll soak up the consequences rather than try to help. For any threat presented, you shrug it off or escalate until they cave in. Then everyone else has to bend to your wishes if they want your cooperation. The ideal strong and silent person is psychopathic. Most people trying to follow it tear themselves up to do so. The alternative is to allow the small complaint, to whine a little bit about how something wasn't right today. Because you have a subculture to validate you, your feelings become "reality" in that you can have an ongoing conversation about it instead of being told to shut up. On balance, a good thing for every underrepresented idea under the sun. What we don't know how to deal with yet is when this turns into a social media mob; the new face of the manipulator is someone who points the subculture at a target and says "their fault; go get 'em." But - my conjecture is that eventually, most people burn out on this kind of radicalization. So then, are we getting better? Will Endless September come to a conclusion? Stay tuned, I guess...

anon4 11y ago

My favourite hashtag this year is #NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay

jacquesm 11y ago

People even complain about complaining in the New York Times.

rtl49 11y ago

At the risk of "microcomplaining," I'd like to deride this as yet another thoughtless, substance-free article from the NYT. With an amusing lack of self-awareness, a non-issue is identified (as a "seismic shift," no less) and connected with unrelated social phenomena using misinterpretations of the available evidence, many of which, conveniently, have also been described in other hyperlinked NYT articles. If you believe this is a new phenomenon, I invite you to read just about any novel written during the Victorian era. If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class, I think you will take issue with the thrust of this article. As for the implications of social media, that it can amplify certain aspects of human behavior is such a humdrum, "middle-brow" observation that I'm surprised this wasn't written by Thomas Friedman.

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
The letters columns of news papers have been fun of micro complaints since time began.
hashkb 11y ago
Sounds like a macrocomplaint about microphenomena? If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class I think this is a little different; a dinner party presumably is full of people who want to listen to each other talk. (And novels are generally more thoughtfully prepared than tweets.) I don't know if it's a seismic shift, but anecdotally I can say that my microcomplaints around the dinner table don't get likes like Kanye and Kim's tweets do. Edit: something about the fine line between comedy and whining.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I agree the situation isn't directly analogous, though presumably one only reads updates from people whom one wishes to follow. I was trying to suggest that, with respect to this particular issue, social media has simply amplified a human tendency that has existed historically. In other words, it hasn't produced some "emergent" phenomenon that merits special consideration, as this article suggests.
11y ago

eep_opp 11y ago

This has been a strange year. Some people that pointed out "victim culture" were demonized for it earlier this year. It's strange to see that the idea has caught on. The 'victimhood' culture was only a very small minority of people found online that praised each other for things like being neurodivergent and handed out encouragement for not seeking medical help. It was crazy to see ideas like 'manspreading' being taken seriously outside of those (not so small after all) communities. Have they already overstayed their welcome? The terrible part is that some legitimate complaints are being mistaken for the usual whine.

omginternets 11y ago
> manspreading Was this really taken seriously outside of the communities you're referring to? I got the sense that an overwhelming majority of people rolled their eyes.
- eep_opp 11y ago
  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-manspreading-on-new-york-city-subways.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-mansp...
  - omginternets 11y ago
    These men are impolite -- I'll agree to that -- but how rich and decadent does a society have to become to waste public resources on impoliteness? Just ask a motherf*@&er to move. It's what we do here in Paris, and 99% of the time, people are embarrassed and compliant when you call them out. But noooooo, let's all act like babies and tweet about how the literally the whole world is oppressing us. I wish I could ship these people to Syria and show them some real oppression.
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      One of my co-workers bragged about purposely siting next to manspreaders. She was really proud of it. I guess she thought it was part of the fight for equal rights? I don't know, I'm so confused by this world sometimes.

WalterBright 11y ago

When my father returned home from his combat tour in WW2, he was bemused by the trivial things that people complained about. He was like "you're not going to die tomorrow, what are you complaining about?"

gadders 11y ago
I remember a clip from The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch where he was complaining to his Mother about how hard his phd was and she said "Yes, dear, but at your age your Father was fighting the Nazis."
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Reversing the 'others have it worse' to 'others have it better' is fun to show why the reasoning doesn't hold. For example: Some people are born into wealth, so you can't ever say anything is easy to do because you aren't born into wealth.
veddox 11y ago
Having grown up in a Third World country, I am oftentimes amused/annoyed by the seeming insignificance of "problems" people in the West complain about. Although the longer I live here, the more I find myself doing the same... Raised standards lead to raised expectations.

forlulz 11y ago

Back in the UK, somewhat relevant: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/16/lets-not-whinge-at-waiters http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/16/lets-not...

moron4hire 11y ago

We are a society that is addicted to outrage. I don't begrudge people being outraged at things, but it's not a terribly helpful position and it does tend to amplify the exposure of the thing that is outraged over far beyond what it deserves to receive. For example, this stupid Starbucks "Red Cups" issue. It's probably just a handful of idiots who don't even understand their own ideology who are complaining about these cups. And I personally would never have known about the whole issue if it weren't for people in my Twitter stream complaining about people complaining about red cups. How many of those people who are now complaining about the cups learned about the issue from people they know who complained about people complaining about the cups? It's like some kind of hamfisted, Saturday morning special on intolerance or something, like one of those old Star Trek episodes where some people had half of their face black and other people had half of their face white, or vise versa. We've socialized ourselves into believing that we must social-media-comment on every issue to make sure everyone knows where we stand, to create proof that we still maintain our standing within our in-crowds. It's exactly like school-children jumping in to mob bully someone. We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work. We can't broker any level of disagreement, because that would call into question whether or not we're BFFs. It's nothing new. Remember people tying yellow ribbons around their trees during Desert Storm? Same thing. It's easier to retweet than it is to accept that you can't do anything about an issue.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work. That one sentence explained a whole lot to me about the culture of victimhood, microaggressions, and the like. Brilliant.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

It takes much less energy to be negative than positive.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Maybe to be mildly negative. To be outraged, though, takes enormous energy. Unless the offense is actually worthy of the outrage, it's a waste of time and energy.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I have to disagree. When one is negative, one can find communities of other people just as negative about something. One can then feed on their energy, so one doesn't have to expend as much. Over time (even in a short period of time) there's a group of outraged individuals who've gotten there rather easily. You almost never see similarly charged, overly happy communities (outside of the potheads - just kidding). I think the reason is, it's way too easy for someone to come in and spoil everything by starting something negative. Negativity is like a disease that just spreads and consumes.

bitwize 11y ago

I think if you complain about "microaggression", it's automatically a microcomplaint and can gleefully be forwarded to /dev/null.

kelukelugames 11y ago
One of my co workers wears a gray hoodie every day, but is the only person that constantly gets told that she doesn't look like a dev. Just happens to be a black woman. Seems pretty annoying to me.
- bitwize 11y ago
  It could well be annoying, but if she produces good code and gets accepted as a dev (and gets paid the same, etc.) it doesn't rise above the level of annoyance. Me, I'm annoyed that I look like everybody's nerdy whiteboy dev stereotype. I'm a grown-ass man. Yes, I can see that R-rated movie; I actually remember when PG-13 wasn't a thing. No, I don't have a student ID; college was a long-ass time ago and I'm glad it's over.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Wow. Your struggles sound oppressive. How do you overcome these daily challenges to self-esteem and sense of belonging?

javajosh 11y ago

The real sea-change is a steep decline of self-restraint as a core value within power structures. The powerful, particularly on the right, have learned that self-restraint, shame, remorse, empathy are unnecessary and even damaging. They have learned to do something that came naturally to their aristocratic forebears: to actively eliminate such feelings as a weak distraction from the correct use of power. Stephen Colbert made a career lampooning this change. "If you are in power, and someone speaks up: Don't admit mistakes. Don't apologize. Don't defend yourself. This opens you up to unnecessary liability. People are self-interested sharks, and more often than not if you take any of these actions, this will just be like blood in the water. They will balloon their concern out of proportion and take a huge, unjust advantage of you. So just ignore it." - What GWB might have said with a straight face. When those in power start adopting this attitude, the powerless lose what little power they had to "shame" a leader into simply doing the right thing. The powerless lose all respect for the powerful, and it is only through the unflappable loyalty of security forces that the powerful remain in power doing those times. At least in a democracy we have a chance of occasionally flushing out arrogant, disconnected power-mongers without violence - but in many cases there is no such mechanism. Anyway, no it's not about victimhood, it's a (possibly preemptive) reaction to the loss of self-restraint among the institutionally powerful.