Collective Victimization Problem and the First Step Toward a Solution

When it comes to taking full responsibility for one’s life, the obstacles are not always emotional or irrational. In fact, many men—especially in modern Western society—face challenges that seem, and often are, objectively valid. These challenges can be both emotionally and cognitively rooted, and the boundary between those is not always clear.

As we explain in several AlphaMastery™ programs, men of all ages are increasingly predisposed to outsource responsibility—not out of weakness, but through frameworks that appear rational, and to a certain extent, are. This outsourcing often stems from logical analyses of systemic injustice, unfair relationship outcomes, or cultural double standards that men feel trapped within.

But here’s the trap: the more structurally true these collective constraints seem, the more psychologically appealing it becomes to fall into collective victimization. And while not all forms of victim-consciousness are delusional, the psychological consequences of staying in that state too long are devastating for personal growth and masculine development.

In this article, we analyze the emotional mechanisms, personality traits, and societal narratives that influence how much responsibility men actually take for their lives—and how to reclaim that responsibility without denying reality.

Personality trait disposition in combination with cultural influence

There is no single “responsibility gene” that predetermines whether someone will own their life or externalize blame. Yet we consistently see that certain personality trait configurations—when coupled with cultural influences—create a fertile ground for internalized victimhood. In particular, the combination of high neuroticism (especially high withdrawal and volatility), low assertiveness, and low agreeableness forms a personality pattern highly susceptible to victimized or vulnerable narcissism.

This specific trait constellation—researched in both clinical and personality psychology—has been shown to predispose individuals to feel chronically misunderstood, emotionally fragile, yet secretly superior to others. It’s no coincidence that these same traits often correlate with susceptibility to ideological victim narratives, including those found in movements like intersectionality or social justice identity politics (see Zeigler-Hill et al., 2011; Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010).

Now, let’s consider how this unfolds in a young man: if he scores low in assertiveness and agreeableness, but high in neuroticism, his path can split.

In one direction, he might channel his internal discomfort and social friction into productive effort. Even if he's introverted, his disagreeableness may push him to prove his worth through quiet mastery, building skills in solitude, and outperforming peers in fields where competence is king. But this outcome requires high conscientiousness—especially industriousness and orderliness—to act as stabilizing and productive forces.

If, however, conscientiousness is low, the pattern turns dark. The same man now lacks the internal structure to strive and the emotional resilience to cope with failure. What follows is often parasitic loneliness, a victim identity, and self-exoneration. Instead of striving, he retreats. Instead of effort, he chooses excuses. The belief that “the world is set up against me” becomes not just an occasional emotion but an ontological position—a fundamental lens through which he sees life.

This is especially dangerous during a man’s twenties, a decade when his sexual marketplace value (SMV) is still developing—typically at 30%–50% of its peak. In this period, without structure, discipline, and responsibility, many young men become psychologically vulnerable and ideologically captured. They feel unattractive, overlooked, and replaceable, not realizing that this time is designed to build the man, not reward him.

Intersectionalism as Collective Covert Narcissism

At its core, intersectionalism is dangerous precisely because it begins with truth.
Discrimination exists—and often manifests in layered and compounding ways. Structural disadvantage is not a myth. However, where intersectionality veers off course is in its unbounded scope: both in terms of the selection and quantity of discriminative criteria.

The Selection Problem

Which traits or life circumstances qualify as valid sources of discrimination?
In intersectional theory, the answer appears to be unlimited—and that is its fatal flaw. Consider two individuals: one grows up with an alcoholic father, the other with a physically disabled father due to a workplace accident. Both face adversity, but the nature of that adversity differs—especially in terms of agency. A child, at some developmental stage, can resist or set boundaries with an addicted parent. No such intervention is possible in the face of a parent’s permanent physical or cognitive impairment.

From both psychological and sociological perspectives, these are not equivalent experiences—yet intersectionality makes no attempt to differentiate the qualitative depth or agency dynamics within such conditions.

Worse still, modern intersectional discourse—especially in fourth-wave feminism—has introduced historical grievances as valid current identity markers. That is, “lived discrimination” need not be lived at all. Ancestral trauma, or even generalized historical injustices, are often counted as legitimate identity-layering tools. No credible theory of epigenetics supports such far-reaching psychological inheritance—yet intersectionality does not care. It lacks constraint, taxonomy, and falsifiability.

In practical terms, what does this mean? It means that every attribute—family tree, DNA, inherited givens, birth circumstances—can be interpreted as a legitimate form of discrimination. Each can be assigned an arbitrary “quality score” that is not derived from any objective scale. And that’s not because such a scale hasn’t been introduced—but because the creator of such a scale would also have to rely on some authoritative structure. And if that structure is not religious—or at the very least a shared, coherent ideological foundation—then it's simply opinion based on another opinion.

After Kant’s Copernican revolution in epistemology, it became clear that subjectivity mediates all experience. This means everyone can, and will, interpret personal disadvantage in idiosyncratic ways. But if we were to return to a religious foundation, especially in the Western tradition, this entire framework would collapse with one principle: regardless of your circumstances, your duty is to carry your burden—like Job—without full comprehension of its fairness. That wipes the slate clean. It refocuses identity not on pain, but on responsibility.

The Quantity Problem

How many intersecting identities are enough to claim victim status? Three? Five? Twelve? There is no standard. Take a man who is a single father with full custody of three children after being betrayed by the mother. He is objectively in a disadvantaged situation. Now add that he grew up without a father figure himself. Does that deepen his victim status? Most likely, yes. But who decides how many variables are enough? Who ranks or limits them? By what metric—emotional suffering? Intergenerational trauma? Social neglect?

This question becomes especially relevant with Gen Z and Generation Alpha. For many young people with a particular psychological predisposition, intersectionality offers a rationalized justification for their emotional state. A person with high neuroticism, low assertiveness, and low agreeableness—a trait cluster strongly associated with vulnerable narcissism (and often seen in people with borderline traits)—may now find a culturally accepted narrative to wrap their emotional fragility in a cloak of moral superiority.

Take a concrete example:
A neurotic woman in her 30s who lost custody of her children, has no formal education, and was raised without strong paternal boundaries. She enters into a transactional relationship with a much older man—a 60-year-old “sugar daddy.”
According to intersectional logic, this is a direct consequence of patriarchal power structures.

She is not just a victim—she is entitled to feel like one. Worse: whatever narrative she chooses to express over time must be accepted without question. The narrative may evolve, contradict itself, or contradict earlier facts—but that doesn’t matter. Every version of her suffering must be honored with one exception: the idea that she is the primary author of her own misery. That is ruled out entirely.

Personal accountability becomes the sole forbidden conclusion. And that’s easy to avoid—when victim culture offers countless smooth highways of rationalization, and only one narrow, difficult path that connects personal decisions, behaviors, and moral responsibility to real-world outcomes.

Intersectionality as Psychological Trap

The outcome is predictable. When combined with the wrong personality configuration, intersectionality does not emancipate—it entraps. It reinforces what psychologists call covert or vulnerable narcissism: a fragile yet entitled self-concept that externalizes blame and internalizes unearned moral superiority.

The conclusion is bleak but necessary: If everyone is discriminated against, then everyone has a reason to feel like a victim. And if enough individuals with vulnerable narcissistic traits adopt that stance simultaneously, the result is not social progress—it is a collective epidemic of covert narcissism, weaponized through moral language and immune to critique.

What is the solution?

So what is the solution? This is exactly what we address in the Alpha Mastery programs—especially Underdog, Based, and Frame. Let’s begin with the most fundamental point: if everyone is discriminated against, then actually no one is. There are certain elements of life that are simply inevitable—tragedy is woven into the fabric of existence. Bad things happen to good people. Many of us start life from an awful position. Your father was a drunk who beat you? You grew up in poverty? You’re short, wild-tempered, or genetically predisposed to narcissistic behavior? That might all be true. But so what? What’s your next move?

Is it to seek out the tempting instant gratification that modern victim culture offers you? Maybe take a selfie of yourself crying in bed and receive hundreds of likes for “coming out of the closet as a depressed beta”? Or reframe your emotional instability as “discovering your true feminine energy” after being neglected by your third toxic narcissistic spouse and use that trauma to sell coaching to other women in the same state? Yes, you can absolutely do that. You are more than welcome to. But the result is always the same: you’ll sell your soul to a bitter, self-centered, performative victimhood culture that rewards drama and penalizes responsibility.

Is there an alternative? Yes, and it starts with one decision: stop adding your own moral tragedy to the already inevitable tragedy of life. You’re a victim? Probably, yes. But so is everyone else. And if you don’t change course, others around you—your partner, your children, your community—will suffer too. Regardless of your inherited intelligence, you know the difference between good and evil. Even most children do. You know lying is bad. You know wasting time is bad. You know drinking yourself into numbness, gorging yourself into obesity, binge-watching low-quality content, having sex with strangers, or living in secret sugar-daddy or other non-perspective “situationship” arrangements are all self-destructive. You don’t need New Age spirituality, overpriced coaching programs, or pop-psychology influencers to tell you that. You don’t need to reprogram your neural pathways or analyze your “inner wounded child" or "pain body". 

You just need to stop wasting your life.

Before making any grand declarations of purpose, mission, or legacy, start with the obvious: stop doing the things that are clearly and objectively making your life worse.

You don’t have a sufficiently well-paying job? You lack a powerful social network? You’re overweight—just like most of us? What now? You fantasize about a magical solution? A wand from Hogwarts falling into your lap and fixing everything overnight? You’re waiting for a wealthy, handsome, emotionally stable man to show up and love you exactly as you are with no demands? Or maybe a hyper-supportive, based, smart, beautiful, emotionally grounded woman to enter your life with loyalty and sexual enthusiasm but without any past chaos or psychological baggage? These are delusions. They are your adult version of fairy tales. And worse: they keep you passive and entitled.

The first step toward the solution is brutally simple. You’re constantly in conflict with others? Stop lying. Stop making false accusations. Own the truth—especially the parts others already know or suspect. You feel unmotivated? Stop doomscrolling. Stop using social media as a toilet where you absorb the trauma, drama, and dysfunction of others. You don’t like your appearance? It’s not about finding the right workout split—it’s about not eating crap. Just stop putting junk in your mouth. As the cliché goes: there were no fat prisoners in Auschwitz. This isn’t a glorification of suffering; it’s a statement of biological reality—energy input and output are not mystical concepts.

So before you post another self-validating story about how you're “finding your feminine core,” “processing your trauma,” or “healing your nervous system,” consider this: maybe you’ve just turned dysfunction into your entire identity. Whether you're a man identifying as a depressed empath, or a woman branding herself as a misunderstood survivor of toxic masculinity while still clinging to drama, chaos, and emotional validation—maybe it’s time to stop.

Stop the narcissistic performance of pain, the modern-day epitaph of which is this: a duo or trio of vulnerable, victim-minded women sitting together in a podcast or video format, diagnosing one of their exes—or the father of one of their children—as a “pathological narcissist.” They shame and mock the man who is not present to defend himself, reducing years of complex relationship history into a one-sided therapeutic entertainment product.

And what for? A brief dopamine hit? A few likes? A moment of collective superiority satisfying internal vulnerable narcissism of their own?

They don’t realize—or don’t care—that what they are creating is forever. The content stays online. The children grow up and eventually see it. Whatever minuscule possibility may have existed to reconcile as parents or to interact with civility is detonated with the emotional equivalent of a hydrogen bomb. Total annihilation. And for what? Some instant gratification rooted in humiliation and selective storytelling. Let’s not forget: the vast majority of long-term relationship memories are demonstrably reconstructed and distorted through recall over time. In such emotionally charged accounts, the probability of objective truth approaches zero.

Stop making victimhood a lifestyle. Stop exporting your unprocessed bitterness into public domains and immortalizing your dysfunction for your children to one day discover.

Instead, embrace old-school responsibility. Stop lying. Stop whining. Stop blaming.
Start working. Start telling the truth. And most of all—start being a better human being.

Key ideas

You can stop adding your personal moral tragedy to the inevitable existential tragedy of life. You can end the destructive feedback loop that brought you here. Are you a victim? Absolutely—just like everyone else. But if you don’t step up, your children will be victims next, your legacy will be a continuation of the same decay.

The real first step is much easier—and much harder. It starts with this:
Stop lying. Stop fake accusations. Own your truth—even when it's ugly—because people probably already know it anyway.

Feel unmotivated? Stop doom-scrolling. Stop consuming the emotional vomit of other broken people online. Stop letting your mind become a toilet for collective despair.

Don’t look good in the mirror? It's not about the “right workout routine.” Stop putting garbage in your mouth. 

Before posting narcissistic stories about “finding your true self” or subtle cries for help that read like covert admissions of borderline dysfunction… Before presenting your victimhood as proof of your value… Before blaming your mess on the patriarchy and deeming one third of male population narcissists, try this instead: 

• Take responsibility.
• Stop lying.
• Stop playing the victim card.
• Start working.
• Be a better human being.
  

It’s not pretty. It’s not popular. But it’s real. And it's the only thing that will make you free.

In conclusion

Never in history has it been so easy to be a victim and enjoy constant admiration, compassion, and emotional reward from others who—much like crabs in a barrel—will do everything to pull back the one who is trying to climb out. Victimhood has become a social currency. Intersectionalism is a fascinating construct, not because it’s entirely wrong, but precisely because it’s mostly correct: people can be discriminated against, suffer terrible starting conditions, and carry inherited disadvantages that genuinely shape their chances in life. However, the core problems of intersectionalism lie in its refusal to define clear boundaries. There is no universal god-eye that draws a rational line regarding the quality or quantity of one’s disadvantages. Whatever your circumstances, you can always pile up enough rational excuses to construct a compelling narrative of why life is harder for you than for others. And that’s exactly the problem: the result of that mental framework is a psychologically validated descent into covert narcissism—particularly for those with low agreeableness, low assertiveness, and high neuroticism. Instead of climbing out, you end up building a perfect intellectual justification to stay where you are and feel superior in your misery.

And what does this look like in real life? For men, it might be emotional collapse hidden under gym selfies and tweets about “shadow work,” or writing melancholic captions about betrayal and lost masculinity. For women, it might be constant rebranding of failed life choices as “empowerment,” crying on camera about their mental breakdowns, while still seeking sugar-daddy-type arrangements to validate their worth. “Strong woman discovering her true nature at the borders of psychosis and neurosis” has become a social media genre of its own. But in both cases, the dynamic is the same: strategic self-presentation as a victim to gain approval, sympathy, or validation instead of actually solving the problem.

What’s the alternative? First, accept that everyone is discriminated against. That’s life. There’s tragedy interwoven into the structure of existence. Bad things happen to good people. Many of us start with horrific conditions: your father may have been a drunk who beat you, your mother might have been unstable and manipulative, you might be short, wild-tempered, or even narcissistic by nature. All that might be true. But so what? What’s your next move? Is it really taking a selfie of yourself crying in bed and posting it online for likes as a “depressed beta coming out of the emotional closet”? Or uploading a reel about how “inner work” is helping you embrace your feminine softness while you're still dating toxic men for free dinners?

Yes, you can do that. And many do. But the result is always the same: you end up selling your soul to the bitter, hysterical, victim-centric subculture that glorifies weakness, excuses failure, and destroys lives—especially your own.

There is another way. You can stop adding your own moral tragedy to the inevitable tragedy of life. You can stop the nexuses of destructive behavior that have led you to where you are. Are you a victim? Very likely, yes. But so is almost everyone else. And if you don’t reverse the direction of your own story, you will not only ruin your own life—you’ll also infect others: your partner, your future children, and your closest relationships. Regardless of your intelligence level, you know the difference between good and evil. Even children do. You know that lying is bad. You know that drinking, binge eating, watching porn for hours, gossiping, making false accusations, and wasting time are all bad. You don’t need New Age spirituality, breathwork, or “alignment practices” to understand that. You don’t need a therapist to help you feel your pain body. You just need to stop doing things that you know are destroying you.

You don’t have a well-paying job? You don’t have a solid social network? You’re overweight, isolated, or constantly in conflict? That’s reality for many people. What are you going to do—wait for a miracle? Are you waiting for Harry Potter’s wand to fall out of the sky and magically restructure your life? Or maybe for a smart, beautiful, emotionally supportive, high-libido, loyal, feminine, submissive, well-earning woman to walk into your life and fix everything? Or if you’re a woman, for a perfect man in a white Bentley who’s rich, emotionally available, not too dominant, not too soft, and ready to raise your three kids from different exes? These are delusions. Waiting for the golden tool to fix everything is part of the disease.

The first step is painfully simple. You lie a lot? Stop lying. You constantly feel misunderstood? Stop making false accusations and start telling the truth—especially the truth others already suspect anyway. You feel unmotivated? Stop doomscrolling. Stop using the endless sob stories of others as both emotional porn and a distraction from your own mess. You hate your body? It’s not about finding the perfect training system—stop overeating. Just stop putting trash in your mouth. As the cliché goes: there were no fat people in Auschwitz. That’s not an invitation to glorify suffering, but a blunt reminder of biological facts.

So before you “come out” as a misunderstood neurotic or victimized empath, before you write another poetic caption about your borderline tendencies or failed relationships with narcissists—just stop promoting your broken identity. Stop using your pain as a weapon or shield. Stop making your trauma your brand. Instead, start doing the things that even your inner child already knows are right: stop lying, stop being weak, stop blaming the world, and start becoming useful, disciplined, and honest.

That is the first step. And only then—maybe—will the next one reveal itself.