The dangerous combination of victimhood and virtue signalling - amplified by social media

I must be a victim for something but for the life of me I cannot find for what. It is really annoying since most everybody I know is victim, sometimes multiple victims. Maybe I should feel victimised by not being a victim?

If you are a Millennial you are a victim and get the bonus of being able to blame your parents. In the UK, if you are a Millennial and a junior doctor, you can double your victimhood and also blame the government. If you have both of these victim badges and suffer from a real or imaginary disability you hit the jackpot and get a triple victim award.

My theory is that the rise of victimhood results from the insatiable need of large numbers of people to engage in virtue-signally. You know the endless 'I feel your pain' commentary that is an obligatory part of the job spec of 'celebs' and C and D grade politicians.

Social media provides the perfect channel to keep this merry go round turning.


Why you might ask am I ranting on about such an unimportant subject.

This week the Guardian newspaper (a left of centre UK publication) has been wallowing in how hard life is for Millennials.

The perfect storm of debt, housing and joblessness facing a generation of young adulats - and is to be done.

Where there is a victim there is a villain.  For the Millennials it is their parents generation who are nearly always incorrectly referred to as the 'boomer generation'.

Much to my surprise I have just read an article that gives another view. A view that is something approaching the truth. I am sure that I would normally disagree with most things published in Spike but this article had me nodding in agreement.  Definitely worth a read.

Finally we come to virtue-signally brigade who want it known they share the pain of Gen Y. There is the normal contingent left wing politicians and the inhabitants of think tanks and then there are the older pundits who are on a guilt trip and spend their life criticising their own generation, normally from the safety of having a big fat state funded pension.

The sad thing is that there is a genuine issue with intergenerational fairness but it is obliterated by those that try and blame everything on older people.  Rant over. Dick Stroud