Everyone wants to be a victim. Who wouldn’t want to be? You get to have people praise you without having to do anything to try and make you feel better. You are given less responsibility because people will believe you need help. Some people may even give you money.

Being a victim sounds great, right?

There is just one thing that most people forget when they want to be treated like a victim.

They aren’t victims.

We have created a culture where anyone, victim or not, can tell the world that their life sucks in order to get ahead. People will complain that everyone hates them or that their friends are being mean.

I even know people who will tell their peers that they have been abused by family members in order the gain sympathy and attention. The only problem is that those cases of victimization never occurred.

Of course, it isn’t wrong to tell the world you have problems. There are real victims who need help.

The problem is our society hardly ever does anything to help victims, opting instead to take the easy way out. For example, if student is teased for being ugly at school, it is easy to tell the student the bullies are wrong, and the student is beautiful.

Our culture is much more concerned with making a victim feel better in the moment we are told about a problem instead of taking the extra step to try and help the victim solve the problem.

The problem in doing this is that the problem never actually gets resolved and it leads people to believe they can gain a momentary sense of self worth by telling someone they are being victimized, which inevitably leads to liars claiming they have been victimized to gain attention and praise.

The solution to the problem, however, is easier said than done.

The solution is to solve a victim’s problems instead of putting a short-term bandaid over problems. Instead of telling the bullied student he or she is beautiful, help them stand up to their bullies or help them gain a sense of self worth that isn’t dependent on other peoples’ approval. By doing this, lying about being a victim won’t seem glamorous to liars.

If this is not done, more and more people will lie about being victims and society will continue to waste its time trying to make people feel better instead of solving any problems.