The Professional Victim

Some archetypes of people have always existed throughout society. Most of them are either blatantly dangerous or subversively benign. The Professional Victim is both dangerous and well-hidden.

Victims of injustice

At some point or another, almost everyone on this planet will become a victim:

  • At some point or another, someone will abuse us.
  • Even when nobody overtly abused us, most of us have experienced neglected when we needed help.
  • And even other times, we may not even realize we’re a victim of abuse.

When others abuse us, the correct answer is relatively straightforward, but difficult to perform:

  1. Accept and manage the hardship.
  2. Take responsibility for anything we may have caused to create the situation.
  3. Release ourselves from any and all substances that contributed or magnified our problems.
  4. Move on to succeed in spite of the victimization, or maybe even through it or (occasionally) because of it.

Staying victimized

However, if we remain selfish and focus only on our problems, we can choose to stay a victim:

  1. Victimhood is easy, since we must merely accept helplessness.
  2. Taking responsibility takes work, can be difficult, and others don’t always reward it.
  3. People will often run to a victim’s cry for help, but self-sufficient people often suffer alone.

People can frequently find more comfort in abdicating responsibilities than seeking meaning from persevering. After someone has made it a habit, they’ll engage in further activities that both disempower themselves and burden others:

  1. They’ll stop self-developing, since there’s little reason to become a better person if it doesn’t make better consequences.
  2. To the degree others will act to save them, they’ll regress into a more infant-like state of neediness.
  3. When their decisions lead them to a more hyper-dependent state, they’ll blame others for their continued issues.

Once the above elements become habitual, this person has become a Professional Victim.

The victim attitude

Professional Victims require others’ sacrifice to maintain their way of life. Thus, they typically become masters at framing stories that make themselves the recipient of injustice.

  • They’ll quickly capitalize on others’ defects, but won’t be willing to indicate their own flaws.
  • Since others’ hard work and sacrifice for them draws attention to their indolence, they won’t acknowledge them.
  • They’ll sideline anyone who insists they take accountability for their actions in lieu of more “accepting” friends.

This behavior doesn’t always mean condemnation and criticism. They very well may be a nice person, praise others, or give generously.

Their endless neediness that disregards others’ needs, however, poisons any otherwise positive contributions to society.

The victim lifestyle

This mindset is toxic to our sense of identity and self. Therefore, Professional Victims can’t typically maintain this attitude by themselves for long. Many of them hide from their self-induced misery with some type of addictive substance.

Since their conscience will scream at them that something is wrong, they’ll need more social validation than most people would. This often develops into a collective codependency with other Professional Victims.

Enough Professional Victims in a group will develop a culture of protracted childhood. Their community will often start with a shared hardship, but will often blossom into something far more potent:

  • A general anti-authority, anti-rules disposition that glorifies impulsive behavior and rewards public rebellion.
  • Spending excessive amounts of money on recreation and status symbols (e.g., jewelry, clothing) that indicate their association with each other.
  • Endless discussions devoted to bragging about status and sharing techniques for exploiting institutions who can maintain their lifestyle.
  • Copious amounts of time wasted through various forms of recreation and addiction.

These people contribute almost nothing useful or productive to society, and tend to drag down all civilization and technology. They have scaled with our modern conveniences.

As society becomes more complex, they can often develop advanced tactics to legally reinforce their image:

  • Classifying themselves as a victim people group
  • Exaggerating the issues as their neurodivergence (or sometimes because of it)
  • Hiding things from the government via someone else officially owning it

However, despite their presence being a type of cancer on society, their existence is the indicator of something positive.

Made by good times

The internet has propagated a famous memetic axiom by G. Michael Hopf:

  1. Strong people create good times.
  2. Good times create weak people.
  3. Weak people create rough times.
  4. Rough times create strong people.

Obviously, this trend cycles continuously. The “weak people” of society are very often groups of Professional Victims.

Any group of people has an inescapable sin nature, so giving them more power guarantees more foolishness.

A society has a high ratio of Professional Victims means they have been doing well enough to support useless people.

  • In a more scarce society, people don’t endure their complaining.
  • Within history’s bitter lens, society frequently forced them to work, enslaved them, or simply exiled them.
  • When times went well, they were fortunate enough to simply be the “village idiot”.

In that sense, the number of Professional Victims present in a society mark the high point of that group’s glory.

When the relative ratio of Professional Victims increases into the next generation, however, society increases its risk of falling apart. This is a huge reason golden ages and glorious empires never last.

How to detect one

On a more practical level, every Professional Victim will always show variations on the same actions.

  • They will permute those actions in proportion to their intelligence, but they have the same goal. This means you can figure them out after two or three interactions.
  • They’ll often ask for “small favors” that aren’t that small.

Money-based requests

  • Begging for money.
  • Asking to co-sign a loan.
  • Borrowing money without paying it back.

Lifestyle maintenance requests

  • Ignoring age-based responsibilities (e.g., driving a car, getting a job, turning 18 and expecting others to take care of them).
  • Asking for rides but not reimbursing for petrol.
  • When you’re throwing something out, asking if you’re throwing something else out as well.

Dwelling-based requests

  • Asking to use an extra room or guest room in your home.

Refusal to change lifestyle

  • Expecting you to pay for their lifestyle because you have a job.
  • Spending money on having fun, then asking for more.
  • Unwilling to work a job or take a job referral.

Frequently, they’ll employ shame if you deny their requests, which exploits your kindness.