Why Everyone Has a Struggle Story Now (Even If They Didn’t Struggle)
Why are wealthy people fabricating “from the bottom” stories? We look at how privilege cosplays as struggle to earn sympathy and status.
You’ve seen them. You might have sat next to them in AP Economics. You may even be one… but don’t worry, this is a safe space (for now). We’re talking about the ever-expanding tribe of Privilegio Strugglicus: well-fed, well-schooled, and well-connected individuals who’ve recently discovered that selective amnesia is great for building a personal brand.
These are people who grew up in houses with more bathrooms than siblings, yet now regale us with tales of “just getting by.” Their childhoods were thermostatically optimized. But throw them on a panel or podcast, and suddenly it was all just one meal away from catastrophe.
Apparently, adversity has become the new Rolex: a symbol of authenticity, a proof of suffering-earned wisdom, even if the closest thing to a crisis was a barista spelling their name wrong during a formative year abroad.
A new economy has emerged, where struggle is staged, edited, and sold like content. Where pain is pitched, rather than processed. And if you’re not careful, a momentary inconvenience becomes a TED-worthy trauma. Because why just be privileged when you can be relatable, too?
Victimhood: The New Blue Checkmark
Being rich used to be enough. An Alphard, a startup, a splash of Hermès, and done. Now? Not unless you’ve cried about burnout on a podcast and disclosed that time you “almost” didn’t get into Brown. Being rich is only palatable if it’s seasoned with a bit of suffering.
Struggle is the new status symbol. And for those who didn’t grow up chasing buses or rationing school lunches, a workaround was needed. So they did what any entrepreneurially-minded child of advantage might do: they borrowed someone else’s pain and added it to their persona.
That’s the economy now. To be admired, one must overcome. If there’s nothing to overcome? Manufacture.
That missed flight becomes a tale of existential crisis.
The unpaid internship becomes a story of class mobility.
That year in Bali, previously a tax write-off disguised as yoga, is now a spiritual reckoning born of internal displacement.
And the tragedy? It works. We live in a culture that confuses vulnerability with authenticity, and inflation with depth. Performative struggle buys attention. It buys immunity from critique. People don’t ask tough questions when you open with “I’ve been through a lot.”
You’d think this moral masquerade would be transparent. But no.
Meanwhile, those who actually faced hardship are being bumped off the stage to make room for trust fund philosophers and adversity cosplayers. Apparently, if you can fake the pain, you can still keep the privilege.
The Two-Faced Olympics: Grit in Public, Gucci in Private
The duality is where it gets especially theatrical. Our protagonist is a master of context. They know exactly when to lean into the struggle arc, and exactly when to lean on their old tennis coach who now runs a VC fund.
One moment, they’re writing emotionally resonant threads about sleeping on a friend’s sofa “while chasing the dream.” The next, they’re back-channeling intros through a family friend who once chaired a hedge fund and still thinks “grind” is the noise their Nespresso machine makes. It’s narrative arbitrage, extracting moral value in one room, while transacting legacy capital in the next.
They tell the “bootstrapped” story when it gets them empathy and applause. But when it’s time for traction, they don’t hesitate to flip the Rolodex. All the while, they act as if both things came from the same source: their drive, their hustle, their “why.”
It’s not that privilege is bad. It’s that pretending not to have it, then quietly using it, insults everyone who never had the luxury of pretending.
And while they get to navigate the world with a portfolio of curated backstories, others are stuck being told their real ones are too raw, too much, too difficult to fund. It’s dishonest. It’s theft… of space, of attention, of opportunity.
But optics talk. And as long as the narrative is tight and the outfit is neutral tones, no one questions it. Nothing sells like struggle, especially when it’s been carefully packaged by someone who never really had to live it.
The Myth of the Meritocrat: Suffering as Branding
In an age where resumes are skimmed, but personal narratives are devoured, suffering has become the gold standard of legitimacy. You’re no longer judged by who you are or even what you’ve done, but by how well you’ve turned personal discomfort into a cinematic pitch.
Gone are the days when pedigree and polish alone earned admiration. Now, you need a bit of grit. Not actual suffering, necessarily; just the performance of it. Something that scans as hardship without ever compromising your comfort.
People are catching on. They know the algorithm. Struggle is SEO-friendly. One compelling sob story, polished for the stage, can land you book deals, interviews, LinkedIn virality, and a string of heart-eye emojis from investors who mistake performance for depth. If you play it right, you become untouchable. Critique is deflected with, “You don’t know what I’ve been through,” which usually translates to “I once got ignored after my first pitch call.”
So now, every life becomes a branded arc.
The past is rewritten.
The rough patches are exaggerated.
The privileges are quietly deleted.
And the final product? A Marvel-style origin story starring someone who was briefly uncomfortable but never truly at risk.
This inflation flattens the moral landscape. Everyone’s a survivor. Everyone’s a warrior. But when everyone is exceptional, no one is. And real stories about real resilience, from people who didn’t get to opt in or out, get buried beneath a pile of curated adversity and professional vulnerability.
Just Say It: You’re Privileged. It’s Okay. Really.
Just tell the truth.
Say you had help. Say you had options. Say you had backup plans that weren’t “sleeping in a car” but “moving into the renovated pool house until things stabilized.” No one’s asking for an apology. Just honesty.
Instead, we get a parade of faux-humility dressed up as revelation. “I struggled too,” they whisper, as if admitting to a human emotion absolves them from naming the private school, the family fund, or the uncle on the board of three accelerators.
Authenticity, once associated with self-awareness, has mutated into performance art. It’s been hijacked by people whose lives were cushioned by layers of insulation but who now want in on the aesthetic of grit. So they craft struggle-lite origin stories with just enough turbulence to pass the sniff test, but not enough to actually dislodge comfort.
You want to talk about bravery? Try saying: “I started with a lot, and I still got help.” That’s real. That’s rare. That would actually move the conversation forward.
Because when people own their privilege plainly, it gives permission for a more honest, less postured version of ambition. It stops wasting energy on narrative inflation and starts focusing it on what actually matters:
What you’re building,
Who it’s for,
Who it benefits beyond yourself.
Authenticity isn’t a tortured metaphor. It’s a basic posture of reality. And there’s nothing noble about pretending your comfort never existed.
This isn’t an attack on vulnerability, nor is it a dismissal of genuine struggle. Real hardship doesn’t need defending. It speaks for itself. What’s being called out here is the performance of struggle by those who never truly experienced its consequences.
When privilege gets dressed up as adversity, it drains credibility from the people whose lives were actually shaped by barriers, not inconveniences. It cheapens what it means to overcome. It turns lived trauma into a prop for personal gain.
There’s a difference between reflecting on discomfort and branding it as hardship. You don’t get to market resilience after spending your twenties toggling between networking events and spiritual sabbaticals. You don’t get to cry hustle when your elevator was already halfway up.
This is about honesty. About the minimum standard of not pretending your life was harder than it was. And if that feels like a threat, maybe it’s because the truth doesn’t sound as impressive.
To the privileged: no one’s asking you to feel guilty. Just don’t steal someone else’s struggle because your own story lacked narrative tension.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we help HR leaders foster cultures where actual credibility outshines curated hardship. Contact us to ensure your leadership narratives land with cultural integrity.