Thanks for mentioning this. This has been the norm for at least 15-20 years. It wasn't until I was in college (early 2000s) that I realized popular and happy people weren't inherently bad. Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? And where did I get the idea suffering gave me validity? Who knows. What I do know is that this misconception was a big waste of time.
> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent?
They were the primary bullies growing up? That's where I got the idea, at least. And suffering seems like a more authentic emotion than happiness, as there are all sorts of heavy social incentives to constantly project happiness. There's a lot more people out there faking happiness, than there are faking suffering.
Some grunge and altrock, no doubt marketed / targeted directly at the youth of the time, pushed those sorts of tropes. The songs aren't bad, perse, in retrospect, but I'm able to view them very differently today than how I felt about them as a youth.
The general concept is much older than even Nietzsche. I would put it at least as far back as the account of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic[1], a critique of Socrates' concept of justice:
I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger
