In this day and age, people search for someone or something to blame. Why are we obsessed with creating villains? What happens when they don’t exist?

In 2023, a lot has changed, including the need to place blame. When something terrible occurs, hands rush to the keyboard to assign blame, guilt, and fault. Tragic events are rarely accepted as freak accidents or acts of nature, as people instead attempt to crawl back in time until they can pinpoint a moment where things went wrong and someone messed up. Likewise, people appear addicted to assigning blame and labelling villains in everything from media figures to family members. However, it is possible that great tragedy can occur without anyone or anything to blame. Meanwhile, the need to create villains likely does more harm than good.

Creating & Calling Out Villains In 2023

While the concept of a villain is certainly not modern, many aspects of being named this pejorative title are certainly unique to this day and age. Thanks to media, everything has become broadcast, meaning that someone’s worst moments can live in a loop forever that is accessible worldwide. It also means that as consumers decide they don’t like the values someone possesses, they are now presented with means of directly attacking this person through the keyboard. Harassment has now become as easy and accessible as logging onto Twitter.

People are obsessed with villains, whether because they cross their morals or perhaps show people sides of themselves that they don’t want to admit to possessing. In fiction, for plot to advance, there must be conflict. This occurs due to an opposing force, which is oftentimes human. The same formula applies to reality TV. However, people get lost in the blur between entertainment and reality and make it their mission to lash out at media figures they dislike. Some consumers are so caught up with creating villains that they attack actors for portraying fictional characters, as they are unable to separate people from their craft.

Looking at the media, especially reality TV, it’s clear that people want to name villains. However, this same principle occurs in other aspects of life. When terrible things take place from school shooting to mass hurricanes to acts of terrorism to car crashes, people often take it upon themselves to assign blame. Rather than accept things such as natural disasters, people will instead find someone to blame for the lives lost, such as a faulty weather prediction or failure to provide a foolproof evacuation plan. In fact, it seems like it’s almost human nature to assign blame.

Why Do Humans Assign Blame?

Grief is a powerful phenomenon. When people lose someone close to them or experience a trauma, their minds can sink into dark and troubled places. One of the base responses that people dive towards during tragedy is blame. Perhaps this is because they don’t know how to grapple with their overwhelming emotions, and it is manageable to target their feelings onto something negative. Anger might be a more familiar ground than loss while crusading against someone provides grievers with a purpose in their time of great uncertainty.

However, the main reason why people gravitate towards blame during tragedy is that it alleviates guilt and personal responsibility. If a car crash occurred due to a faulty car model, for example, then the driver doesn’t have to blame themselves for texting while driving. Rather than face their own guilt, remorse, and internal turmoil, they can focus their attention on assigning blame and seeking vengeance or retribution. Blame wipes out vulnerability and instead provides an easy solution for masking troubling emotions.

People also like to assign blame, such as to media figures, because it gives them a moral high ground. Rather than take accountability for one’s own actions and shortcomings, it is easier to call out aspects of other people that are lacking. People then moralize their responses by telling themselves that people put themselves in the spotlight and thus open themselves to such negativity. Assuming a position of victimhood in real life also allows one to feel morally superior to those they have deemed their villains, bullies, or abusers whether these titles have been justly earned or not.

Do We Need Villains & Victims?

Yes, villains exist and by definition, so do victims. There are plenty of people who purposely and maliciously cause harm and those who do so carelessly and callously. On the other side, people suffer due to all sorts of tragedies. Sometimes these are human-driven. Other times, they are by chance. While people need to be punished and rehabilitated when they are the ones who cause pain, there are many instances when terrible things simply happen. Trying to assign a villain is a cheap way to avoid one’s feelings, as well as an exhausting and fruitless exercise.

Now in some cases, such as acts of terrorism or shootings, it is necessary to not simply accept these events. However, there are more productive things people can do than assign blame. While it’s critical to identify the causal factors that lead to these occurrences to work on prevention, it helps nobody to assign blame outside of the individuals involved in creating the destruction. Yes, many factors lead to terrible events that are people-driven. However, the need to find someone to punish can often overshadow the need to devote resources to critical aspects such as grief counselling and crime prevention. In short: people focus on the wrong things.

Just as some people say “all things happen for a reason,” others make it their mission to find that reason and assign it blame. Whether one can blame a tragedy on God or fate or someone in particular, it seems to comfort people to find something to blame. However, this is a cheap form of comfort and not a true one. To overcome tragedy, one must first face it. Assigning blame is a way to avoid facing the full, ugly truth. Meanwhile, calling out villains online is an ironic form of bullying that often sinks one lower than the person they are opposed to. At the end of the day, blame is nowhere near as powerful as acceptance.

Continued Reading: Why Do We Need Heroes?