Why were passengers “terrified” to briefly fly through low-density smoke from a forest fire?

I see a lot of social media claiming people are scared about not scary things. Have we all become wimps? There seems to be a sort of weird reverse pride in people proclaiming their weakness.

TikTok is full of comments volunteering “I could never” and proclaiming various not very comical self-effacing incompetence. Especially by young men. It’s like a Gen Z/Alpha competition to be the bigger Beta, like a kind of reactionary opposition to Gen X stoicism.

It’s like we elevated victimhood so much that people are beating down the door to get in. It’s like a mass psychogenic pandemic of social ineptitude Munchausen.

I’m glad we have dumped so much machismo bullshit, but the reverse is just the same phenomenon in a different guise.