"My life sucks more than yours" and other fun social games

Have you ever been hanging out with people or trying to talk to someone that always tries to outdo you on the "suck-o-meter"? Than you have been part of a lovely game that I like to call "My life sucks more than yours", MLSMTY for short. Confused? here is an example:
Person 1- It's getting late, I should go home and go to bed. I have to work tomorrow from 9-4.
Person 2- Oh yeah? well I have to work form 8-5 tomorrow. So I have to get up earlier than you. Therefore my life sucks more than yours.
(this is not an actual conversation that I have had, just to let you know.)

Granted, I have been known to play this game as well, and I apologize.. This has got me wondering, is this an American thing? Do we as Americans, who are normally workaholics, desire to trump people by having the least amount of free time? Are we just looking for a dose of pity? I wish to understand.

Sometimes when you are genuinely trying to tell people how you have been you might bring up something bad that has recently happened to you or something that has got you frustrated people might play mlsmty. It seems like the more crappy things you have going on in your life the more validation you have.

Maybe if we all banded together to rid the world of MLSMTY our lives would seem much happier. If we spent as much time focusing on the positive side of our lives as the negative our lives would feel less sucky.
I am not saying that you can never talk about the bad things in our lives, just that if someone is talking about a sucky occurrence sit back and listen instead of trying to come up with your own sucky occurence. This way its more like a conversation and less like a battle of suck.

Oh no! this turned out a lot more ranty than I had intended. I swear my next post will be about butterflies and bubblewrap...or not...