Pop-trauma allows people to continue to believe "dreams can be achieved through hard work" while not blaming themselves for not achieving their dreams.
The reason I'm not living the dream could be that it's impossible, or I haven't tried hard enough. I don't want to believe either of those. I'd rather believe that something happened to me in my past that rewired my brain to stifle my full potential. Then I could still hope to someday achieve my dreams, while not doing anything to progress towards them.
It's not popular because it's right. It's popular because it's so, so appealing.