Five Platform Functions and the Frustration–Aggression Pathway: A Mechanism Model of Grievance Identity Formation among Young Men

Aggression research holds that aversive experience raises aggressive readiness, but whether aggression is enacted depends on appraisal, cue exposure, reinforcement, and inhibition. This theory article specifies how digital platforms may modulate that pathway for young men exposed to identity-relevant status threat. It disaggregates platform effects into five functions: a social comparison amplifier, an identity threat accelerator, a cue-saturated environment, a reinforcement architecture, and an aggression affordance system. Each maps onto a component of the General Aggression Model, cognitive neoassociationism, or I³ Theory, and each is paired with a discriminant prediction that would count against that function if it failed. The article defines grievance identity as a self-schema marked by central in-group injustice, chronically accessible hostile attributions, legitimised adversarial behaviour, and peer recognition for hostile performance, and distinguishes it from collective victimhood, identity fusion, and ideological commitment. A six-stage pathway links identity-relevant goal blockage to inhibition erosion. The article engages with contested evidence on algorithmic recommendation, the selection-versus-amplification identification problem, and the generalisation gap in precarious manhood research. It reports no data and sets out an empirical agenda and conditions for falsification.