Quote Originally Posted by Hooligan View Post
Help me to understand why so many of you embrace this background archetype?

It is trite, lazy flimflam. Even worse it is dull....the epitome of boring, like shredded roleplaying iceberg lettuce. Many of the above examples bear out those points.
Anything's boring if executed poorly. "My parents died, and I grew up alone" isn't inspiring, but neither is "I lived happily at home until I left".

I think that making a backstory complex enough to be about more than just "I'm an orphan" or "An event happened" will keep you from having something uninteresting solely because of a single element you use. After all, in a well-rounded history, would you say it's all boring and pointless because they share one background detail with poorly written characters?