Misery Loves Competition

You ever notice how sometimes we get caught up in these conversations where we're trading stories about our problems like veterans trading war stories and showing off battle scars?

You know the conversation where you mention to a friend that you're broke and their response is like "oh yeah, we'll I'm broke AND I have a kidney stone."

So then you have to think of the most tragic thing in your life that could totally trump kidney stone.
You start comparing whose burden is greater to bear and before you know it, it turns into a full on competition of misery. 

Like what's that all about? 
Is it some kind of subconscious need to gain empathy? 

I don't know. This is just a random post because I noticed it happens a lot in conversations I have with people and it just struck me how crazy it is.