He was screwed by his environment in a way. He grew up in a rich area where he was at the lower end of the scale. So he didn't have to worry about money the way average teens would, but he couldn't wow the girls of his circle just by flexing. And then he fell into body dysmorphia. He frequented bodybuilding forums (the now infamous "I thought the average was 4"; this is very unsettling" post springs to mind) and then got hit by lookism. Those people go beyond focusing on a flaw or whatever and wanting to get their nose done. They measure canthal tilts, norwoods and so on. His problem, ultimately, was that he was a short guy who wanted to be a jacked GigaChad ThunderCock and bag all the 10/10 rich blondes. And that just couldn't happen. He wasn't ugly, especially compared to all the other people who fall into lookism. They're chinless jawlets with bad hair and whatever else. He wasn't ugly. He was just short. But instead of trying to work with that he fell more and more into denial and some kind of self-worship fueled by his self-loathing over not being what he wanted to be; the big guy with a big johnson.
Honestly, he was just a fuckup. He went up to a sorority, but when they wouldn't open he packed up and left. That was his original target. He couldn't even do that "right". I don't know if there were red flags or anything his folks had missed. Or if they didn't even care. But his problem ultimately came down to some extreme narcissism. There are a lot of guys in his shoes. Lost in looksmaxing/lookism and all that. We're talking about the generation, give or take, that entered puberty and got unlimited free internet porn. MySpace gave way to Facebook and Twitter which produced Instagram and OnlyFans and all that. It moves lightining fast and you're compared to every single person in the world, not your immediate circle. This is a pretty complicated talk but the short of it is that there are a ton of financially poor, isolated, awkward guys who got dealt a bad hand by the genetic lottery. They usually give up and wallow in their despair, sometimes adopting a misanthropic attitude, but usually they're defeatists. His problem was his entitlement from the environment he grew up in. And whatever other inherent problems he had, down to the genes that made him "him".
Anyway, I honestly hate Holland's Iron Boy. I wish he could get Jason Todd'd by Stormin Norman. Nostalgia aside, I actually think Garfield was the best one. He captured Ditko's original jittery Parker and the more mellow versions that followed. He's pretty close to the Ultimate books too. I wouldn't mind seeing him become the Sony Spider-Man, while Iron Boy continues in the MCU with Tobey either getting his own Old Man Spider flicks or just riding off into the sunset.