First World Problems

[cosmolinguist]

I wrote this on Facebook in response to someone sharing humorous pictures of anguished-looking people accompanying tweets of people complaining about things.

It's nothing new or spectacular in itself, but because I'm kind of grumpy today and because I had a few minutes waiting for someone, I wrote about why I hate "First World Problems." Here's what I said:

I don't take any pleasure from things like #firstworldproblems or White Whine any more (if I ever did; I hate unhappiness and if I read about someone's and add the feeling that I'm unhappy that the thing they're unhappy about is somehow unworthy of their reaction, that's just unhappiness squared).

One problem I have with it as a meme is I've seen so many people -- mostly women -- use this as an excuse to minimize their own problems, to apologize or even denigrate themselves for caring about the things they care about. I remember one who was berating herself for...something like being sad that one of her kids was sick, and called it a first world problem, which is just sad. This is an issue familiar to parent/child dynamics as long as there have been parents and children!

So I think it's a shame not only that we look for excuses not to be bothered about the things that bother us, thereby encouraging guilt and shame, but also that we imagine we white/first world people are the only ones who ever get to have problems with technology, food, the weather, etc.

What crystallized this latter point for me was reading something Teju Cole said:

I don't like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.

I'm not saying the people making some of these tweets are great examples of humanity. Many suffer from a deplorable lack of empathy or patience or perspective. But I don't think that state of affairs is going to be improved at all by us anonymizing and laughing at them, while simultaneously having no apparent idea ourselves of how the first world differs -- or doesn't! -- from the rest of the world.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

(link to Teju Cole is broken)

[cosmolinguist]

Bah, I was sure I fixed that! But now I remember the browser crashed, and I went back to fix everything else that needed fixing but forgot that.

Thanks for letting me know -- it's nice someone bothers with the links! :) Fixed now.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

I absolutely see your point. And Teju Cole's - my friends in India are also worried about their fancy cooking, their cleaning ladies, and their kids' grades, and we tend to forget that there is a class stratification in developing nations, too. USA/UK/Europe don't own the 1% :)

For me, I say "first world problems" to remind myself that I'm fortunate, to remind myself that what I'm complaining about shouldn't be bringing me down - it's just a thing, it doesn't have that power. It cheers me up, it helps me have perspective, and I mostly say it to myself, or to a friend who is in on the joke. I don't use it for legitimate emotional states.

But I'm glad you pointed this out, because I think it's a really important distinction. Amanda Palmer wrote about this a few months ago, too -

"starving people have starving people problems, dying people have dying people problems, overweight people have overweight people problems, white people have white people problems, black people have black people problems, rich people have rich people problems, gay people have gay people problems, straight people have straight people problems….are we detecting a pattern?

everybody’s got them, period.

you can’t measure human suffering with a yardstick."

The rest is here (scroll way down, it's a section near the end)

http://amandapalmer.net/blog/on-recording-marriage-and-the-problem-with-first/

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad it cheers you up and brings you perspective. I know that's a thing many people intend it to do (it doesn't work for me, but I'm glad it does for the people it does!).

I just think it's irritating when in situations like the one I linked to here it is applied -- to people who aren't saying it themselves -- for purposes of mockery and derision. It dehumanizes the tweeters/facebookers while condemning their apparent lack of empathy or self-awareness: the irony's too thick for me there.

And it does make people get self-conscious about saying anything negative, leading to the "well that's just a first world problem" stuff that can so aggravate me because even if it isn't just a problem of humans in general (though it often is!) it's often just another vehicle of making people feel bad about feeling bad. That never ends well.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

I saw a less irritating version called 'Middle class problems' which seemed to brilliant equally divided between some which were horribly entitled, some which were genuine if minor problems and some which deliberately self-parodying. But the meme-framing (which used images of people with their heads in their hands in despair) made no distinction and was judging/mocking them all as if they were all the deeply entitled ones.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think "first world problems" understandably stems from a really good impulse to say "I have this problem, but I don't mean to minimise people who have much worse problems!" But I've often felt there's something wrong -- basically exactly what you just said.

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you wrote this, because I needed to see it today. <3

[cosmolinguist]

I'm very glad to have helped. Thank you for letting me know.