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First World Problems
Sep. 13th, 2013 03:58 pmI 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:
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.