First World Problems and White Whines

[jimhines]

A while ago, somebody on LiveJournal linked to White Whines, one of several sites which collects “first-world problems.” There are certainly some spoiled, privileged, and sometimes humorous posts collected here … but the whole concept bugged me.

Partly, I hate playing Competitive Problems. Yes, it’s important to keep perspective, and to recognize that there are others out there with far more serious problems than mine … but that doesn’t make my problems unimportant. Jay Lake talked about it a bit on his LiveJournal a few months back:

Friend: “Man, I feel lousy. I have a cold.”
Jay: “Man, that sucks. I hope you feel better soon.”
Friend: (embarrassed) “Oh, wait. You have cancer. Never mind.”

Because cancer is the trump card of Competitive Problems. (Okay, now I’m tempted to write the rules of this game. Diabetes gives me a +3 to complain about health problems, but I also lose one point per published book for any writing-related complaints…)

Where was I? Oh, right. What bothers me more than the “Ha ha, your problems aren’t real problems,” attitude (and I will admit I don’t have a ton of sympathy for some of the problems posted), is the whole concept of lableing these things “white people’s problems” and “first world problems.” As it turns out, “third world” isn’t actually shorthand for “Everyone is poor and starving and diseased and waiting for the west to swoop in and save them.” Here, have a few images from third world countries like India, South Africa, Brazil, and Tanzania.

I could write a long-winded post trying to unpack the various problematic assumptions here, but I decided to go a different route instead. Feel free to substitute “first world” and “third world” for white and PoC in my comments below.

Four more modified White Whine images behind the cut…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I used to use "first world problems," then I kind of thought about it and realised how a lot of the things I had problems with were probably also issues in many parts of the world not just Canada. Since then for days when my MP3 player is not working, and I have a headache and I don't want to go to work and I'm out of milk and everything is annoying at once I use "petty whinging" which seems to better suit.

[jimhines]

That makes sense. Another suggestion on LJ was "Privileged Whines," which I think could work better for some of my own day-to-day annoyances.

Which isn't to say that a day like the one you describe isn't legitimately frustrating...

[muccamukk]

I kind of feel like "privileged" is starting to get used to the point where it's losing all meaning.

I mean, I'm economically privileged to have a job that I really like and that pays for my (non-working) MP3 player and to buy milk (and to have a computer to post all this with). I'm health privileged to not have a headache all the time like some people I know and to be able to drink milk without lethal allergies. And I realise that and I'm grateful for it in my prayers, but I kind of don't want to turn my Man That Was a Bad Day rant into a discussion of the finer points of privilege, especially as the word is often associated with white privilege, which I have, but then we're back to your original rant.

TL;DR: I like petty better because it's less political.

[naraht]

Thanks for this. I've been uneasy about the whole "first world problems" meme for a while now.

[dragovianknight]

The "first world problems" thing has irked me from the start. Complain or don't complain, but don't try to assuage your liberal guilt in the course of your complaining. :P

[adelheid]

How is it "assuaging" liberal guilt? Depending on the way it's used, I generally see it as acknowledging subject position/context and explicitly *not* thinking that this is truly the worst thing in the world.