Despite their addictive internet properties, First World Problem memes insecurely acknowledge that, though we feign to live complex lives, they are comparatively pieces of cake to the less privileged. Here the assumption is that our lives really aren’t as bad as we make them to be; others are far worse off than us.
This pose is arguably praiseworthy considering the myriad opportunities we have to push foreign issues “under the bed” and legitimize our trivial predicaments, this partition drawn between “first” and “third”, here really “privileged” and “unprivileged”, still resonances with Orientalism and hegemony.
While characterizing our problems as first world, we are fundamentally differing our lives from the lives of those in the third world. The line being drawn here is artificial; the first and the third world do not exist as places but are now seen as general states of populations in terms of economy and status.
Grossly, we can define the third world as a place of little or no development, with widespread poverty and sparse internal infrastructure. Given the at times volatility of government and the vagaries of poverty, the conception that the third world is a separate “other” dose not hold.
Perhaps the ambiguity of “other” people’s problems makes them the perfect material for internet comedy. Either way, I am dissatisfied with the partitioning of first and third worlds and similarly disappointed in the popularity of pointing out minor, modern inconveniences while so blindly confronting more meaningful suffering, even if in irony, they are acting as a form of respect for those who suffer on deeper levels.