Comments on: It’s just “Problems” and “Context”

By: jorm

jorm — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 18:46:17 +0000

You are not required to engage in “debates” with assholes and idiots. That’s not “debate”.

If your opinions or thoughts are actually good and interesting, people will debate you. If people don’t – if people actively go out of their way to prevent you from engaging – you may want to take a long hard look at why, and stop trying to blame Evil Feminists.

By: Carl Weetabix

Carl Weetabix — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:02:13 +0000

It’s part of why I hate the term “hater” (no pun intended). While it is often rightfully directed at assholes, it is also a way of demeaning everything they say, implying it has no value or truth, and telling them to “shut up”.

It is true often say, racists do seem to be “haters”. However shutting them down with amounts to a stereotype is ironic in that the problem with racists, is their racism is founded on stereotypes.

In the end all of these are just ways of “winning” an argument not by engaging the argument, but rather by demeaning the arguer to shut them up. “first world problem” is saying, “You are whining about nothing (I want to hear about), shut up.”

By: So-Called “First World Problems” and a Little Bit of Privilege | Girls Can't Resist

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:15:13 +0000

[…] being said, I fully agree with this article. Essentially, the concept of “first-world problems” and usage of the phrase needs to […]

By: Steve Simitzis

Steve Simitzis — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:47:00 +0000

There was a good pushback against this when the meme first popped up:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/whats-wrong-with-firstworldproblems/248829/

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.

One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research In Motion’s technical issues would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because people don’t wake up with “poor African” pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is–quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone.