This "oooh that's such a first world problem" malarky

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is it just me that finds it a little bit wanky as a stand alone comment then?
It's just started mushrooming a bit and is rather getting on ones tits.

sorry.

Does it mean the same thing as "luxury problems" and "affluenza"?

I was thinking that but you wrote it

WTF is going on with my typing tonight? faced not placed

I have been leaving bizarre and badly spelled messages all over the internet lately for ever

Well that's just a typical First World problem, MrsDeV. Some people can't afford computers you know!

MrsDV I suffered from chronic typos yesterday, me and my FWPs eh?

The phrase 'first world problem' didn't exist when I was a student a decade while ago, but it reminds me of one of my classmates from that era who had done some sort of development work in an African country that I won't name because it might identify her. Many, many problems I and the rest of our year suffered were trivial 'in comparison'. Didn't stop her getting hugely offended when I inadvertantly made a (in retrospect stupid, but not intentionally insulting) comment touching on something that (I didn't know) affected her. This makes me suspect that at least a few of the FWP-shouters out there are similarly hypocritical. It also kind of gets on my wick when people refer to their own problems as FWPs - if it's trivial it doesn't need the extra attention (or a sodding hashtag) and if it isn't, well, don't try to minimise it yourself as there are plenty of others who will do that for you...

I'll say this for the phrase. Its bloody handy for winding people up

I've never thought of it as political or a sign of the writer being particularly 'aware'. To me it just says that YABU for having such a snivelling unimportant little lacklustre problem AND expecting us to give a shiny low flying fuck about it.

YANBU. What's the one supremely important problem in the world (rhetorical question)? Should that one thing be the only AIBU here, because everything else isn't as important? Of course not.

Would make AIBU a lot easier on old HQ and the Big Red Button though

Worrying about whether it is a first world problem is such a first world problem :o

You are so welcome.

Kew, that is gobsmacking.

OP, I thought the first world problem thing started with that website 'white people's problems', which was very funny. When done as a gently self-mocking running comic commentary, it is amusing. When done to pompously put down anybody who dare complain about anything short of mass genocide, it's not big or clever.

I always thought it was just a sort of gently mocking 'don't swear the small stuff' type comment, I say it if I'm getti frustrated at myself for dithering over things that don't really matter and are essentially a choice between luxuries. Didn't realise it was wanky!

I normally only hear this said by people of their own problems eg "Yes I know it's a FWP but I get really paranoid about my cleaner reading my post". In which case it's fine.

I'd only ever use it "against" a good friend who'd had a serious loss of perspective and needed a gentle nudge - again it has it's uses.

The irritating forum use is annoying, but no more so than the more common "honestly, if that's all you've got to complain about...."

Brie and Dilys it is the Wanky use of it I am complaining about, as in the "if that's all you've got" - and it takes a lot to irritate me usually so it must have really got to me

Neither of you have stuck me as wanky posters before.

I've only seen/heard it used in a self-deprecating way, too - prefacing a comment with an awareness of the, um, inherent triviality, I suppose...

Is there actually any evidence that people with "third world problems" do not also suffer from depression, worries about their children's behaviour, niggles about their MIL? From all first hand accounts I have read it seems to me that it is precisely in a life and death situation that small problems can take on a huge significance.

(Anne Frank's diary, anyone?)

I suspect this whole idea that the sufferers of third world problems cannot possibly also be suffering from first world problems comes exactly from onlookers: people who travel to the country and see the extended bellies and exhausted mothers but do not speak the language and do not hear the gossip round the village pump; people who are not of that culture.

I think it has it's uses, to puncture very entitled or clearly whinging-while-wealthy people, problem is it's now getting overused to just mean "Unimportant"

I think a lot of you are reading so much into this, it was a trending topic on Twitter and usually used as jokey retort to someone complaining.

'Ugh, my phones upstairs and I can't be bothered to get it so I have to use the iPad'

• 'lol first world problems'

I have never ever heard it used in a 'I am so much cleverer and world-weary than you' context. ;(

Ime it is not just about the Twitter fad, it's an old idea.

I have heard it suggested for years that suffering from e.g. anxiety or depression is a luxury/first world problem etc that poor people with Real Problems simply can't afford; in fact, I've read the same idea in 19th/early 20th century books, so definitely not a new idea. Not sure that the actual phrase First World Problem did not feature in a book we read at school, and I went to school in the 70s.

How incredibly patronising, firstly to use the issues faced by those in developing countries to negate and belittle other people, and secondly to infer that said people are somehow less human and do not have daily annoyances and irritations of every other person on the planet.

People have this limited view that because a certain level of living is unimaginable in this country, it means that it is unliveable in other countries. Yes it is a struggle when you live in a developing country, but you still live and laugh and have a family... People are not sitting there waiting for the oxfam cameras to happen by.

It differs only slightly from the outdated missionary colonialist attitude that we like to pretend was erased. And the ironic thing about it is that whilst people are feeling very current and smug popping their FWP tags on everything, people in our perceived rich countries are living in levels of poverty that are unimaginable also.

I think anyone with experience of adoption can tell you that, mirai. To demonstrate your suitability as an adopting parent you need to show that you have thought a little more deeply about the child you are taking on as a person and that you are not regarding them in the light of putting a bit of money in a collecting tin. Think of growing up knowing that your parents are looking on you as their private little charity to the point of being willing to state so in public- how good would that make you feel? "We had you not because we wanted you but because we thought we'd help out." And a third world country is a bit of an emotive term these days. Bringing up an adoptive child is also about helping them to feel proud of their background.

Or to put it briefly: the slightest hint that you regard adoption as doing the child or country a favour shows that you are not ready.

I didn't have my biological children to do them a favour, my parents did not adopt to do my brother a favour. We wanted a child for all the reasons that people do want children. An adopted child needs to feel wanted in the same way.