I have a serious problem with the term 'first world
problems' for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that people
mostly use it to negate whenever someone who is better off than they are has
something go wrong. Nowadays, it comes package-delivered with all the "at least
you aren’t starving in a third-world country" clichéd phrases, which then
begins a slippery slope that means that literally no-one can ever say that they are going through hard times.
Homeless and living on the street? At least you have a street to live on unlike most kids in Ethiopia; that kind of
thing. The reason why this annoys me like it does is that I get that those in
the higher ranks of society go through issues as well; not the same issues as
the rest of us, but they have to deal with problems same as the rest of us.
Sure, someone complaining about a scratch on his Mercedes kind of has what’s
coming to him, but more income brings on a different variety of things that
need to be handled and not everyone is cut out for it despite where they are.
For the record, this isn’t me looking down from a castle wall and telling
people to get over it; I’m just a middle-class guy who’s seen enough Disney
Princess movies to get the general idea of why living in regal luxury can get a
bit too much for some people.
