Steven Poole Discusses Memes….

…and hilarity ensues:

So there I was, bashing out a hot take on my MacBook Air on a sunny terrace, when I took a sip of my takeaway coffee and my heart sank. The barista had put milk in it. That ruined my whole morning. What a terrible world. But I know, right? First world problem!

Wow! Finally, some self awareness in a ‘Guardian’ columnist…

But why do we speak of “first world problems”, exactly, and what might we unintentionally mean when we do?

Oh. I spoke too soon. The Royal We is being sprinkled around again:

For a start, the phrase is an anachronism, since we no longer talk about the “third world” .

‘We’ don’t? I can assure you we do. You might mean ‘we’ as the Guardianista watercooler crowd, but that’s not the whole world, thank heavens.

That implies there might be something smug in the modern usage, as well as a hint of enjoyable transgression in using language that is not “politically correct” .

I’m not sure that correcting someone attempting to control the language is ‘enjoyable’, so much as necessary…

Some may wish to retort that worrying about the political implications of the phrase “first world problem” when used by rich people is itself a first world problem. But repetition of language that implies an unspoken attitude to others will often help that attitude to harden within us. And that’s everyone’s problem.

Nope! It’s still your problem. Yours, and all the other SJWs.