My #firstworldproblems

When I sporadically check my twitter I am consistently bombarded by tweets like these:


“I forgot to put deodorant on and now I smell like a person.” 

“My hot water ran out 45 minutes into my shower.”

“I want to enjoy my popcorn during the actual movie, so I have to starve like I'm fasting for Ramadan during the 20 min. of advertisements.”


(Tweets from @FiWoProblems)

Unless you have been living under a rock, or in the third world, then you have probably recently come across the saying “first world problems.” For those of you new to the phrase, it basically means that the first world is so spoiled that no one actually encounters problems, and instead when we have what we deem to be a “problem” we are just bitching about how we are mildly inconvenienced.

Now I’m not arguing this statement, as most of our day to day problems are peanuts considering some other things people must encounter.

Think for a second, how quickly is your day ruined when you find ants in your house? It’s disgusting, them walking all your food. Now imagine having to live like that all the time…gross. I, like the rest of you, just threw up a little in my mouth.

It feels as though majority of the first world cannot fend for themselves when push comes to shove.

Think you’re different?

 Try to track and hunt an animal, without your shotgun Rambo, and then find practical use for every part of the dead animal. Not just digest it, but sew with it, sleep on it, and live in it.

Unless your name is “Dances With Trees” then you will probably struggle with standing in the woods for over 10 minutes without any signal for your IPhone, let alone catch the animal.

Now before I get your comments saying that, “Me and my dad go to the woods and hunt wild turkey for Thanksgiving with crossbow. Just like the first Thanksgiving.” I’m going to stop you before you call yourself the next day Davie Crocket and say that if that turkey went into a frialator right after the arrow pierced it, then just stop. Just don’t even open your mouth, you only help my point.

But I’m not here to criticize our problems, I get it. Life is easier now, and people are always going to be unsatisfied with the current situation. That’s how we progress. If people were psyched on candles there would be no light bulbs. If we weren’t lazy we would have never switched from bikes to cars. And if anyone could actually understand Morse code, we probably would have never needed phones.

The thing is that I feel like our culture is a little too reliant at times on these things which is supposed to make our world “better.”

Isn't it terrible when someone wants a response to their e-mail message of a video of cats, the third one they sent to you this week, 23 seconds after they clicked send?

Personally I treat e-mail like snail mail. You have to wait at least three days for me to read, two weeks for a response, and sometimes messages just get lost in the mail. Incidentally enough this is why I love the FaceBook like button, the polite way to show that you do not care at all.

As for texting, that’s a whole other beast. I hate when people what to have a conversation on texting. Have we not figured out yet that this is the most inefficient form of instant communication, seeing as how the contents thirty minute conversation via text would have been covered in a two minute phone call?

Also, on a personal note, don’t text me messages that say “Sup,” give me orders or commands, like “Meet me at the basketball courts” or “I’m getting food in fifteen minutes, you are coming.” Don’t even give me an option, odds are I am doing nothing, and if we are going to get food, I’ll probably ditch what I’m currently doing.

As for the internet, I wish there was no FaceBook; every day I have to justify why I still am a part of that hellhole website. “What if I want to check in on that kid I met once three years ago?” “I have friends in other countries so you know, I need it…” Oh yeah because e-mail just doesn’t cut it. After all, what’s the point if you can’t stalk their pictures and every move at 2 A.M. on a Tuesday night? Don’t judge, when it comes to FaceBook, every one of your friends has grounds to issue a restraining order on you. You know it’s true.

To be fair my overall animosity to the computer and other forms of modern day technology does stem from the fact that I am not intelligent when it comes to it. I am often frustrated by the fact that I don’t know how to do things on a computer that I could easily do with a paper and pen.

Like last week I had a paper due. No problem, I write papers all the time. After I finished, I went to check the rubric and it said that there needed to be page numbers for every page except the first. I had no idea how to do this, and so I Googled it to find answers, which to my dismay listed what looked to me like entire handbooks on how do what would be a simple step if I just was writing my essay on paper and not on the computer.

And so I got frustrated. And so I did what I do best when I get frustrated; I swore. A lot.

And then I took a deep breath and said, “Mark, calm done this is a first world problem, you’re being spoiled right now.” Which in turn made me angry at myself for being so privileged that I have to worry about stupid things in life like how to number pages, while all the while I still couldn’t (and can’t today) do the sample task, which made me even more angry.

I’m going to stop myself right there and save you some time about how this dichotomy kept me up at night, but I’m sure you understand why I was banging on the keyboard like a gorilla into the wee hours of the morn’.

I guess I’m just asking, “why do things which are supposed to bring me joy and make my life easier, cause me nothing but headaches?”

My lack of intelligence really just serves as a way to slow me down in a process that is meant to expedite solutions to my problems, and in turn creates new ones and amplifies the original ones.

Now not only do I hate technology and do I have a general lack of understanding, I’m also terrified of it.

Like I think robots have the potential to take over, and I do recognize how dumb this makes me sound, which is why I don’t advertise this viewpoint often.

 But not only am I afraid of the robotic apocalypse, I fear where the society goes with more technology. For example, how many people are going to play football outside when they can master it on Madden? 


This might be a semi ridiculous example, but I gave up on skateboarding in favor of the, far easier and not conducive to physics, Tony Hawk series. I even feel elite playing the newer skateboarding series “Skate” because “it’s more realistic than Tony Hawk games,” without even taken into consideration that the most realistic thing would be to stand on my board outside.

I just am not always sold on technology, and sometimes I wish others weren’t either.

I wish we still focused on writing without a computer, so that teachers don’t assign us to write even mere sentences on a computer because “our handwriting looks like crap.” I wish I could feel comfortable going on vacations from my phone, leave it off all day without worrying about what I missed. I wish I could create my favorite moments with friends rather than constantly relying on watching others’ stupid decisions on YouTube.

I wish I could keep up in conversation with my peers and not constantly feel lesser because I do not entirely understand the proper etiquette for tweeting.

I wish technology wasn’t a need in modern day society, but simply what it is supposed to be, a convenience. A help. Not an obsession.

Now I guess my stance is a little extreme; I believe the mentality it most closely resembles is those of the witch hunts in the 17^th century, “if I don’t understand it, then I’m terrified of it and going to burn it.”

Maybe I just need to embrace and understand how truly amazing it can be, how great it is.

How it saves lives, keeps families connected, and constantly keeps individuals informed.

Maybe I should be happy that I’m lucky enough to live in society where necessary life skills are being able to type a paper and not hunt tonight’s dinner.

Maybe I am just too lazy to learn it, and so I tell myself I could never figure it out.

Maybe, just maybe,

I am so spoiled that I need to live in the third-world #firstworldproblems

-Mark Albano