For a start, it patronises those outside the “first world” by implying that hunger, disease and war are not only prevalent among the global poor but in some way the sole conditions of their lives. Whoever uses it, though, it’s arguable that the phrase “first world problems” is condescending and dehumanising to literally everyone on the planet. But when “first world problem” is just a mealy mouthed way of saying “shut up”, it sounds distinctly compassion-free. Naturally, our powers of sympathy are limited and we all conduct psychic triage on the sufferings of others. If, after listening to your pathetic account of how your Uber cab took a whole 10 minutes to arrive, I respond “first world problem”, then I am aggressively staking out the moral high ground and portraying myself (almost certainly dishonestly) as someone who only ever worries about the plight of starving children. Such privilege-checking becomes a more violent intervention when demanded by someone else. At the same time, I remind myself and everyone in earshot that we are indeed living in the “first world”. To pre-emptively concede that my problem is just a first world one is to ostentatiously check my privilege before anyone else tells me to do so. If, at the end of an irate tirade about how my Kenyan coffee beans were over-roasted by the artisanal torréfacteur, I append the phrase “first world problem” with some wry rearrangement of my face muscles, I signal that I know this is just one of the minor frustrations of a very fortunate life. Like many things, “first world problems” has a different force depending on whether you are applying it to yourself or throwing it in someone else’s face. 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”.

And yet search analytics show a big uptake only since 2011, long after we all learned to stop talking about the “third world”. The modern, exclusively ironic usage of “first world problems” did not get going until the mid-1990s. (The usual phrase is the optimistic “developing world”.) The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for “first world problem” is from 1979, though it was then meant seriously, to denote housing problems that were specific to the “first” world.

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

Another word for issues