Meaning
A minor annoyance that qualifies as a problem only for someone living in comfort and affluence, such as slow hotel wifi or a coffee made with the wrong milk. Invoked for humour, self-deprecation, or to put complaints in perspective. Informal and usually aimed at oneself rather than others. Humorous and self-deprecating; can sound dismissive when aimed at someone else's genuinely felt complaint. Regional use: General English; strongest in online contexts.
Origin
The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence, cited in Wikipedia, dates to 1979 in G. K. Payne's writing on the built environment, and the phrase later appears in Matthew Good Band's 1995 song 'Omissions of the Omen'. It became an internet in-joke in the 2000s: an Urban Dictionary entry in August 2005, a Tumblr blog in November 2008, the subreddit in January 2011, and a #firstworldproblems hashtag that peaked on Twitter around July 2011. Oxford Dictionaries Online added the term in November 2012, with Australia's Macquarie following in December, and UNICEF New Zealand leaned on it for a 2012 survey about connectivity complaints. No individual coiner is known, so the dictionary and meme chronology is the documented history.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- #firstworldproblems
- first-world problems
- FWP
Usage Examples
- My biggest crisis today was the office kettle taking too long, a textbook first-world problem.
- Complaining that the resort wifi is slow is the definition of a first-world problem.
- She laughed at her own first-world problem: too many streaming services to choose from.