This past week's hilarious covfefe kerfuffle, and some people's eye-rolling criticism of the joy others were taking in it, got me thinking: every time some silliness comes along, there's always someone (and I myself have totally been this someone) who muses "Why are people letting themselves get distracted by this ridiculousness when there's so much more important shit going on in the world?" The following post addresses this concern.
First of all, this position implies that you can only do one or the other - you can only take joy in the absurdities of life, OR you can only be aware of the injustices in the world. What a ridiculous assertion! The two things are not mutually exclusive. A person can absolutely be a socially conscious, politically active denizen of the world and also be able to take a meaningless joke and run with it. There is no reason we can't do both. In fact, I would argue it's imperative to be able to laugh in the face of an increasingly dark world. Activism fatigue and burnout is a very real thing (look it up) in this age of constant media consumption, internet outrage, and intense wokeness. If we weren't able to take a break from all of this, I'm afraid our hearts would simply explode with the pain of it all. I know mine would.
In fact, laughing at the absurdity of something - finding the funny - is a gentler way of recognizing the absurdity and an effective way of taking away its power. Lately I'm finding myself laughing incredulously at a lot of things that, even a year ago, would have rankled me endlessly, giving it much more power over me than it deserved. Laughter (even sardonic laughter) is much healthier for your body and mind than helpless rage. When we let ourselves get taken over by the darkness, when we let ourselves descend into absolute humourlessness, we lose part of our humanity, and the bad guys win. I don't always understand the things that other people find funny, and I have my own eye-roll moments over what some people choose to entertain and distract themselves with, but more than anything, I want people to feel joy - don't you? Let people take joy in what they want or need - the world is bad enough without us ALSO judging each other based on what we need to not let ourselves go totally insane with a downward spiral of thoughts about how our world is going to hell. For the record, I don't truly believe the world is going to hell; people's ability to be silly in the face of constant bombardment of absolute horror is one of the reasons for this. I love seeing stupid memes. I love seeing people's humour and creativity on display. Those people are not letting the darkness consume them - they are flipping the darkness on its head.
I feel similarly whenever I hear someone make a "First World Problems" joke; it's as if someone's suffering from on the other side of the world totally discredits or devalues our own suffering, simply because we were lucky enough to be born in a developed country. Yes, a person who was born into less ideal conditions has, on a daily basis, an infinitely harder go of it than we do. But it doesn't mean we, in a luckier part of the world, aren't entitled to cry, or scream, or complain.
This invocation is also incredibly patronising to "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. It implicitly characterises the less fortunate majority of the world’s population as saintly idiots who would never dream of complaining about anything more trivial. In the guise of right-on sympathy, we condescendingly picture others as living lives of homogeneous horror while rhetorically rendering them invisible as people, denying the individuality of everyone’s various joys and sorrows." (Full and super interesting article found here.)
Whenever someone invokes "First World Problems" I also want to ask them what they've done lately to decrease the suffering of the people they are invoking when trying to shame a privileged North American for their whining. Do you regularly donate to worthy causes? Have you volunteered your time in less developed areas of the world? If your only interest is making someone else feel bad for their luckier lot in life, rather than actually taking action against whatever injustice or social imbalance you're invoking, keep it to your damn self, thanks. Perhaps my white-person whining isn't helpful, but your higher-than-thou shaming isn't either. We can all do better.
"The problem is," I hear some of you saying, "there are some people out there who are completely oblivious or ignorant to the bad shit going on, and who only subscribe to vapid, mindless distraction." And to you I say: you're absolutely right. Those people may never be interested in important news or world events. But just because those people exist does not mean the rest of us should decrease our own mindless consumption of distraction to somehow like, balance things out. Other people's ignorance is not going to stifle my joy. Those people have nothing to do with me or my similarly woke friends. People are going to consume what they're going to consume, believe what they're going to believe, and open their minds when they're ready to open their minds. Those people are not my problem, and they're not your problem. If you're doing what YOU can, socially conscious person, you can feel good about it, and leave it at that.
Our generation is the most socially aware and critically thinking we've seen yet. I am constantly finding hope and joy in the little things that people do. I do not despair over people's choice of distraction. I think most of us are aware of the things going on around us, good and bad, and if one day's social media gets dominated by some silly meme, don't you worry - the next day we'll be back to the doom and gloom of every day life and news. We know the world is terrible. But we can't let it only be terrible.
Oh, and I will never stop covfefing. For whatever reason I find it too damn funny to let it die. And that's totally ok.
