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Lunacee_2013

(529 posts)
12. While I understand the "first world" issues may seem silly,
Mon Feb 24, 2014, 01:14 AM
Feb 2014

or even dumb to many, especially if food/water/meds are in short supply, there are many others who are truly affected by them. Plus, to be perfectly honest, about half the time someone calls something a "first world" problem, it either isn't (meaning it affects people around the world) or they're trying to deflect attention away from the issue being discussed and trying to make the people discussing it feel guilty (because they have too much free time and money/things).

Serveral years ago, when I was just getting into politics, I came across a blog where a poster (read troll) was constantly calling all sorts of women's issues "first world problems". Including date rape, yes I said rape. According to him, the only women who had to worry about that were upper-to-middle class white girls, 18-25, who could afford going out to clubs and bars and only lower class and poor women ever got really assaulted because no one would believe them if they told. Finally someone called him out on his bullshit, told him that all kinds of rape happened to all kinds of women/girls, and to GTFO. That was the only lesson I needed to see the MRA trolling tactic of calling anything that might ever even bother any rich, pretty, young, white girl a "first world problem". Doesn't mean that such things don't exist, just that I've seen that ploy used since I was 13.

As for the question in your title, I've *heard* someone call G.W.B. the "best fucking thing that ever happened to this country". Ending slavery, winning WWII, giving different groups of citizens their God given rights, that thing that happened in 1776, nope. Sure they were pretty good, but Bush was fucking great! Never mind those 2 wars or 9/11 or the 2008 crash or the torture or the lies, he was awesome! I swear the whole room got quite for about 5 seconds after that and you could almost hear everyone else, even the not so liberal people, thinking "WTF, did he really just say that?" This happened right after the '08 crash when not a whole lotta people were feeling good about the president. I just had to walk away. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks that? This wasn't said in 2000 or even 2006, but in late 2008. Wasn't his approval rating near 20-25% by then?

On edit: I didn't read any of the other posts when I replied, so I just saw where someone else pointed out that this is a MRA debating tactic. Ha, I knew I wasn't the only one who noticed that! We should just make a list of their trolling tricks and spread it across the web. I know there are a few lists already, but we need some kind of huge cheat sheet, an ultimate MRA bs guide, to counter their play book games. And every time we see one of the usual tricks, we can just post "Oh, that's number 24 on the bs guide: how to make feminists feel bad for discussing 'first world problems' and/or living in the first world and not being the poorest human being on Earth."

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