The First World Problems meme is a tongue and cheek image of popular culture which calls on the more privileged in life to talk about their problems whether they be the barista spelling your soy milk caramel macchiato or having to plug your MacBook into its charger so it can update. As a country full of privilege no matter how much or little, there are other countries who don't have the luxuries like water or personal laptops. We as a privileged society have a Ideological stand point on the world.
In a Ideological stand point, there are many viewpoints but the main one everyone know about is the hegemonic view point. The hegemonic view point is a social control over society due to power and it is how content in which all experiences are evaluated even if they don't apply to that situation.
Very brief here.
ReplyDeleteI think using an Ideological method is appropriate for this meme. Certainly also, you can see how the meme is most often used to poke fun at the eye-rolling combination of privilege and cluelessness. I'm not sure how this meme would point toward a hegemonic perspective - it seems more focused upon economic class rather than political or social culture. You are absolutely right suggesting that these memes would become moot in other, less-affluent societies - folks who access the Internet from developing countries like India or Brazil might find these memes to be less funny - or maybe they would just assume that such "jokes" are caricatures of American culture? That sort of global-culture analysis, however, is a bit beyond looking at the meaning in the meme itself - which is the goal for our class.
Consider the elements of the image and how those elements contribute to the force of the satire in the caption. I dig the ambition! but let's focus on the meme itself, rather than how it might serve as evidence in a larger-scale cultural criticism. Let me know how I can help.