First-World Problems: Microcomplaints

[Mike Oxlong]

The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About

Name an inequity, and it is highly likely that social media has helped call meaningful attention to it, if not started and hashtagged a movement.

But a glance through your acquaintances’ aggrieved online posts may well show equal attention paid to the slings and arrows of everyday vexations. The same technology that allows people to voice their displeasure with dictatorships, police brutality and prejudice also enables them to carp about mediocre meals, rude customer service and that obnoxious guy at the next table who won’t shut up.

It was once considered unbecoming, or annoying itself, to moan publicly about trifling personal ordeals. Now, in a seismic shift for the moral culture, abetted by technology, we tolerate and even encourage the “microcomplaint”: the petty, petulant kvetch about the quotidian.

Complaining has historically been deemed permissible when reserved for the ears of significant others, family members or close friends. A simple hypothesis, then, would be that those who gripe online are simply lonely in the physical world, lacking intimates with whom to vent, or are chronic malcontents. But lots of rich, popular celebrities also do it.

“they confiscated Frankie’s glitter spray at the airport.........he’s devastated,” Ariana Grande tweeted in 2014 about her half brother, who was, one may reasonably assume from his nonrelaxed reaction, not going to Hollywood.

“Two irritating things this morning: the bread is mouldy and there’s only de caff coffee,” a hungry and fatigued Elizabeth Hurley posted in 2013.

“I specifically ordered persian rugs with cherub imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh,” Kanye West lamented in a 2010 tweet that has since been deleted but whose relatable misfortune remains foremost in the hearts of his countrymen.

Mr. West’s angst could also fall under the category of the “complaintbrag,” a cousin of the humblebrag and “first-world problems,” a term that has drawn its own share of first-world complaints for its patronizing stance toward non-first-world inhabitants.

In what may be the most common example, the offender moans about a lack of free time (besides that devoted to tweeting, of course) because of the burdensome demands of a hugely successful career. Horrors of luxury travel feature prominently.

The smartphone in particular has facilitated extemporaneous caviling. Irritations that the passage of time may have soothed can, in the moment, be immediately expressed to an audience. Often these complaints take the form of a narrative developing in real time: the talkative taxi driver, the hostile airline ticket clerk, the interminable security line, the malodorous seatmate and crying baby. Such threads frequently pick up steam as the audience validates or shares the narrator’s posts; the nuisances others must contend with can make for excellent vicarious entertainment, and accreting Likes tend to fuel the microcomplainer.

Fear of Missing Out could also have something to do with microcomplaining. In a virtual environment in which everyone else seems to be crowing about an achievement or storybook lifestyle, those stuck for three hours at the D.M.V. are likely to be even more distressed by their current circumstances. Absent anything to trumpet about in those moments, and faced with a streaming barrage of others’ vacation photos and professional victories, they could feel additionally entitled to grouse.

In this way, the microcomplaint functions as a kind of reverse boast: You may be celebrating a new job or engagement with a Michelin-starred dinner, but look at how much I have suffered today — I’m deserving of more attention.

This one-upmanship of absorbed pain may be the strongest force behind the rise of the microcomplaint. “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?” Tony Soprano asked, in his first therapy session, on the pilot episode of “The Sopranos,” back in 1999. “The strong, silent type. That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do. See, what they didn’t know was once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings that they wouldn’t be able to shut him up! And then it’s dysfunction this, and dysfunction that. …”

While Tony was talking explicitly about the culture of therapy and confession, he identified a general transformation in the way we regard stoic reserve versus expression of vulnerability.

He surely would have agreed with the conclusions drawn in a 2014 paper in the journal Comparative Sociology called “Microaggression and Moral Cultures.” The authors Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning argue that the increased attention recently given to microaggressions (commonplace exchanges that denigrate marginalized groups; see the recent controversy at Yale over Halloween costumes) on college campuses is a result of “the emergence of a victimhood culture that is distinct from the honor cultures and dignity cultures of the past.”

Those who were offended in an “honor culture,” where one’s reputation is paramount, once resorted to direct retaliation; think of duels or blood feuds. This vengeful climate eventually gave way in the West to a “dignity culture,” in which people consider themselves to have intrinsic worth that cannot be devalued by others (“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”).

When conflict cannot be brushed aside in a dignity culture, the affronted attempt to compromise or turn to the legal system rather than seek out violent recompense. (Long before ignoring personal attacks became the prevailing mode, Jesus had a few ideas about turning the other cheek, too.)

Gary Cooper, Tony Soprano would argue, combines the best of both worlds: He fights back when necessary — he is “strong” — yet never betrays any feelings of hurt — he remains “silent.”

The authors of the paper assert that we are now in a culture that valorizes victimhood. “The moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights,” they write, which “increases the incentive to publicize grievances.” Instead of pursuing violent or legal confrontation or letting the insult slide, the victim now appeals for support from third parties while “emphasizing one’s own oppression,” often through social media.

So pervasive is this sentiment that it breeds “competitive victimhood,” infecting even those who have relatively little standing to cite their persecution — for instance, white people who bring up reverse racism, or various Fox News broadcasters. (As one may expect, the paper has been endorsed by social centrists and conservatives such as Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who has written about discrimination in his field against conservatives.)

Although microcomplaints are an apolitical phenomenon and distinct from complaints arising from microaggressions, there may be a connection. Since whatever the microcomplainers have endured casts their adversaries as villainous (whether it’s a tardy cable technician or inclement weather), it correspondingly raises their own moral status as innocent victims.

Bellyaching for sympathy is not new behavior. But on social media, in an era in which everyone, as per Tony Soprano, is “crying and confessing and complaining,” it is being legitimized and rewarded in ways we have never seen. Gary Cooper probably would not have grumbled about the Starbucks barista misspelling his name in order to gain points.

“Never tell your problems to anyone,” the legendary football coach Lou Holtz said. “Twenty percent don’t care, and the other 80 percent are glad you have them.”

Those numbers may need some revision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/fashi ... about.html?

[Mock Cockpit]

My recent favourite, "When I turn on the heated seats in my Mercedes, it makes the radio buzz".

[Takechanpoo]

dont Ryan Boundless has a account in fg.com?
that microwhining gaijin dude dont distinguish j-societys problem from his personal problems deriving from his schizophrenic mentality.

[Coligny]

My recent favourite, "When I turn on the heated seats in my Mercedes, it makes the radio buzz".

Because it's a perfecly normal behaviour for a car from a german luxury brand...

[matsuki]

dont Ryan Boundless has a account in fg.com?
that microwhining gaijin dude dont distinguish j-societys problem from his personal problems deriving from his schizophrenic mentality.

Shhhh victim culture "man." We know you must have more experience with mental illness than any of us but nobody cares about how they gave you the wrong meds yesterday.