When First-World Problems Aren't

Recently, one of my friends had trouble with her iPhone. Now, this sounds like a 'first world problem'. Except that my friend worked in a remote area of Scotland, and the iPhone was her lifeline to the rest of the world-- her emergency phone, her internet, her navigation system.

There are a good many scenarios like the one I just mentioned, where a problem which is trivial in one context becomes serious in another.  Soggy summer weather might be merely annoying for vacationers, but could mean financial ruin for a farmer whose crops rotted in the rain. Angst over social slights might seem shallow, but for a woman in 19th century England whose survival essentially depended on a good marriage, reputation damage could be a disaster.

I bring this up because I've encountered a number of stories in settings that make challenges which would be 'first world problems' to modern, Western audiences very serious conflicts indeed. And I've also seen people criticise those stories for having 'whiny' characters or 'trivial' plot points as major issues. Actually, I think the key is for the writer to convey the consequences of that problem in the context of that fictional world.[image error]