By IVAN LAJARA
Life Editor
ilajara@freemanonline.com

We hate how you love to complain.

Let the meaning of that sentence be ingrained into your subconscious, because we’re about to dig dipper into the bowels of just how much we actually complain.

We have lost perspective. Exhibit A: You’re complaining right now about how this column is not journalism. (SPOILER ALERT: It is not).

Consider what’s known in the World of the Web that is Wide as First World Problems. These problems, we should point out, are not real problems that affect developed nations, but a condition in which the most trivial of inconveniences become life-shattering events because of our very condition of living in a first world country.

Things like how angry you get when your cell phone call gets dropped when you are on the train, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out; or when you complain about how small the keyboard on your smartphone is; or how you go to Facebook to ask people about this very thing and nobody responds; or how you lose a fan on your page when you post a follow-up image about the same thing; or when the Rondout Valley Central School District posts on its Facebook page that, “Please be advised that the Daily Freeman is not correct. Our tax levy cap is actually 1.99%” because the Freeman said it was 2 percent.

And actually, it’s 1.9987 percent.

Things like that.

This condition, thankfully, has been appropriately lampooned with the viciousness it deserves.  One permutation of this can be accomplished by posting an image of a stressed individual with the trivial complaint. The juxtaposition, if executed correctly, translates into humor. The margin of error is usually 2 percent.

Sorry, 1.9987 percent.

Here’s but a quick sampling of such complaints, posted on Twitter with the tag “#firstworldproblems,” gathered in a flash because the first version of this column was erased when we forgot to save the file, something that is within itself a First World Problem: Continued...

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“Vacation is exhausting.”

“My new smart phone is too big to fit in my pocket.”

“I need to go to the mall & don’t feel like it AT ALL.”

“How can I have so many dresses and nothing to wear?”

“I only have 4% of battery left on my phone and I’m not going home anytime soon.”

“I haven’t received any new drawings on Draw Something recently.”

Anyway, you have probably experienced this yourself. So, as a free service to the community, we are going to help you realize how silly your complaints are in the big scheme of things. We are thus offering to create the images and post your complaints online at dailyfreeman.com, complaints such as “I can’t believe I just bought the paper and you’re making me go online to get more content.”

Simply send an email to ilajara@freemanline.com with the subject line “First World Problems”; Send us a tweet at @ivanlajara; a fax to (845) 331-3557 (faxes will photographed and be laughed at). The more personalized and those related to the Hudson Valley and The Catskills, the better.

You’re welcome.

Ivan Lajara is Life Editor of the Freeman. He can be reached by calling (845) 331-5000, ext. 502, and by email at ilajara@freemanonline.com. Read his blog at dailyfreeman.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ivanlajara and ‘like’ him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/IvanLajaraPage.

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