The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About | Hacker News Reader

The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About

nytimes.com

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At the risk of "microcomplaining," I'd like to deride this as yet another thoughtless, substance-free article from the NYT.

With an amusing lack of self-awareness, a non-issue is identified (as a "seismic shift," no less) and connected with unrelated social phenomena using misinterpretations of the available evidence, many of which, conveniently, have also been described in other hyperlinked NYT articles.

If you believe this is a new phenomenon, I invite you to read just about any novel written during the Victorian era. If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class, I think you will take issue with the thrust of this article.

As for the implications of social media, that it can amplify certain aspects of human behavior is such a humdrum, "middle-brow" observation that I'm surprised this wasn't written by Thomas Friedman.

The letters columns of news papers have been fun of micro complaints since time began.

Sounds like a macrocomplaint about microphenomena?

If you manage to endure the first dinner party dialog between members of the upper class

I think this is a little different; a dinner party presumably is full of people who want to listen to each other talk. (And novels are generally more thoughtfully prepared than tweets.)

I don't know if it's a seismic shift, but anecdotally I can say that my microcomplaints around the dinner table don't get likes like Kanye and Kim's tweets do.

Edit: something about the fine line between comedy and whining.

I agree the situation isn't directly analogous, though presumably one only reads updates from people whom one wishes to follow.

I was trying to suggest that, with respect to this particular issue, social media has simply amplified a human tendency that has existed historically. In other words, it hasn't produced some "emergent" phenomenon that merits special consideration, as this article suggests.

Agreed. The article reads as a halfhearted attempt to mine cultural significance from social media, probably under pressure from a looming deadline or a quota.

Also, the tie between "microcomplaints" and "microaggressions" (with the Yale example thrown in) feels lazy and misguided. There's plenty to be written about the culture of victimhood vis-a-vis "microaggressions," and many fine articles have been written about it already. Connecting that issue to, say, Kanye West's tweet-gripes about Persian rugs feels glib.

The author comes closer to something resembling an interesting point when he talks about Gary Cooper -- though not for the reasons he thinks. One could write a fascinating, if not necessarily profound, article about the difference between yesterday's celebrities and today's. What seems to compel today's stars to blab about the pointless minutiae of their first-class lives on a regular basis? For that matter, why are minutiae being elevated to the level of important cultural discourse? I don't know -- probably something to do with the 24-hour news cycle, social media, and the need to fill a content void -- but I'd love to find out precisely why, and more important, what we can do to reverse the trend.

We are a society that is addicted to outrage. I don't begrudge people being outraged at things, but it's not a terribly helpful position and it does tend to amplify the exposure of the thing that is outraged over far beyond what it deserves to receive.

For example, this stupid Starbucks "Red Cups" issue. It's probably just a handful of idiots who don't even understand their own ideology who are complaining about these cups. And I personally would never have known about the whole issue if it weren't for people in my Twitter stream complaining about people complaining about red cups. How many of those people who are now complaining about the cups learned about the issue from people they know who complained about people complaining about the cups?

It's like some kind of hamfisted, Saturday morning special on intolerance or something, like one of those old Star Trek episodes where some people had half of their face black and other people had half of their face white, or vise versa.

We've socialized ourselves into believing that we must social-media-comment on every issue to make sure everyone knows where we stand, to create proof that we still maintain our standing within our in-crowds. It's exactly like school-children jumping in to mob bully someone. We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work. We can't broker any level of disagreement, because that would call into question whether or not we're BFFs.

It's nothing new. Remember people tying yellow ribbons around their trees during Desert Storm? Same thing. It's easier to retweet than it is to accept that you can't do anything about an issue.

> We have a child's understanding of how interpersonal relationships work.

That one sentence explained a whole lot to me about the culture of victimhood, microaggressions, and the like. Brilliant.

When my father returned home from his combat tour in WW2, he was bemused by the trivial things that people complained about. He was like "you're not going to die tomorrow, what are you complaining about?"

I remember a clip from The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch where he was complaining to his Mother about how hard his phd was and she said "Yes, dear, but at your age your Father was fighting the Nazis."

Reversing the 'others have it worse' to 'others have it better' is fun to show why the reasoning doesn't hold. For example:

Some people are born into wealth, so you can't ever say anything is easy to do because you aren't born into wealth.

Having grown up in a Third World country, I am oftentimes amused/annoyed by the seeming insignificance of "problems" people in the West complain about. Although the longer I live here, the more I find myself doing the same... Raised standards lead to raised expectations.

Protest was once a thing that was mostly practiced on a local level, within the family and church, and subject to the constraints of small groups. It is now fully secularized and pushed into the hands of the masses. There is a subculture for everyone.

And this works against "strong and silent". Strong and silent is not particularly noble in practice - it's a self-sacrificing game theoretical strategy. To take the upper hand in social situations, you avoid showing vulnerability and instead consistently display strength. For any problem someone cares about, you will show that you don't have to care, that you'll soak up the consequences rather than try to help. For any threat presented, you shrug it off or escalate until they cave in. Then everyone else has to bend to your wishes if they want your cooperation.

The ideal strong and silent person is psychopathic. Most people trying to follow it tear themselves up to do so.

The alternative is to allow the small complaint, to whine a little bit about how something wasn't right today. Because you have a subculture to validate you, your feelings become "reality" in that you can have an ongoing conversation about it instead of being told to shut up. On balance, a good thing for every underrepresented idea under the sun.

What we don't know how to deal with yet is when this turns into a social media mob; the new face of the manipulator is someone who points the subculture at a target and says "their fault; go get 'em." But - my conjecture is that eventually, most people burn out on this kind of radicalization.

So then, are we getting better? Will Endless September come to a conclusion? Stay tuned, I guess...

This has been a strange year. Some people that pointed out "victim culture" were demonized for it earlier this year. It's strange to see that the idea has caught on.

The 'victimhood' culture was only a very small minority of people found online that praised each other for things like being neurodivergent and handed out encouragement for not seeking medical help. It was crazy to see ideas like 'manspreading' being taken seriously outside of those (not so small after all) communities. Have they already overstayed their welcome?

The terrible part is that some legitimate complaints are being mistaken for the usual whine.

> manspreading

Was this really taken seriously outside of the communities you're referring to? I got the sense that an overwhelming majority of people rolled their eyes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-mansp...

Neurodivergence as a movement started out of functional people with managed symptoms being forced into abusive 'cure' therapies from intolerant parents. It is still by and far the go to movement to discuss the stigma of being mentally ill despite functionality and lack of distress.

What happens if the distress is over other's reaction to the condition, but not due to the condition itself.

That's also in neurodivergence afaik, unless we're talking about trans folk, they're their own category.

> The authors of the paper assert that we are now in a culture that valorizes victimhood.

An interesting observation. I have never thought about it that way before, but it seems plausible. What do others think about this statement? (Please make sure you read the context, though...)

I think that's too strong of a statement. Victims aren't considered heroes. Rather, social media enables broader transmissions of stories, and people connect with certain stories, so people playing victim card may receive sympathy, possibly empathy, but not made into a hero.

Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero.

> Now the person that DOES something about their shitty situation, now there's a person we call a hero.

Asking an administrator to fire someone who "makes you feel unsafe" is definitely doing something. They're not a hero.

Well jezebel declared someone that read during Donal Trump rally a hero for the act of reading. I guess hero is not an extremely hard to obtain status nowadays.

I think it valorizes suffering. That's hardly new to humanity, but I think we've hit upon a new medium and a format to do it in the form of the micro-complaint.

Edit: precisely this: "Irritations that the passage of time may have soothed can, in the moment, be immediately expressed to an audience."

An interesting article on the topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...

I wonder if this (and other things like it) is just a product of human beings being very prone to ideological influence/groupthink and the internet providing an effective medium to transfer that?

Consider a publication with 2m+ hits per month on their website that posts about how outrageous it is that people "Never Wonder Why Tampons Aren’t in Men’s Restrooms"[1] and the crowd cheers. The question I wonder is "How did these people get where they are now, to be outraged by this?", and I think the answer is incremental internet influence.

[1] http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexis...

>Cissexism is pretty much unchecked cis privilege or an otherwise shoddy awareness of the social monopoly on binary gender.

rolls eyes

Fuckin' Poe's law.

Hardly a satire - more probably markov chains CS101 homework ...

Sadly EF is serious site and not affiliated with the onion.

I'd also think that it's also Sturgeon's Law.

Except >99.9%

That particular example probably has lot more nuanced that this general phenomena of people complaining about petty things. Trans people have valid concerns. They also have huge problems with prioritization, awareness, organization of their movement etc. So they use feminist organizations as a way to get some of those.

But feminists are not very good with most of that stuff either. And feminist want to use trans as excuse to further their own political agendas. Then there is this idea that sympathy is underplayed in society because it's womens strength and there was/is patriarchy etc. So the feminist movement is pouring elevated amounts of compassion to random directions, while being completely blind to others. Add some confused teenagers to that mix and voila.

And this is why I treat people who complain about complaining with skepticism. It's a pretty good question to ask why there are no tampons in men's rooms. I often ask myself why there are no baby changing tables in men's rooms. Anyone who has ever needed either and was the "wrong gender" by social convention to be afforded that convenience knows it's kinda not a small problem.

Maybe just have generic restrooms?

This will decrease the efficiency somewhat. The urinals are very efficient load capacity/space available.

I generally support them though. And getting more shameless with age is well documented phenomena.

That's easy though. Just create a part of the bathroom with urinals. Anyone who's physically able and comfortable using them can use them. Place it in such a way that people going to the stalls don't walk past the urinals.

It's a tiny problem. You simply walk into the ladies restroom and use the changing table. It's not as if the door won't open, and it's not as if the women there won't understand. I've done this without a problem in plenty of places.

Gonna throw paper towels on the bathroom floor and change the baby that way instead of risk g getting arrested for walking into the women's' room.

Why would walking into the womens rest room get you arrested? Just open the door, ask the ladies if they object to your presence and if not go ahead.

It's not necessarily about actual risk as much as a culture of fear.

"Sexual harassment" is a career-ending bogeyman. Best to avoid anything that even whiffs of it.

Never be alone with a pretty woman that works for you. Never be alone with a child that isn't yours. (Ironically enough.)

Why would the woman have to be pretty?

What about the friends of my kids?

Let's not pretend the comment that you're responding to was written in good faith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

No. Charity doesn't require us to be naive.

For all you know I am naive.

> Let's not pretend the comment that you're responding to was written in good faith.

I find little to disagree with in the comment in question. I've followed the rule, Never be alone with someone else's kid, forever. You always want another adult to be able to testify that nothing untoward happened. The Two-Deep Adult Leadership Rule is perhaps the core principle of the Boy Scouts' youth-protection program [1] --- which, it has been noted, could be described with equal aptness as the adult-protection program. The same rule is also followed by wise pediatricians, dentists, etc., not to mention by male physicians with their female patients.

I do agree with Jacques that the attractiveness of the woman is irrelevant: Less-attractive women (there are no "ugly" women) can claim sexual harassment too. And rumors can start regardless of the participants' attractiveness.

[1] http://www.scouting.org/Training/YouthProtection.aspx

Women aren't children. Doctors and lawyers are alone with clients all the time. This whole discussion is depressing.

I don't know that I would just walk into a ladies room. As others have mentioned, that could lead to no end of trouble.

What I do is ask a lady entering to let the ladies know I need to change my child's diaper. They'll understand and helpfully clear the way for you.

It could but it has not yet in my experience. I don't know about other dads but all I got was some helpful advice on how to handle safety pins and offers of assistance, nobody every looked so much as cross-eyed or threatened to call the police.

Baby changing tables in men's restrooms is becoming much more common in parts of Canada, but you are 100% correct that it wouldn't have happened if people didn't at least question the ingrained idea that changing tables only belonged in the women's restrooms.

Changing stations, fair point, but to the tampons question, I think it is fair to cast the same question as "Why are there no urinals in the women's restroom?"

Could there be some people who would choose to use the women's restroom and still have the ability to use a urinal? I would say yes.

Would the vast majority of people benefit who use that room? I would say no.

It appears to me to be simple an economical thought which drives these decisions, not some sort of vicious gender discrimination.

I think its perfectly reasonable to deride those looking to maintain the status quo for no reason, but this seems to me an overblown problem on both sides of the argument.

That example does not work, because men's and women's restrooms have sitting toilets which anyone can use.

I'm sure it's economic decisions that drive not putting a tampon dispenser in the men's room, or not putting a baby changing table in the men's room. At the same time, these small accomodations are incredibly cheap ways to make society inclusive in a meaningful way.

The real sea-change is a steep decline of self-restraint as a core value within power structures. The powerful, particularly on the right, have learned that self-restraint, shame, remorse, empathy are unnecessary and even damaging. They have learned to do something that came naturally to their aristocratic forebears: to actively eliminate such feelings as a weak distraction from the correct use of power.

Stephen Colbert made a career lampooning this change.

"If you are in power, and someone speaks up: Don't admit mistakes. Don't apologize. Don't defend yourself. This opens you up to unnecessary liability. People are self-interested sharks, and more often than not if you take any of these actions, this will just be like blood in the water. They will balloon their concern out of proportion and take a huge, unjust advantage of you. So just ignore it." - What GWB might have said with a straight face.

When those in power start adopting this attitude, the powerless lose what little power they had to "shame" a leader into simply doing the right thing. The powerless lose all respect for the powerful, and it is only through the unflappable loyalty of security forces that the powerful remain in power doing those times. At least in a democracy we have a chance of occasionally flushing out arrogant, disconnected power-mongers without violence - but in many cases there is no such mechanism.

Anyway, no it's not about victimhood, it's a (possibly preemptive) reaction to the loss of self-restraint among the institutionally powerful.

My favourite hashtag this year is #NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay

People even complain about complaining in the New York Times.

Back in the UK, somewhat relevant: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/16/lets-not...

I think if you complain about "microaggression", it's automatically a microcomplaint and can gleefully be forwarded to /dev/null.

One of my co workers wears a gray hoodie every day, but is the only person that constantly gets told that she doesn't look like a dev. Just happens to be a black woman. Seems pretty annoying to me.

It could well be annoying, but if she produces good code and gets accepted as a dev (and gets paid the same, etc.) it doesn't rise above the level of annoyance. Me, I'm annoyed that I look like everybody's nerdy whiteboy dev stereotype. I'm a grown-ass man. Yes, I can see that R-rated movie; I actually remember when PG-13 wasn't a thing. No, I don't have a student ID; college was a long-ass time ago and I'm glad it's over.

Wow. Your struggles sound oppressive. How do you overcome these daily challenges to self-esteem and sense of belonging?

It takes much less energy to be negative than positive.

Maybe to be mildly negative. To be outraged, though, takes enormous energy. Unless the offense is actually worthy of the outrage, it's a waste of time and energy.

I have to disagree. When one is negative, one can find communities of other people just as negative about something. One can then feed on their energy, so one doesn't have to expend as much. Over time (even in a short period of time) there's a group of outraged individuals who've gotten there rather easily.

You almost never see similarly charged, overly happy communities (outside of the potheads - just kidding). I think the reason is, it's way too easy for someone to come in and spoil everything by starting something negative.

Negativity is like a disease that just spreads and consumes.

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