Third World Success

About

Third World Success is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a dancing tribal child with captions about overcoming hardships that are associated with life in underdeveloped countries. The series can be seen as a derivative of Success Kid and the anti-thesis of First World Problems.

Origin

Prior to the image's association with Third World Success, the image has been seen on Twitter^[18] as early as June 2011 and paired with the phrase "It's Friday, Niggas"^[16] as early as October 14th, 2011.^[17] The First World Problems image macro series started with a BuzzFeed^[13] post in March 2011 that juxtaposed stories from the First World Problems subreddit^[14] with the items in question. Later that year, a Quickmeme^[15] page was created featuring a stock photo of a woman crying. As of March 2012, the page has over 91,000 instances.

Terminology

The Third World^[24] is a term coined in 1952 by French anthropologist Alfred Sauvy to define countries that did not take part in either capitalism (the First World) or communism (the Second World). Over the years, it gradually gained a negative connotation, being associated with poverty and a country being underdeveloped.^[25] In contrast, the phrase First World^[26] is associated with already developed countries. First World Problems are meant to criticize the fact that people who live in countries considered the First World will probably not have to encounter problems their Third World counterparts will: not owning a computer, starvation, and combat.^[27]

Spread

On November 11th, 2011, Slacktory published a compilation of photos entitled "Third World Perks: A Photo Meme"^[8] as a alternative to First World Problems. The images consisted of people living in impoverished conditions accompanied by optimistic captions.

Approximately two and a half weeks later on November 27th, the first Third World Success image macro was created on Quickmeme^[1], featuring a photo of a group of dancing children with the caption "Found water / wasn't contaminated." It was subsequently posted to Reddit^[12] by user somename2222 and accumulated over 12,000 up votes within 4 days.

On November 28th, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[4] posted a round-up of instances titled "The Third World Success Kid Meme." Within 24 hours, there were 230 Reddit threads related to the meme and 972 Quickmeme^[3] submissions. On November 29th, the culture blog Molempire published another compilation of derivatives. The meme has since spread to Tumblr^[5], the Body Building forums^[6] and Meme Generator.^[11] As of March 2012, there are over 8000 instances on Quickmeme and over 630 on Reddit.^[19]

AT&T President Lawsuit

On April 27th, 2015, gossip news site TMZ reported^[33] that Aaron Slator, President of Content and Ad Sales for the American multinational telecom corporation AT&T (shown below, left), is facing a $100 million racial discrimination lawsuit filed by Knoyme King, a former employee of the company who worked under Slator as a content coordinator. According to the lawsuit, King claims that Slator had sent a text message to a friend that featured a racially insensitive instance of the meme (shown below, right), which also happens to be the earliest known version in the series, along with the note "an oldie but goodie." The message in question was initially discovered by one of King's colleagues and former assistance for Slator while transferring his data from an old cell phone to a new one.

King also claims that she was treated unfairly and harassed by Slator for being a close acquaintance of his former assistant who discovered the message and that other executives at AT&T were informed about the incident but took no actions to reprimand Slator. The suit also accuses the company of maintaining a racially prejudiced culture, as King alleges she was repeatedly held back for promotions in favor of less qualified non-African American employees. That same day, an AT&T spokesperson issued a response condemning the action of Slator, who has played a vital role for the company in the merging and acquisition of DirecTV, calling the images "offensive to everyone at AT&T" and assuring that "a thorough investigation" has been launched to determine the appropriate course of disciplinary action. On the following day, AT&T released a statement confirming that Slator has been fired as a result of the controversy.

"Aaron Slator has been terminated. There is no place for demeaning behavior within AT&T and we regret the action was not taken earlier."

Notable Examples

Derivatives

Second World Success Kid

On November 30th, 2011, a spin-off image macro series known as Second World Success^[20] emerged on Reddit, which featured a picture of a smiling child waving a Chinese flag and various captions criticizing the developing nation's controversial issues of child labor laws and censorship of free speech. Collections of notable Instances were subsequently posted on Memebase^[21], FunnyJunk^[22], and #1 Meme Universal Trend.^[23]

Skeptical Third World Success Kid

On June 22nd, 2012, Redditor anute3392 submitted a photograph of an Ugandan child titled "Skeptical 3rd World Child"^[28] to the /r/pics subreddit. Apparently taken by Redditor Nepalm^[32] during her trip to Uganda as a voluntary member of the Student Global Health Alliance, the photograph became an instant favorite and reached the frontpage of Reddit within hours of upload. Though the child in the photo has not been identified, the woman has been confirmed to be Heena Pranav, a doctor from Chicago who was in Uganda on a charity mission at the time.^[35] The thread^[28] went onto receive more than 17,000 upvotes and 725 comments in the first 24 hours, as well as spawning a series of image macros with captions alluding to the Third World Success Kid and the Skeptical Baby, an advice animal character based on a photo of an eyebrow-raising infant that emerged months earlier in January 2012.

The majority of notable examples poked fun at the drastically different standards of living in the First World countries or the White Man's Guilt mentality, some Redditors quickly rebutted with a number of instances criticizing the community's inclination towards slacktivism and trivializing the grave issue of famine in Africa.

Search Interest

External References