[albntomat0]

Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"?

I understand that "one-downmanship" can be used to dismiss legitimate claims, but the existence of such tactics does not automatically validate anyone who claims their lives are hard.

The original article used a line from Hobbes regarding existence pre-society, which does not apply. The author could have used many valid other things in the US (homeownership and marriage rates, opiod addiction, savings rate) that would have made that part of their argument valid, but decided to go to the rhetorical extreme.

[jancsika]

> Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"?

As far as one-downmanship-- it can make sense in personal situations where trust is high and someone opens up about suffering. Perhaps in other high-trust instances, where it's likely to be interpreted as bonding/guidance and not muscle-flexing. But even in those cases it can quickly become unhelpful, hence the Python sketch getting lots of laughs.

In the case of political rhetoric, do you know an example of one-downmanship that isn't mere muscle-flexing? Just look at the example here-- OP said they find it "funny" that a generation of people are frightened by decreasing opportunities and the dangers of climate change.

Perhaps pre-internet this was a way to at least get a dissident message out before one got cut off in a live interview. A kind of "sign of life" to sentient beings in the audience. But on HN-- where those constraints don't exist-- it looks to me like the kind of low-effort disruption on par with asking, "What about Visa/Mastercard monopoly, or the telcos," on the next thread that discusses the Google monopoly case.

Edit: clarification

[pcstl]

For what it's worth, I can tell you I'm being completely sincere here and I just wish the literal most privileged people in the world would look a bit around them before claiming to live oh-so-horrible lives.

I say so being a third world inhabitant who has spent some time in the first world and noticed people there simply do not know how much they have it good.

[jancsika]

> For what it's worth, I can tell you I'm being completely sincere here and I just wish the literal most privileged people in the world would look a bit around them before claiming to live oh-so-horrible lives.

You're conflating two unrelated things:

1. American's poor understanding of conditions in the wider world, and of history.

2. How Americans feel about worsening conditions of poverty and health in America, or-- frankly-- how Americans feel about anything they feel is missing in their lives.

The times when Americans have implicitly conflated those things-- e.g., after WWII when a steep increase in depression among middle class women accompanied unparalleled prosperity in the middle class-- Americans actually prolonged their own suffering instead of ameliorating it. AFAICT, trying to "jolt" oneself out of depression by convincing oneself there's no good reason to be depressed is similar to trying to drink oneself out of alcoholism.

In fact, the idea, "You don't know how good you have it," is so hammered into the American psyche that one of the most popular Netflix series-- The Queen's Gambit-- is essentially an 8-hour long refutation of that idea from exactly that same time period. I'll save you the time-- that idea does not work.

Communicating with ignorant people by telling them about your experiences can be fruitful. Teaching your own coping strategies to people even though they are only experiencing first-world problems is graceful.

One-downmanship is simply not an effective tool to achieve either of those goals.