History Main / AppealToWorseProblems

* Done in ''AChristmasStory'' when the little brother doesn't eat the meat loaf because he hates it. The mother then says starving children in Africa would love it...before finally getting him to eat by saying, "How do the piggies eat?"

# That if the person irritated over the minor problem did help solve or even cared about the big problems, he would then not mind at all that his car broke down or whatever the frustration was.

* In ''BruceAlmighty'', Bruce complains to himself about being late for work while stuck in traffic. In the background, an accident victim is wheeled past him in a stretcher.

Arguing that expressing concern about a (relatively) small problem means that the person doesn't care about any larger problems. A type of Strawman, this fallacy takes the opponent's claim and appends to it the following additional claims:

*** That's a '''much''' better question since [[FridgeBrilliance 'elected monarchy' has a long history]], especially among the Germans. The Holy Roman Emperors and Charlemagne before them were all elected. (By the princes, mind you, because no one else was even involved in the business of government at the time, but.) The Capetians of France got their start this way, too. Since [[MindScrew in those days the French were Germans]].

* When dealing with limited time or resources, and discussion or debate of the lesser problem is impeding the parties from solving or addressing the actual issues ("Re-arranging the deck chairs on the ''Titanic''")

* In the ''{{Dilbert}}'' book ''The Joy of Book'', Scott Adams responds to Norman Solomon's book ''The Trouble with Dilbert'' by writing a fictional interview between Solomon and Dogbert. When he has Solomon complain that ''Dilbert'' attacks {{Pointy Haired Boss}}es more than {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s, Dogbert's counter argument is that Solomon clearly supports teen pregnancy because he didn't write a book about that.

* The [[{{Laconic/TeenDrama}} Laconic definition of]] TeenDrama describes the genre as "pretty white kids with problems." Apparently, if you are white, young and middle class, any of all your claims to legitimate {{angst}} are utterly invalid and if you are sad about anything at all then you are {{wangst}}ing; because [[SarcasmMode obviously some people have it worse, therefore it is wrong for you to complain]].

** A better question to ask about Naboo would be how a planet where the entire population seems to be clustered around one city, and is unable to feed its people without space trade for roughly two weeks, when its landscape looks arable and they have a highly advanced technological level and more than enough wealth to support themselves

*** This would actually be perfectly acceptable... if one or both sides were established to be cheating. See the final game in {{Maverick}}.

* The [[{{Laconic/TeenDrama}} Laconic definition of]] TeenDrama describes the genre as "pretty white kids with problems." Apparently, if you are white, young and middle class, any of all your claims to legitimate {{angst}} are utterly invalid and if you are sad about anything at all then you are {{wangst}}ing; because [[AppealToWorseProblems obviously some people have it worse, therefore it is wrong for you to complain]].

# That if the person irritated over the minor problem did help solve the big problems, he would then not mind at all that his car broke down or whatever the frustration was.

* When dealing with limited time or resources, and discussion or debate of the lesser problem is impeding the parties from solving or addressing the actual issues ("Re-arranging the deck chairs on the ''Titanic''")

* The [[{{Laconic/TeenDrama}} Laconic definition of]] [[TeenDrama]] describes the genre as "pretty white kids with problems." Apparently, if you are white, young and middle class, any of all your claims to legitimate {{angst}} are utterly invalid and if you are sad about anything at all then you are {{wangst}}ing; because [[AppealToWorseProblems obviously some people have it worse, therefore it is wrong for you to complain]].

* The [[Laconic/TeenDrama Laconic definition of]] [[TeenDrama]] describes the genre as "pretty white kids with problems." Apparently, if you are white, young and middle class, any of all your claims to legitimate {{angst}} are utterly invalid and if you are sad about anything at all then you are {{wangsting}}; because [[AppealToWorseProblems obviously some people have it worse, therefore it is wrong for you to complain]].

* [=~Fark.com~=] has many headlines that fall into this, mostly for local legislatures who, "having solved all other problems", get to work on something mostly innocuous. Also, whenever doctors come up with some silly technological innovation, you can be sure there'll be a Fark headline about it ending with, "Still no cure for cancer." Of course, part of the humor is that theses are the people that are specifically hired to work on the big problems, and seem not to, suggesting that resources are indeed being directly misspent.

* [=~Fark.com~=] has many headlines that fall into this, mostly for local legislatures who, "having solved all other problems", get to work on something mostly innocuous. Also, whenever doctors come up with some silly technological innovation, you can be sure there'll be a Fark headline about it ending with, "Still no cure for cancer."

* When dealing with limited time or resources, and discussion or debate of the lesser problem is impeding the parties from solving or addressing the actual issues ("Re-arranging the deck chairs on the ''Titanic''")
** Note that time and resources are virtually always limited. You could be getting a job and donating the money to charities that feed starving children in Africa, or prevent malaria etc.

* This (specifically the starving African children) has become a fairly popular T-Shirt. It personifies Africa as saying "And you think you have problems..."
* [=~Fark.com~=] has many headlines that fall into this, mostly for local legislatures who, "having solved all other problems", get to work on something mostly innocuous. Also, whenever doctors come up with some silly technological innovation, you can be sure there'll be a Fark headline about it ending with, "Still no cure for cancer."
* A similar fallacy is the "if you care so much, why aren't you doing something about it?" argument, which is also related to the PerfectSolutionFallacy in that the only way that the target can be doing something about it to the arguer's satisfaction is to be devoting 24 hours of every day to the issue and therefore not be involved in the debate.

* Consitutes the MiseryPoker trope. And the SeriousBusiness trope, if used as an insult. (The implication being that you take it too seriously and other things not seriously enough.)