# Third World Success Third World Success is an image macro series featuring a photo of dancing children with captions about overcoming hardships tied to life in developing countries. The format started on Quickmeme in late November 2011 as a counterpart to First World Problems, and Reddit crossposts pushed it to viral scale within days. ## Overview Third World Success is an advice animal image macro built around a photo of dancing children, paired with optimistic captions about small victories of daily life in developing countries[1]. The format positions itself as the flip side of First World Problems, swapping complaints about minor inconveniences for lines about surviving real hardship[3]. Common captions include "Found water / wasn't contaminated," treating basic needs as personal achievements. The image is often grouped with Success Kid as part of the broader advice-animal success template family[4]. Where First World Problems pokes at the pettiness of wealthy-country complaints, Third World Success flips the perspective and celebrates what people in poorer countries treat as wins[1]. ## How It Spread On November 28, 2011, BuzzFeed published a roundup titled "The Third World Success Kid Meme" that pulled together the strongest early examples[1]. Within 24 hours of the original Quickmeme post, Reddit had 230 threads about the format and Quickmeme hosted 972 submissions[1]. Culture blog Molempire ran its own compilation the next day, and the format moved onto Tumblr, the Body Building forums, and Meme Generator over the following weeks. By March 2012, Quickmeme counted more than 8,000 instances[1]. A spin-off called Second World Success surfaced on Reddit on November 30, 2011, using a photo of a child with a Chinese flag and captions about child labor and censorship[2]. In June 2012, a photograph titled "Skeptical 3rd World Child," taken during a charity trip to Uganda, hit Reddit's front page and spawned another wave of related macros[6]. In April 2015, TMZ reported that AT&T executive Aaron Slator was hit with a $100 million racial discrimination lawsuit from former employee Knoyme King[5]. The suit centered on a text message Slator sent that contained a racially insensitive Third World Success macro, discovered by a colleague while transferring his data to a new phone[5]. AT&T fired Slator the day after the story broke[5]. ## How to Use The format typically uses the dancing children photo, with captions running in the standard advice-animal two-line structure. The setup describes a moment of hardship, and the punchline reframes a basic need such as clean water, food, or avoiding illness, as a personal victory[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Third World Success? It is an advice-animal image macro of dancing children captioned with optimistic lines about surviving hardship in developing countries[1]. ### Where did Third World Success come from? The first macro was posted to Quickmeme on November 27, 2011, with the caption "Found water / wasn't contaminated," then crossposted to Reddit where it took off[4]. ### What does Third World Success mean? The format flips First World Problems by treating basic needs like clean water or a meal as accomplishments from a developing-world perspective[3]. ### How do you use Third World Success? Pair the dancing children image with a two-line advice-animal caption, using the punchline to reframe a basic survival win as a triumph[1]. ### Is Third World Success still popular? The format peaked in 2011 and 2012 with thousands of Quickmeme and Reddit submissions, and is now treated as a classic advice-animal entry rather than an active meme[1]. ## References 1. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/the-third-world-success-kid-meme]() 2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/]() 3. [https://slacktory.com/2011/11/third-world-perks-a-photo-meme/]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/third-world-success]() 5. [https://www.tmz.com/2015/04/27/att-executive-aaron-slator-racist-text-message-lawsuit/]() 6. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/vhq5f/skeptical_3rd_world_child/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/third-world-success Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library