Since the advent of Facebook status updates and Twitter, I noticed (and get annoyed to no end) that people are often boasting shamelessly about themselves but in a way to suggest they are not boasting. Sounds strange?
Take for example these comments:
“So busy! Have to go for 3 shoots and 2 fittings later then meet new designer. Wish there is more hours in a day!” – translate to mean, “Look. I’m pretty. I’m a model. My life is just awesome.”
“Quickly nipping into Gucci to grab a bag from their new collection before lunch!” – translate to mean, “Look, I am rich. I can afford to buy luxury goods at whim.”
“Buying a new set of Bvlgari rings to support their charitable drive for homeless children. Please also lend your support to them!” translate to mean, “Look, I am rich and I THINK I am even doing a good deed by passing on the message”.
You will notice that exclamation marks are often included to try and trivialize the comment….
Anyway, I came across this really hilarious article from New York Times that really pushed the message home. Humblebrag; now I know the term for it!
If I Do Humblebrag So Myself
By Henry Alford
Published: November 30, 2012
SOMETIMES when I crave a powerful dose of humility — the kind of humility that can come only from fully apprehending the lot of those less fortunate than me — I turn my attention to the plight of the former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. He experiences an exquisite kind of pain. As he lamented on Twitter earlier this year: “They just announced my flight at LaGuardia is number 15 for takeoff. I miss Air Force One!!”
When my stores of sympathy have not been fully depleted by contemplating the indignities heaped on Mr. Fleischer, I’ll then go on and immerse myself in the ennobling humility of the comedian Dane Cook. Mr. Cook, who has nearly three million Twitter followers, once tweeted: “Being famous and having a fender bender is weird. You want to be upset but the other drivers just thrilled & giddy that it’s you.” Finally, on those days when my humanity is fathomless, I turn to the selfless tweets of Deepak Chopra. Like: “Hope & despair are born of imagination. I am free of both.”
There’s nothing new about false modesty, nor its designation as a form of bad manners. But the prevalence of social media has given us many more canvases on which to paint our faux humility — making us, in turn, increasingly sophisticated braggers.
Enter the self-deprecating boast known as the “humblebrag,” a term devised by the comedian Harris Wittels, a writer for the NBC series “Parks and Recreation,” who collects hundreds of these cockeyed chestnuts on his Twitter feed and in his new book, both called “Humblebrag.” Whether it be the publicist Jenny Marie Miranda asking, “Why do men hit on me more when I’m in sweat pants?” or Dina Manzo, one of the “Real Housewives,” stating, “I obsess over the welfare of old people & animals on hot days like today. OBSESS #thereissomethingwrongwithme,” a humblebrag is an opportunity for the attention-starved to stake a claim on our sympathy.
Indeed, this may be why false modesty is no less discomfiting to its audience (and is sometimes more so) than outright bragging. Outright bragging expects to be met with awe, but humblebragging wants to met with awe and sympathy. It asks for two reactions from its audience, and in so doing makes fools of its beholders twice over. The practice is also ineffably irritating because it ultimately and slyly asserts the triumph of business over the personal: given that there’s a higher tolerance for bragging in business than social circles, many falsely modest statements on Twitter and Facebook try to fly under decorum’s radar by whispering to their readers, “You’re my fan, not my friend.”
What societal failings can we hold accountable for the practice? It’s emblematic that one of the signature phrases to have emerged from reality television is “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to win.” In most cultures, the assertion “I’m here to win,” as uttered by a contestant in a competition, would be deemed redundant. Reality television, like social media, is often pure advertising, so auto-trumpeting is thought to be less toxic.
Second, our weak economy has probably raised the bar for displays of competitiveness and semi-bald assertions of self-worth.
Third, many humblebraggers take solace in a rationalization that runs roughly, “I’m not throwing away my afternoon on the Internet, I’m waging a jihad of quirky auto-branding.”
Whatever its causes or context, humblebragging is a testament to the amount of ardor and subterfuge people bring to the craft of self-promotion. The varieties of humblebragging represent a breadth of motive and technique. Most humblebrags are attempts to convey one of three messages: “I have too much work”; “I am an idiot/impostor”; or “I have firsthand knowledge of the gritty gilt to be found inside the gilded cage.”
On the overworked front, we’ve heard from the Broadway actress Kerry Butler (“I’ve been signing so many autographs lately, that I was writing a card to my dad and started to write my last name!!”) and Tobias Lütke, Shopify’s chief executive (“I just started writing a tool that I know I could turn into another million dollar company if I had the time”).
Those who vaunt their supposed idiocy or role as impostor include Joe Jonas (“Totally walked down the wrong escalator at the airport from the flashes of the cameras... Go me”) and the “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings (“Hey, if you put me in your /celebs list, I’m flattered, but let’s be honest: that’s the most expansive definition of ‘celeb’ possible”).
Exquisite pain has been felt by Lindsey N. Waterhouse, the chief executive of Waterhouse Sports & Entertainment (“My emails send so slowly over here in Cannes! So frustrated!”) and Jared Followill, the Kings of Leon bassist, who tried to soften the blow of one tweet (“Mother of God. Tornado coming. Hide in my wine cellar or my theatre? Or my gym.”) with the parenthetical comment “In the face of death, I still find ways to brag.”
But these categories are merely the beginning. Other humblebraggers can be found desperately trying to convince you that they’re normal or, even more disingenuously, trying to clear up nonexistent rumors. Humblebrags can gain special piquancy when their seeming effort to belittle their author also seemingly belittles others in the author’s path; note the use of quotation marks at the end of a tweet from the biographer Paula Broadwell in August: “Honored and humbled to be included in @claudiachan’s profiles of global ‘remarkable women.’ ” This tweet, too: “remarkable.”
Indeed, so diverse is the terrain that the anti-humblebrag — or, as the blogger Jen Doll has called it, the “underbrag” — has been born. As a Facebook friend of mine, the writer Teddy Wayne, announced on that site recently: “To counter the prevailing social-media ethos of posting only successes (professional accomplishments, vacation/party/elaborate meal photos, humblebrags), a practice from which I am not exempt either, I will sporadically begin posting instances of failure with the hashtag #failures. To avoid pity-parties, I will end each note with a spirited exclamation point!” Here are acts of stupidity and ignorance devoid of possible reward, other than the enactor’s demonstrating enough confidence to share his act of stupidity or ignorance. Think face-plants in mud; think ill-fitting underpants.
How should we react to false modesty? When we encounter it on social media, it’s usually easy enough to stop following or to unfriend yourself from the culprit. But its real-life iterations are more complicated.
There’s great solace in rolling your eyes heavenward in the presence of a sympathetic conspirator, and in developing with that conspirator a series of nonbitchy jokes fueled by the humblebrag and its creator. But in the end, the real challenge is to realize that falsely modest people are probably trying to combat their own perceived weakness. We then need to try to cultivate a tolerance devoid of condescension, possibly taking a cue from Victoria Gotti, who, when asked about her husband, John Gotti, once said, “All I know is, he provides.”
I learned the hard way. There was no greater humblebragger in my life than a friend who told me about a publicity tour for which he’d been sent to Germany, lamenting, “I chain-smoked the entire tour.” Another time, he alluded to himself as “beloved by all yet loved by none.” Once, at a dinner party in his home, he told five of us all about an acting award he’d received at a film festival in Mexico — but then explained he had to pay to collect the medal.
I quailed at all three of these statements, viewing them as manipulative attempts to assert worth. I thought, What creative person who is not a household name would kick international publicity in the teeth? And who, outside hoary TV legends, would ever refer to himself as “beloved”? My irritation sat with me like an unwanted houseguest ashing all over my slipcovers. One night over dinner, I started to call him out on it, but lost my nerve.
When he died a year later of cancer, I suddenly felt different. Now I could see the humble through the bragging.
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