Urban Dictionary took a break from defining the most grotesque words in the English language to define a useful one. They define “humblebrag” as subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or "woe is me" gloss. It’s a popular enough trend that someone wrote a book about it. I pray that book didn’t make much money, but if you take into account that Paris Hilton wrote a book that seemed to sell quite a few copies then I’m sure it sold wonderfully. I’m sure the book is funny, but any book that is just a collection of twitter updates should maybe be defined as something other than a “book”.
We all see humblebragging all the time but twitter and facebook helped it to explode. One especially perfect example of a humblebrag is this tweet by some random dude.
"Why is it that every time I have a softball game someone walks up to me and says , are you on roids ! Hahaha dude I don't even lift weights"
See what he did there. He is attempting to be humble because he doesn’t lift weights but he is in reality just attempting to tell you that his muscles are flippin’ huge. Roid huge. This dude once beat up the Ultimate Warrior. But he wasn’t even trying…so you shouldn’t be impressed?!
Humblebragging is fine. We all do it. We all complain about how we hate going to the gym, run so slow, have kids that are smarter/cuter than us, don’t deserve our spouse, etc.
I just ran 500 miles, but now I have a blister on my toe.
I just got accepted to MIT, can’t believe they accepted me despite my 4.16 GPA.
My 3 year old daughter just passed the bar exam, no idea where she gets it. I’m so dumb!
Again, we all do it. We are all proud of our accomplishments but you can’t just walk up to someone and start listing of facts about why they should be impressed. The problem isn’t the humblebrag. The problem is when we become too aware of the humblebrag. We suddenly become paralyzed in our conversation. Our convenient way of bragging without bragging has been taken away and we become super conscious of how much of what we say could be constituted as a humblebrag,
My wife and I recently completed a Warrior Dash. A 5k with 13 army type obstacles. This was our first time doing an adventure race and was an “accomplishment” for us. We were excited that we gathered the courage to do it, proud we were able to finish it, and honestly just had a blast. After it was all over I was surprised that it was a really, really easy race. This is probably what a person in Somalia has to go through just to get a bucket of water. We completely over trained for it and could have completed it without any training at all. Any of you could.
This event set me up perfect for a humblebrag. Just cool enough to impress most people but just enough to throw in some humility. And honestly I was rather excited to share that we did it.
But….the word humblebrag popped into my head. I can see through my ruse then everyone else can too! What’s a man to do?
Do I just quit sharing all events that take place in my life that aren’t horrible? Do I preface all statements with, “not to brag”. Do I just ignore it and move on?
Forget that. Life is too short to worry about all that. I’m going old school and taking the humble out of the humblebrag. I am now just going to brag….non stop….all the time…about everything.
So next time I see you in public if I walk up to you, slap you across the face, spit at you, and then say something like, “MY MUSCLES ARE MORE HUGER THAN HULK HOGAN’S” just understand that it is my attempt to avoid the internet fueled trap of humblebragging.
*Yes, I realize that this entire post could be construed as just one big attempt to humblebrag about my Warrior Dash. So in the words of the new Brandon, “I DID A WARRIOR DASH AND IT MEANS I AM MORE AWESOME THAN BEAR GRYLLS AND YOU PROBABLY JUST ATE ARBY’S WHILE I WAS DOING IT….PUNK”.
