Wittels - Humblebrag : the art of false modesty

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Copyright 2012 by Potato Shoes Productions Inc.

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ISBN 978-1-4555-1417-5

Dedicated to

Mom, Dad, Steph, Ganny, and Scarlett Johansson

If you were included in this book, while I can see how you would think Im a dick, I hope that you know its all in good fun. Everyone humblebrags. I do it too. A lot. Thanks for being a chiller.

Man, I cant believe this dumb little word I came up with actually got me a book deal.

Did that last sentence annoy you? It should have. But, can you not quite put your finger on why it annoyed you? Well, its because that type of statement is what I like to call a humblebrag and its what this book is all about. First, lets define a humblebrag.

humblebrag ( huhm-buhlbrag)

noun, verb

1. a specific type of brag that masks the boasting part of a statement in a faux-humble guise. The false humility allows the offender to boast about their achievements without any sense of shame or guilt. Humblebrags are usually self-deprecating in nature, but there are a few exceptions, which are mentioned later in the book.

Here is an example of a standard humblebrag, which was tweeted by late-night talk show host, Craig Ferguson, aka @CraigyFerg: I just got nominated for a damn Grammy. Take that low self esteem. #fuckyeah. The brag element of his tweet is that he was nominated for a Grammy, whereas the humble element is his low self-esteem. Here is another example from some fellow named Sam Halliday (@samhallidayTDCC) from some band called Two Door Cinema Club: Our song has just come on the radio in our taxi. Awkward! In this tweet, he is bragging about his bands song being played on the radio, while disguising it as an awkward situation that he was forced to endure. (Incidentally, the use of the words awkward or weird are quite commonly used in humblebrags. In fact, there is a whole section of the book devoted to it. Dont skip to it. Just take my word for it for now.)

Hopefully, youre getting the hang of it now. Its not difficult. This book is basically a collection of my favorite humblebrags Ive found on Twitter and elsewhere. Also there are some jokes about said humblebrags, and then also some other stuff. I hope you enjoy it; it was really a pain in the ass to write. (See? That was another humblebrag.)

I didnt really notice humblebrags until I moved to Los Angeles in 2006. I love living here, but, mangoing to a party out here is a nonstop humblebrag-fest; people complaining about how their pilots probably wont get picked up or how a studio gave their screenplay some shitty notes. It can be truly endless. Its just kinda how people communicate out here. I am generalizing, of course. Not everyone in LA does that. Also, it isnt just in LA that people are shamelessly self-promotional/aggrandizing. I am sure that, right now, somewhere in Brooklyn, a street artist is saying he put a picture of Mao Tse-tung on the highest Nike billboard, but it sucks that he got arrested. Or that in Ireland someone is saying he grew the biggest potato, but Aye, was it hard work. It happens everywhere all the time, but I just noticed it in LA specifically. Yet, for a while, I couldnt name exactly what I was noticing. I just knew it wasnt straight-up bragging.

Then, Twitter blew up and I started constantly seeing these kinds of statements typed out for the world to see. This was the perfect medium for it and I finally identified what it was and why it annoyed me. It was bragging, but it wasnt just bragging. It was a type of bragging that included some amount of fake modesty, which somehow made it acceptable to do.

Every time I would read one, I would think, Why would that person say that? What is the point? It can only serve to make people jealous of you and/or hate you. No one ever hears one and actually thinks you are cooler. But people do it because its in their nature to prove to others how great their life is, or maybe theyre actually just trying to prove it to themselves? Shits deep, yo! I fought the impulse many times to respond to all of these offenders on Twitter with Why did you feel the need to tell the world that? But I was scared to burn bridges. Instead, I just silently stewed in my resentment for a couple of years. Then, I became too fed up with seeing people repeatedly doing it, so I once tweeted, Guys, if youre going to brag, dont be humble about it. Just brag. And from that I coined the phrase humblebrag and started up an anonymous Twitter account (twitter.com/humblebrag) where I would retweet any flagrant humblebraggers.

The first humblebrag I ever retweeted was by Donald Glover (an actor on NBCs Community and rapper Childish Gambino). He (@mrdonaldglover) tweeted: Its an honor to be the 1st thing japanese men see after reading their porn on the subway. Then there was an attached photo of a Gap ad featuring a photo of himself. Clearly, he just wanted to let us all know he was in a Gap ad. Thats where it all began. Childish Gambino has since name-checked humblebrag in one of his songs, making this whole thing worth it. (Wait, was this a humblebrag? Probably.) Then, I retweeted a few more from a few different people, and a few more after that, and so on. Soon after, the Twitter accounts follower count started to grow exponentially and people began emailing humblebrag@gmail.com with suggestions for people I could retweetfriends of theirs, bosses, celebrities they followed.

And what started as an inside joke between me and the writing staff at Parks and Recreation (where I work) became somewhat of a second job for me, where I would sift through hundreds of emails a week searching for leads on any humblebrags. It is most definitely a gigantic waste of time, but I like to think I am doing some sort of a service for society (#humblebrag)putting humblebraggers in check, so that we can get back to a time when braggers either outright bragged like assholes or just didnt do it at all.

L ets start off with one of the most commonly used form of humblebragging, which is the name-drop humblebrag. No one likes a name-dropper. Add to that some phony self-deprecation and you have a not fun thing. There are a couple kinds of these. One kind is committed by normal people and the other by celebrities. Whats funny about normal people saying things like I totally drank too much while hanging out with Johnny Depp is that hanging out usually means they were at the same bar and drunkenly yelled at Johnny Depp that they went to the same high school. I bet Johnny Depp didnt consider it a hang. Whats funny about when a celebrity does it is that its usually an attempt to show that theyre a normal person. They arent though, is the thing.