Do people brag more on the Dope than in real life?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, the dust-up over potential bragging by LurkerInNJ over in this MPSIMS thread got me thinking about how, in general, on the Dope, people seem to speak positively of themselves much more than they do in real life.

I feel like I frequently hear people talk about how attractive they are, or how smart they are, or how savvy they are, and there’s even a thread up now called “Why People Want To Date You” that’s basically just supposed to be an opportunity to toot your own horn.

I realize that message boards and the real world are inherently different media, but for example, I’m in school right now and if my friends and I were sitting around talking about people who got good grades and what they did to do so, and someone in the group was like, “Well, I regularly score in the 90% percentile on tests and here’s what I do,” we’d all be taken aback. Because frankly that type of talk is gauche in real life. Whereas if there was a thread on “How Do High Academic Achievers Do So Well?” a good chunk of the thread would be, "as someone who does well academically . . . "

Another example: in the many threads we have where people are discussing dating or how to not be weird in romantic situations or whatever, there’s always some posters who say, "Well, I get hit on a lot and . . . "
I think if my girlfriends and I were discussing creepy guys or something, people might share their anecdotes but if someone was like, “I get hit on all the time” most of us would be internally raising our eyebrows and thinking something along the lines of “bitch, please.”

Anyways, in conclusion, in real life for me people never, ever brag, or if so it must always be followed with a self-deprecating remark. And compliments are accepted quietly and maybe with some caveat on the part of the receiver, or dismissed. And the Dope seems different.

Anyone else see this? Or are my perceptions off? Thoughts?

2

None of the supermodels I’m sleeping with in my mansion seem to think so. I’ll bounce the question off some of my friends at tonight’s Mensa meeting.

3

I’ll get back to you after lunch. I have to go wash the salt off my Maserati right now.

4

Yes. Welcome to the internet.

5

I think your friends must not like each other very much to be so disparaging of one another.

But as for the title question, sure, I think there’s an element of braggarts and liars on the net. But more often, there’s a need to say things here that we wouldn’t have to say to our friends to establish backstory. We all *know *Rebekah gets hit on a lot, she doesn’t need to say it. If we’re talking about how to handle getting hit on, of course we’re going to listen to her. We all *know *Alan is super smart, he doesn’t need to tell us his SAT scores for us to discuss what it was like growing up as a sheltered smart kid.

Here, that stuff needs to be made explicit for a conversation to make any sense.

6

Has it occurred to you that we all might be a bit too busy with our important and wonderful lives to invest in concerns of the hoi-polloi? I mean, these 13 degrees didn’t earn themselves.

7

The only people in real life whom I’d feel the need to impress are my wife and my parents. And they already know about my accomplishments anyway. So yes, I brag more here than in real life.

8

No, I think people that post here on the Dope actually brag less than people in real life. Because a large number of posters here seem to be overly medicated, borderline mentally ill or social pariahs.

But surprisingly, those conditions DO get bragged about.

9

I tone it down for the SDMB.

10

I think it’s a bit of confirmation bias too. People (at least I know I do) tend to gloss over the posts about those who drive 76 Pintos and work in fast food, as opposed to those who drive $90,000 luxury cars and are captains of industry.

I was going to submit a more detailed post, but my freakishly huge penis keeps getting in the way.

11

Oh. So you have to wash your own Maserati? Huh. How charming. In my community, by the way, we use pepper to melt the snow. Salt would be…quaint.

When people brag about themselves a lot, I always feel weird. I feel some kind of weird embarrassed feeling for them. I don’t know why.

12

**Nzinga **- didn’t you propose the term “sneak-bragging”?

When there is an OP asking for advice about work, sometimes I plow right in, and as part of my comments, I try to frame why I think I’m qualified to answer, then provide my response.

100 times out of 100 I find myself going back and thinking to myself “did I really need to say I do X, or Y people report to me” or whatever? I always end up feeling like I was subconsciously sneak-bragging and regret hanging that stuff out there…

13

It’s not the Dope, it’s the Internet. It’s the same reason people feel free to call each other the most horrible insults in the Pit when they would never dream of saying such things to a person’s face. Not being able to see or hear the other person removes the air of reality. Bragging to a friend’s face would (hopefully) give you a sense of embarrassment, but bragging to a bunch of faceless strangers is a lot easier.

14

I think that most of the background information good or bad is framing a response or a question. I also think that it’s confirmation bias - for instance the thread mentioned in the OP “Why people want to date you” (45 replies) was a response to an earlier thread “Why people don’t want to date you”(237 replies)

15

Well, I don’t mean to brag but… Hell yeah, I did!

16

:wink:

17

You’re in med school, right? Lots of people are insecure about being there, because they know some kid with identical scores and gpa didn’t because of the AMA restricting how many graduates come out. Just how Harvard turns down tons of perfect SAT’ers, the average medical school person knows they don’t deserve to belong there more than the guy who got reject. You can take this one of two ways: you can either realize your luck and good fortune and attractive personality, or you can realize you’re a schmuck and and your entire future rests on a simple roulette wheel. Lots of your life has been predicated on how you do on tests, which is often a poor measure of your real practicing life, which includes bedside manner or ability to quickly learn information or make snap judgments - key components of being physicians.

So that’s where you and your friends’ insecurities come from.

Now, onto the dope. Lots of people here are extremely intelligent. Overall I’d say they’re much more intelligent than the average Joe. However…people here also have the social skills of baboons. Lots of people don’t work out or pay attention to their appearance, there’s a strong anti-makeup or anti-hair removal sentiment among doper feminists.

Real life isn’t mirrored by the dope because rare is it for people to TALK about themselves so extensively or in drawn out paragraphs with no interruption. So do people brag more than in real life? Sure. But not with bad intentions. Do most people feel they’re more attractive than they are? Sure do - just like they think they’re better drivers, lovers, et al.

WhyNot hit the nail on the head too about back story. When a weird, gangly guy hits on my friend in an all white bar when she’s the only black one…we laugh and giggle, but nobody says “Hey, the guy has a complex about wanting to date the different looking one, or the black one!” But on the dope, naturally, you have to have backstory and have to spell stuff out.

And like Pyper said, people saw awful stuff in the Pit. I say awful stuff that’s not as harsh as the Pit can be, but I’m the most ‘colorful’ and blunt/abrasive of anyone I’ve ever met. So I know people are being bastards in the Pit just cause they can be and are real fraidy-cats in real life.

18

Are you people still here? Don’t you know you’re wasting my precious time by forcing me to come in here to read this crap? I’m too high-born to put up with this nonsense. My secretary, who is hot by the way, and typing this very post for me (hey, I just had a manicure), won’t appreciate if I’m too upset to allow her to have these Skybox tickets to the Super Bowl.

19

::flings poo at Onomatopoeia:: (but with the pinky held high, because I am a well-bred baboon.)

20

I’m late replying because my enormous penis was blocking my view of the monitor. So I weighted it down with a bag of cash until Laura San Giacomo and a randomly selected porn starlet get here for my regular Thursday afternoon orgy. To answer the OP: no.