I don’t think most people humble-brag knowing they are humble-bragging. Like any other faus paux, it’s happens when someone isn’t really cognizant of how they sound to their audience. If your audience is made-up of people who have never boarded a plane, let alone first class, then your chances of saying something “humble braggy” about riding in first class is very high–and you’d best be particularly thoughtful about what you say.
Just like skinny chicks need to be careful about how they word their body-image complaints in a room full of obese people. No one wants to hear a skinny person complaining about their microscopic muffin top when everyone else is carrying around a monster truck tire. Yeah, everyone should be able to complain about stuff. But not every complaint is going to be received the same way, by the same people.
Actual quote from the FB page of one of the offenders, which is what set me off:
“I don’t mean to humblebrag, but…”
Also, I know these people. These aren’t first-time-in-first-class people, these are the kind with something afuckingmazing happening to them every day and who never have a conversation not about themselves. Like I said, a good story is great, and bragging once in a while is fine, but some people just can’t STFU about me, me, me.
I just went to read some Facebook crap and realized I left all my iPads in my other mansion and my private jet was in the shop so I had to send my butler to the Apple Store in my Maserati to buy some more. Technology is annoying.
FYI - The term “Humblebrag” was coined by comedian/writer Harris Wittels, who very sadly died from a heroin overdose earlier this year.
I think a lot of people confuse any kind of “stealth” bragging as a HumbleBrag when actually a HumbleBrag is a lot more nuanced than that. From the examples in the OP:
^^^ Not really HumbleBrags, these are just brags. True Humblebrags would be more along the lines of:
“I can’t believe the post office wants me to ride on their Tour d’France team, I’m SO SLOW AND OUT OF SHAPE.”
or
“I was at the Vogue after-party and all of these girls keep hitting on me! Haven’t they seen my mirror?”
The specific quality that makes it a true HumbleBrag is that the bragging is joined by a self-deprecating remark of some kind. Not just complaining about the thing you’re bragging about.
I support artists and particularly young comedians by hiring them as heroin “tasters” when they can’t get any other gig. But they keep dying, and I’ve gotten very depressed about it recently.
Bragging of all sorts makes me nauseous (BTW, “nauseous” was the word I won with in the International Spelling Bee I was forced to participate in as a first grader).
Don’t think all the humble bragging is committed just by all you average to low witted people either. Hell, some of the worst offenders I’ve encountered were my fellow classmates at Harvard, Cambridge, MIT and Oxford. Talk about neurotic blowhards—they made me sick! My fellow Nobel laureates are little better—“oh, look at me, I’m a Nobel winner, aren’t I special!”No, you’re not special, get over yourself! I stick all my many awards in the closet (and extra-large storage facility) and never discuss them. Why? Because I have couth (“couth”, my kindergarten Spelling Bee winning word), that’s why.
I’ve noticed a high correlation between humble bragging and outright lying, too! I can’t tell you how many times we’ve measured new recruits in my Giant Penis Club, only to find that they fall quite a few millimeters shy of the 9 inch length/ 6 inch girth requirement. *Hello, it’s not a crime to have a tiny penis! *
I was telling my protégé, God, just the other day, “what the hell, dude, couldn’t you have created man with a little more humility?!?” He replied, “Well, if I had a penis as big as yours, I wouldn’t feel as compelled to compensate vicariously through my creations.”
I bet that African villager looks like a right ass when he bitches about this years fruits not being so sweet due to weather conditions, when you consider there are civilians in war zones being raped to death.
My point is EVERYONE bitches about things that to someone else will seem trivial.