The new ep. of The Simpsons just had a hipster character use the word “humblebrag”.
I think ‘humblebrag’ was stolen from me. I made ‘sneakbrag’. I think someone much savvier with social media saw my new word, tweaked it to replace ‘sneak’ with ‘humble’ and made it much more popular. Now the Simpsons is using it. I think I should be able to still claim it. Can I?
I think I first saw Humblebrag on Twitter, when Wil Wheaton used it about four or so years ago. He probably got it from elsewhere, my guess somewhere like Reddit. It may even be way way older than that.
Even if you could prove you were the first to coin “sneakbrag” - which would take a lot more evidence than you’ve presented here so far - you’d have no claim on “humblebrag”. It’s a different word.
I hope that this is a whoosh. In case it isn’t, you can’t claim a thing. Do you seriously not think that there is a possibility that someone else can come up with the same thing as you independently?
Hajario, I’m serious as cancer. I want to be the coiner of a “thing” sooo badly! I am always making up stuff with my friends, hoping it spreads and gets in to slang usage eventually. It’s possible someone came up with humblebrag in the same timeframe that I came up with sneak brag, but I think it is more likely that one word came from the other.
No. It is infinitely more likely that someone else totally independently had the same idea as you as well as many other people over the years. It’s not like it’s a unique concept.
A humblebrag and a sneakbrag aren’t even close to the same thing, except for the brag part.
Comedian/writer Harris Wittels has been sharing HumbleBrags on Twitter for a long time, and just released a book of HumbleBrags this year . Does he owe you money?
Well, I can’t find any concrete proof of the word humblebrag any earlier than 2011, which doesn’t seem right to me. Every apparent cite earlier is actually a link to a more current page (stupid dynamic webpages confusing the issue).
However, there may be a definitive history of it inside this book by comedian Harris Wittels.
I’ve never heard humblebrag, and I only know sneak brag/sneakbrag or stealth brag/stealthbrag from the SDMB but I thought the consensus was that “stealth brag” was way cooler than “sneak brag”.
I spent way too much time combing through search results for stealth brag and sneak brag. Way too much noise, very little signal. How do you search two words and get only results that have those words together? I thought the techniques was to use quotes but searching “sneak brag” brought up all Threads that had both the words sneak and brag but not necessarily together- which meant LOTS of unhelpful results.
A Sneak or Stealth brag is just when you slip a brag into conversation without drawing too much attention to it. Like if I’m telling you a story about taking my daughter to school and casually include that we were driving there in my Ferrari.
A HumbleBragis when someone who has life pretty good complains about that awesome life or pretends life’s a drag while also bragging about it. It’s a special beast and often mis-labeled. Here aresome examples:
“Wow, we just got mobbed at the airport. I think they thought we were Justin Bieber.” - Adam Levine
“I have got to stop saying yes to every interview request. 9 minutes that felt like a week.” - Patton Oswalt
“Totally walked down the wrong escalator at the airport from the flashes of the cameras… Go me.” - Joe Jonas