So…is your OP a “sneakbrag” or a “humblebrag”? How meta…
I think you’re vastly underestimating how easy it is for more than one person to independently come up with roughly the same idea at roughly the same time. It happens frequently in science, mathematics, the arts, etc.
Nzinga, I’m on your side. It’s easy for someone to claim it’s unlikely they stole your intellectual property, but that doesn’t matter. Finder’s Keeper’s is the rule, and since your claim of origin precedes theirs to my knowledge, I think the burden of proof is on them. You called it first.
I invented the “Too Slow, Joe” move.
This may be the earliest SDMB use. It’s by the OP from May 2010.
And still nothing at all like a HumbleBrag.
Sorry, you’re right. That’s the earliest use of sneakbrag that I could find, but the concepts are not the same.
This page has a usage from January of '09:
http://www.gosugamers.net/general/thread.php?id=347786
From second page of Google search results for “sneak brag.” 6/23/09
Edit : Shakes fist at Mithras
I remember a thread here where some posters thought the term “asshat” originated on the Dope. It’s a big world out there, y’all.
Bear in mind that “humble boast” has been around for ages, and it’s just as likely that humblebrag came from that direction.
I’d just like to take this opportunity to copyright the word shambrag © Ashley Pomeroy 2012. That’s my word now, you can’t use it without paying me an appropriate royalty. The only Google return I can find for it is a typo for “chambray” from a parasite.*
In fact I’m not happy with you using “sneakbrag”, it’s too close to my word. The concept is worryingly familiar.
- Okay, I’m kidding; you can’t copyright a word (you can trademark it, so perhaps I should launch a line of fake handbags or something). If Apple want to hire me to come up with words, I’m game.
“Sneak brag” seems pretty derivative of the much more common term “stealth brag” anyway.
Since this is the post that crushed my dream, I will start with this post.
The first time I ever used sneak brag on the internet was in that post Marley quoted. So the link above has prove of usage before I do.
I tried soooo harrrd to find ‘sneak brag’ on google, after I saw it caught on at the dope. I don’t know how you managed to find it (I know *hateration *fueled hajario to find it, but I marvel at how **you **found it so much easier than I could.)
So that’s it. That’s the end of my journey. I didn’t invent sneakbrag after all. And humblebrag belongs to the masses.
I do want to say that sneakbrag, the way I had defined it, is not the way posters in this thread seem to think it is. It isn’t just working something cool into conversation…it has always been about fake complaining about something so that you can actually sneak in a brag. I thought humblebrag meant that too.
Thanks for all the replies. Time to call my best friend and give her the bad news. She was rooting for me.
As you know, back in 1970… I starred on a series called, Wha’ Happened. And everytime something would go wrong, I’d look at the camera and say: “Hey, wha’ happened?”. We had a lot of fun with that and a lot of other catch phrases: “I got a weal wed wagon!”, and uh, “I can’t do my work!” And I believe I was the first one to use the phrase, “I don’t think so!”.
Thanks for giving me my new sig.
At least you had the guts and the honesty to admit you were wrong.
Yes!!! I’ve got a sig with my name in it! Woo hoo! I feel the same kind of famous that I did when I thought I made up a phrase!
???
Jokey poo.
Oh good, because you know I love you.
BTW, if you put “sneak brag” into Google (with a space and the quote marks) you get the 2009 cite on the first page, probably…if you’re logged into gmail or something else Googley, you get results tuned to what they know about you. That’s one of the reasons why the Dope often is the first of the links for a lot of us.