Why Bragging About Your Online Success Isn’t Helping Me
By: George J. Ziogas
Tags: Psychology, Self, Success, Freelancing, Work

Why Bragging About Your Online Success Isn’t Helping Me

Or anyone else for that matter

Image: olezzo/Adobe Stock

If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, then you know what it’s like to come across the humblebragger. At least, they think they’re being humble. If you’ve been on social media, then you’re also familiar with overt braggarts.

You’re minding your own business, scrolling your newsfeed, and you stumble across a longwinded post from an old friend. You know them well, but a lot of people also know them because they’ve grown into something of an Internet sensation.

Let’s be honest, anyone with a bit of knowledge these days can build a healthy following online. And your old friend just made a post that was a longwinded way of bragging about all of their achievements. There was literally no other point to the post, but to highlight all of the incredible work they’ve done.

While there’s nothing wrong in theory with being proud of one’s accomplishments, it hits a little different when you take time out of your day to write a post with the intent to brag about those accomplishments.

I’ll be completely honest with you. That post changed my view of that person. It’s something I hadn’t noticed about them before so I went to browse the rest of their posts and realized it was par for the course. That’s all they seemed to do. And, by injecting words like blessed, proud, humbled, they tried to make it sound like something it wasn’t.

What is Bragging?

Look, social media is social. It’s there to share your life with your friends and family. So, it makes perfect sense that you share moments of success and happiness. Of course, you want to announce a promotion, a new addition (whether human or furry), or any number of positive achievements or events going on in your life. Generally speaking, people share in your happiness. They congratulate you because friends like to see their friends succeed.

The issue comes when you share not to spread happiness, but to make others feel envious of you. The announcements or information you’re sharing isn’t useful, there’s no informative purpose, it’s intentionally dysfunctional, and is all about showing off. When you brag, there are two considerations — the information you’re sharing, as well as the people you’re sharing it with.

If we take it in a professional context, you may make a post on LinkedIn announcing an upcoming paper. That’s useful information. However, making a random post where you tell your audience you’ve been cited thousands of times… that’s not helpful or useful.

Which begs the question, if someone wants to share information that isn’t useful or helpful, why do they do so? What were they trying to accomplish? What harm are they causing by sharing as they did?

Let’s define bragging. If it comes up naturally, then revealing impressive information about yourself isn’t necessarily bragging. For example, if someone asks you where you live and you happen to live in The Hamptons, then you aren’t bragging by responding to their question. Now, if you were to disclose it without being asked, then it’s bragging.

If you complete your LinkedIn profile by filling in relevant achievements, then you’re not bragging you’re simply doing what the platform requests. So, perhaps the best way to determine whether something is bragging or not is to consider whether you’re imposing your status elevating thoughts on others by sharing what you’re sharing.

The Result of Bragging

What bragging does is highlight negative information about you, the sharer. You’ll become known as a braggart. Guess what? Most braggarts don’t know they’re braggarts, but the rest of the world recognizes it and they don’t like those people. What that bragging impresses upon your audience is that you hold a negative view of the people around you because ultimately, the message you send is that you’re better than them.

If only those people kept their bragging to social media where you could mute them. Unfortunately, the people who brag online are just as apt to do so in person. Research shows that bragging is linked to more undesirable traits. People who tend to brag when positive events occur are reportedly less empathetic, less agreeable, and less conscientious. Whereas those who brag and overshare have higher levels of narcissism.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but what might come as a surprise is how often you brag without even realizing you’re doing it. I’d encourage you to go look at the posts you make and determine whether you’re guilty of a humblebrag or two or if you go all out with straight-up, overt bragging. If you do, what does it do for you?

Often, what happens is the braggart attracts a crowd. A lot of people gravitate to them. Those people ingratiate themselves to the braggart because they see a benefit in doing so. Generally, these are people who have a lower status and/or ulterior motives to build a relationship with the person. The braggart now has an entourage. It sounds innocent, but in the real world (and online) that entourage can be used to tear others down in a bid to protect the braggart.

This is something you can watch unfold online all the time. A celebrity can call someone out and all of their fans rush to attack that person. It isn’t just celebrities who do this, however, anyone with a following can sick their followers on someone with who they have an issue. It creates this vicious cycle of bullying and power exertion.

There’s a new habit emerging, people brag (online and in-person) about the success they’ve found and they brag about it by acting as though they’re trying to inspire you to also succeed. They package their brag as a way of empowering you to take the same steps they did to create the success they have.

In fact, some people even go to the trouble of writing it all out and selling the information in a book. Then, they brag about that success. Look at what I did! I managed this online business while working a full-time job and now look at me! What are you waiting for? It may come with good intentions, but it doesn’t always lead to positive results.

We’re all guilty of a bit of self-promotion now and again. We want to highlight our strengths, we want to have our moment to show our expertise or competence, whether it’s in the workplace, online, or in general. We all do it.

But what is your intention when you do so? Because I can tell you this, when you brag about your online success it isn’t helping me. It isn’t helping anyone. It isn’t helping you either, because one over-the-top brag or poorly worded post highlighting your success can tank your reputation. You might continue to brag, thinking others are jealous of your success or inspiring success in others and the reality is it’s making everyone dislike you.

All that to say, be careful how you communicate your success to others. You might think you’re helping, but you’re more than likely doing real damage to the people around you.