Is it worse to humble-brag or to pull a Richard Sherman?

In the blogosphere, the key to building a platform is to make other people think your platform is bigger than it really is. Because people don’t want to read your stuff unless you’re already popular. What this means is you have to figure out ways to create hype and buzz about yourself. But particularly if you’re in the Christian blogosphere like I am, you don’t want to do it in a way that looks arrogant. So that’s become the source of an epidemic of “humble-bragging” among Christian bloggers. It’s always more obvious what you’re doing than you think it is. So I’m wondering if rather than pretending to be humble, it’s actually less obnoxious to go ahead and boast openly in the fullness of your zany, wild hubris like Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman did on Sunday.

Humble-bragging is an art. You need to communicate the information that you’ve achieved something awesome in a way that it’s both clear that what you did is actually awesome and at the same time that it’s completely not a big deal at all to you. So for example if you achieve something like scoring a selfie with Rachel Held Evans (which I did once! :-)), then you make sure you put it in your facebook feed and say something like, “What a treat to catch up with my good friend Rachel!” Because if you say “catch up with,” you’re insinuating that you hang out with her on a regular basis. And that means that she’s endorsed you as a human being.

Whenever you’re invited to be an expert on a topic like “post-evangelical angst” at an important conference (which I’ve never gotten to do :-() where you’re on a speakers profile page with faces of people who are published authors, then it’s very important to put a link to the speakers profile page on your facebook feed, saying something like “Deeply humbled to be part of the conversation with Sarah Bessey and Tony Jones and Eugene Cho and those Aussies with cool facial hair who always show up at missional church conferences,” etc. It’s important to say something like “part of the conversation” instead of “sharing the stage” even though you’ll be on a stage and nobody else will be talking until the Q&A, because it’s all supposed to be a conversation just like we’re all equals sitting around relaxing with a cup of joe (I really hope nobody ever says “cup of joe” in real life!).

If the sarcasm isn’t clear enough, I’ll just go ahead and say I prefer the Richard Sherman approach. If you’re not into football and have no idea what I’m talking about, Richard Sherman made an amazing play at the end of the Seahawks/49er’s playoff game Sunday that put the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. And then he went crazy in the post-game interview, bellowing, “I’m the best cornerback in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s the result you are going to get. Don’t you ever talk about me!” White America got offended by the rawness of his outburst, and it became the racial drama of the week.

Since all the sports bloggers have milked the Sherman rant for every possible angle that could be taken, I figured I’d try the “I’m a white guy who gets Richard Sherman” trope since it fits my brand, except that that sounds too patronizing so maybe not. But seriously I really feel like going off on the world sometimes. And I’m glad he did. Because all the pageantry of professional sports is such a damn farce. And usually the athletes play along in those interviews and say something banal and congenial or maybe “give the glory to God” (because when we point to God in the endzone, he gives us touchdowns!). The professional sports industrial complex has caused me to hate the word “analyst” almost as much as I hate it when people want all of facebook to know that they’re “humbled” by their latest achievement. Plus, I’m kind of glad that one of those sports reporters got taken out of character for a moment. It’s nice when the script gets ruptured.

So if you’ve got something to brag about to your facebook feed, just be big and bold about it. Write something like “I just found out that I’m going to be speaking at the Ecclesia conference because I’m wicked smart and everybody retweets me and God loves me more than he loves you!” If somebody wrote that, I would literally laugh out loud instead of just writing LOL. I guess I just like hyperbolic grandiosity better than fake humility. Humble-bragging insults my intelligence; it’s too easy for me to ridicule. Being a hyperbolically flamboyant braggart shows that you don’t take yourself too seriously, even if you’re doing it deliberately to brand yourself as not being like all those humble-bragging Christian blogger people.

For some reason, the image I can’t get out of my head when I think about Richard Sherman’s rant is the scene in Love Actually when the woman Sarah who works at the graphic design company finally gets the hot French guy Karl to come home with her and she tells him to wait a minute so she can run around the corner and do a manic, fifteen-second happy dance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with happy dances. Man, if I ever get a publishing contract, you’d best believe I’m not going to say the word “humbled” in my status update.

And just so it’s clear, the main reason I’m writing this post is because I’m jealous that other people are having more success than me. Especially people who started blogging after me who have amazing numbers now. And it doesn’t mean I don’t love you or want you to be successful. It’s just my junk that I’ve got to deal with. And this is part of how I do that. Peace.