Comment by pekk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pekk | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The article may have made this unclear, but just being happy about good news for you isn't self-promotion. Like if you just had a baby or whatever, and you share that news, that isn't self-promotion. Self-promotion is bragging to others about how awesome you are. It's narcissistic. "I'm a 10x developer." "You can't contradict me, I run big services in production at scale." "Everyone knows I'm the best PHP coder around." Okay...

So if people are annoyed by your bragging, it doesn't mean they are envious people annoyed by good things happening to you. It might mean that they are annoyed at self-absorbed, arrogant or full of shit you are. These aren't really good traits.

You say that being a self-promoter will "optimize your social relationships" because it filters out people who are simply annoyed that you have good news. I'd call people who simply hate others' mere good news just envious haters. But since self-promotion isn't just talking about good news but bragging, the people you are filtering out with self-promotion are not envious haters. They might just be realists who are into action over talk, not being anxious to take credit from others, not trying to look better than others and make team projects into competitions. That stuff generates conflict, it isn't nice, and the collapse of the reality distortion field can be painful. You probably want some of those people in your life, unless the whole point of your life is to service a fragile ego.

My point is that "envious", "self-absorbed", "arrogant", "hater", and "full of shit" are not objective qualities that a person can intrinsically possess. Rather, they are value judgments that one person labels another with. "Nostrademons is an arrogant twat" is not an objective statement; it is a subjective one, with an implicit "I think that..." prefixing it. "Pekk thinks that nostrademons is an arrogant twat" is an objective statement (hopefully false in this case, it's provided for example only).

For any given person's actions, there will be a cloud of value judgments around that action. What's arrogant and obnoxious to one person may seem self-confident and assertive to another. And in general, people are happier when they don't hang around people they find obnoxious. So there's some degree of self-selection going on. If taken too far, you may end up in the situation where nobody wants to hang around with you, and that's probably a good reason to tone it down a little with the bragging. Similarly, if you find that the only people who want to hang around you are folks who you don't want to hang around, you may want to either change your actions to attract folks you actually want to be with, or change your definition of who you want to be around. But there's no intrinsic good or bad level of self-promotion, only the level at which you personally are uncomfortable.

What I find personally annoying, is when "you" are in a "competetive pond", and then people drags in stuff from outside the pond, into the pond for competetive purposes. That is unedible, and "foul play" in my book. :)

>Rather, they are value judgments that one person labels another with.

Not quite. Reputation is collective, not individual. If enough people agree that someone is self-absorbed and arrogant, that person has a problem.

Now, it could be a problem with the collective, not the individual. Most collectives have a reversion-to-the-mean feedback loop which punishes outliers - with a possible get-out where they demonstrate exceptional effectiveness and value.

But that doesn't mean there isn't an objective reputation consensus, with objective consequences.

So the "That's just your opinion, man" defence isn't always going to work.

"Lots of people have the same opinion" and "objective truth" are not interchangeable concepts.

The article may have made this unclear, but just being happy about good news for you isn't self-promotion.

The article quite clearly states that such self-promotion is what is often termed "humble bragging" (and in case the article might have misunderstood the study, the actual study itself uses very neutral language, like "sharing accomplishments"), which unfortunately is essentially just sharing any good news at all -- the examples given are new car, promotion, but the gist of the pretty limited study was sharing accomplishments.

From which I have to say that nostrademons is somewhat on the mark. It is unfortunate that many people project their own negative feelings (jealousy, resentment) onto other people's statements, to the point where our lives have to be presented as a shit sandwich if we ever really want to share good news without "bragging" --- "Pretty surprised that a dumb jerk like me got a promotion. I'll probably end up getting myself fired.". It's easy enough to do, but ultimately it's usually lying to yourself and the audience just to pander to other people's insecurities and just adding noise to the whole world.

And one of the best examples of this is the infamous Facebook baby updates: To people who care about the person, those are wonderful bits of news about something that is the one of most important events in the person you care abouts lives. To other people it's some asshole trying to lord over them just because they can procreate...I mean any asshole can go and have a kid and really do you need three pictures of a little shit and noise machine in a whole week? Who do they think they are...

"Bragging" is in the eye of the beholder more often than not, and generally is a case where people have to start to increasingly filter facts about their lives lest they pass the "bragging" line in the sand of the listener. Many people love to hear your bad news, but they resent your good news.

Rather incredibly, the comments and moderation throughout this very story are a microcosm of what is being discussed -- people drag so much baggage into these discussions, with pekk just loading their comment with a mountain sized chip on their shoulder.

My comment above has been down"voted" yet is absolutely accurate -- this rather weak study has zero to do with someone saying they're a 10x programmer or the "best" PHP coder. It specifically asks about sharing accomplishments. Cue loads of baggage and justifications for people's entirely negative reactions.

Not worth getting excited about. I started this sub-thread because I thought it was an intriguing, somewhat counter-intuitive explanation for the experiment's results. I think that the discussion in the sub-thread has provided pretty ample evidence of at least the meta-point I was trying to explore. But I don't bear any personal ill-will toward other commenters here; other peoples' perspectives are their own, and part of the point of the Internet is to share them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com