A primer on how to properly brag about your awesomeness.
The Insta-Snappy World’s emphasis on self-promotion has created a plague of fake humility.
What’s the best way to deal with it?
Let’s start with an example.
Take Yale University.
It’s a good school. Like a really good school.
Dubya did his undergraduate degree there. Dubya’s dad was there before him. Both the Clintons did their law degrees there. Some slacker named Anderson Cooper graduated from there. Theo Epstein. Justices Alito and Sotomayor. Paul Newman. Meryl Streep. Blah, blah blah.
So, when you ask a student or alumni of Yale “where did you go to school”, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to shout it from the top of their lungs, “YAAAAALLLLLLLEEEE!!!” 1
However, this is typically not what happens. What you get instead is a mumbled response of “oh, I went to school in New Haven, Connecticut”. This wordplay is supposedly meant to deflect that student’s association to one of the world’s top brand name institutions.
Why? So as to not come off as “privileged” or “better than you”.
The problem is that the use of “New Haven” as code for “Yale” is such a paper thin disguise as to make any distinction meaningless. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of life can quickly sniff this out and would largely be correct in labeling the student with a charge of “fake humility”. 2
Anyone spouting “New Haven” kind of wants to hide their connection to Yale…but not really.
To wit, a Google search for colleges and universities in New Haven quickly reveals that using “New Haven, Connecticut” as code for “Yale” is about as effective as using “2x People’s Sexiest Man Alive and male half of Brangelina” as code for “Brad Pitt”. 3
No offense to the other New Haven-based schools, but – honestly – how many people have heard of Southern Connecticut State University? Or Gateway Community College? Or Albertus Magnus College?
Look, Gateway Community College has a pretty slick-looking exterior (below) and I’m sure there are tons of quality people there. But any superficially informed person in the world knows that “New Haven, Connecticut” is not code for “Gateway Community College”. It’s code for “Yale”. 4
Harvard students practicing the art of fake humility have a whole pun-tastic history of how to properly reveal their academic affiliation (aka “dropping the H-Bomb”). Check out some of these gloriously titled Harvard Crimson articles over the years: Moving Past The H-Bomb, The Power Of The H-Bomb (!!), Defusing The H-Bomb (!!!), Exploding The H-Bomb (!!!!). 5
Clearly, how to tactfully handle august affiliations 6 is an issue Ivy League folk are wrestling with.
Luckily, in my evenings-and-weekends role as a person who tries to make the world more palatable, I’ve whipped up a simple maxim on how to properly practice fake humility – The Generality Principle™:
“To avoid the label of ‘fake humility’, when describing one’s association to a prestigious organization or one’s fortunate situation, be as general as frickingly humanly possible.”
As you can see, increasing levels of generality to the question “where did you go to school” sufficiently protects one from coming off as a pompous asshole. In particular, if your new code for “Yale” changes from “New Haven” to “between the 150 W and 50 W meridians”, you can probably cause enough confusion to effectively erase any trace of douchebaggery.
Here are further examples of The Generality Principle™ at work:
For those not quite comfortable diving right into pure and unadulterated generalizing, there are two other acceptable ways to approach fake humility – The ‘Rhymes With’ Principle™ and The ‘Opposite Day’ Principle™.
The reason that these kindergarten-level principles pass the fake humility bar is because both methods inject humor into the situation.
Let’s revisit our New Haven / Yale example to see the principles at work.
Hilarious!
So there you have it.
Take these principles and go forth into the world without fear of being tagged as a practitioner of fake humility.
Yes, there certainly is. Famed economist F.A. Hayek laid out the idea of a “generality principle” or a “generality norm” in relation to governance and law: In a 1978 interview conducted by James Buchanan, economist and philosopher F. A. Hayek, when considering constitutional restraints on the scope of government, expressed that “the [First Amendment] ought to read ‘Congress shall make no law authorizing government to take any discriminatory measures of coercion.’ I think this would make all the other rights unnecessary.” This idea of generality (that all members of society are to be bound by the same laws) meets with little resistance in the Western world… As much as I enjoy the rule of law and constitutional theory, Hayek failed to actually trademark his work so it’s only fair that the term is up for grabs. Seriously, it took me two seconds to trademark The Generality Principle™ . If you can’t be bothered to superscript your work, then that’s on you. WAIT, ISN’T THERE ALREADY A GENERALITY PRINCIPLE?
