Boasting while pretending not to:

We are not fooling anyone with humble bragging, fake modesty doesn’t win any friends

I was having lunch with some acquaintances, and one of them said, “I hate that I look so young, people think I am still in high school.”

I thought she was my age, if not older, and I am 38. I am not trying to be mean, but I know what children look like, and she did not look like one. She asked me if I had ever experienced being mistaken for a high schooler, I said no, not for the last two decades.

This is humble bragging, the unfortunate art of fake modesty — boasting about something, but pretending to be annoyed by it or turning it into a complaint. In essence, bragging with a sense of false humility.

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People who slyly toot their own trumpet while pretending not to think they are coming across as being genuine and down-to-earth when it is mostly the opposite. And it is clear to their audience that they are shamelessly self-promoting.

A friend in Nepal told me how unhappy she was about her husband, who was having an affair with someone we all knew. A couple of days later, she went online and posted, ‘My husband surprised me with diamond earrings for…