My fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, offered a bit of worthy advice in his column at Above The Law.
If you’ve really got it, then you don’t have to flaunt it.
Shamelessness has become a national pastime. Not only do people feel no shame whatsoever for flagrant self-promotion, but they similarly feel no shame about puffery, overstating their worth. Often grossly overstating their worth. Like the Super Blogger and her team of blogging rockstars, the absurd hyperbole seemed so obvious that it was unworthy of mention. Yet, some commenters took it seriously enough to point that it may not be true. You think?
Herrmann noted that it was unnecessary to go on at length to explain how someone who is truly renown needs to prove it. Larry Bird was his example.
In other words: “I’m Larry Bird. Yes, that Larry Bird.” ‘nuf said.
Granted, few people are Larry Bird level famous. Yet, if you read the twitter bios of random people, you would think that about half of twitter is made up of world famous experts who are available for motivational speaking engagements.
But, as shit is inclined to do, it’s flowed downhill. I received an email from a New York Times reporter yesterday who read my review of David Lat’s book. She wanted to talk with me, as (her words) I had followed Lat’s career.
What career? He was a former Jersey AUSA who pretended to be a girl obsessed with naked judges, and got caught. Then he started a snarky blog that used to be funny and now sells advertising. And she thought I was his groupie, because he’s a rock star? This wasn’t an interview by the Onion, but the friggin’ New York Times.
There is a young law professor, who I happen to personally like very much, Josh Blackman. He’s smart as a whip, and really quite a good guy, but he does one thing that makes me nuts. He promotes the living crap out of everything he does. It’s not that he’s a braggart in person. He’s not. But he uses his blog to make a big deal out of every burp and fart he makes.
Josh has gotten some well-deserved, and seriously worthwhile, kudos. But rather than let his accomplishment speak for themselves, he feels compelled to climb atop the mountain and shout at the top of his lungs. When Josh posted about his being named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30,” I noted this character issue:
In the early days of blogging, any time a person would write something even remotely self-aggrandizing, it would be prefaced by the words, “I apologize for this shameless self-promotion.” There was an appreciation of shamelessness then, and conversely an appreciation of humility. It no longer exists.
And so, I arrive at the point of this post, to offer the corollary to Herrmann’s “if you got it, you don’t have to flaunt it” advice:
Those who flaunt it don’t have it.
If someone has to tell you that he’s fabulous, he’s not. If someone has to spell out that he’s world famous, he’s not. Famous people are famous. People don’t become famous because they say they are, but because they simply are. And famous people take it in stride; they are neither more nor less famous because of anything they or you say about it.
Did you get a call from a reporter asking to interview about something? Cool. So, if you have the competency to be illuminating on a subject, and aren’t terribly put off by the nature of journalistic reductivism, go for it. But don’t then scream about it, to make sure that everyone on the interwebz knows that you’re special, you got a call from a reporter, you were deemed sufficiently expert-y to get your name in the paper.
First, it’s no big deal. Reporters are constantly searching for warm bodies to be used for interesting sound bites to add condiments to their stories. Their editors demand it, and they go through dozens, hundreds, of inconsequential people to fill out the requisite graphs. I get interviewed all the time. It’s background noise. Sorry to burst your bubble.
More importantly, the fact that someone of dubious merit decided to use you as the baloney in their reporting sandwich does not make you an expert. It makes you available. The marketeers’ sales pitch is baloney of a different sort, but has been swallowed whole by far too many of you.
A running “joke” around the blawgosphere is that you are what Google says you are. It didn’t start as a joke, but as a serious proposition by Adrianos Facchetti at one of the most ridiculous blogs around, Blog for Profit. Adrianos offered the proposition in support of his contention that any moron could create an internet persona of expertise by playing Google. Of course, he neglected to mention that creating the appearance of expertise isn’t exactly the same as having it, but then, that’s the nature of the beast.
Look around at the descriptions people give of themselves, and they tell you an awful lot about a person. No, not that they are experts because they say they are, or rockstars, or famous, or motivational speakers available for your next child’s birthday party. It informs of how fragile their self-esteem is, that they need to puff themselves on the internets because the “real them” is puny and inconsequential. It informs of what they are trying to pretend to be, because if they truly were what they claim to be, they wouldn’t have to say so. Nobody is an “expert” because they say so. They’re an expert because other people say so.
Among the many “ages” we’re enduring in this dawn of the digital age, such as the Age of Hurt Feelings and the Age of Words Without Meaning, we are experience the Age of the Nobodies Pretending To Be Somebody.
Modesty is a virtue. More importantly, modesty is informative. When you look at someone’s self-description, bear this in mind. When you describe yourself, consider what you’re revealing. For most of you, it’s that you aren’t Larry Bird, no matter how much you wish you were.
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I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.
You are a very big deal to me.
As a friend of mine says, I’m pretty famous, but few people know it.
If someone has to tell you she’s ethical she’s not. Watch out! Another illustration of the corollary.
Plus, humility is sexy.
That could be a problem, given the cultural environment.
Being asked to be interviewed is definitely not complimentary or bragworthy. Of the few times I have been an actual witness of something newsworthy, I have noticed that reporters have an uncanny knack for selecting the local village idiot (even if there’s only one in a crowd of hundreds) as the target of their interview.
The saddest part of this story is not that a non expert is able to create a persona online that defines them as being an expert. It is that the majority of the world flocks to them like sheep, or as Robert Cialdini says, buffalo, because they are too busy or too stupid not to fall for the power of social proof.
Those are the people I hope will get the point of this post. But then, they do so because it’s easy for the brain dead to find their “experts,” since google says so.
Two things spring to mind:
1) The connection between this post and the one you wrote a while back about the person (people?) who walked out of your talk on the interwebz when they realized that you were not going to talk about promoting yourself on the interwebz.
2) A quote I have heard attributed to Jerry Rice — when asked why he does not conduct touchdown celebrations, he said (supposedly), “You should act like you have been there before.” (In fact, when I saw the title of the post, I was expecting the Rice reference.) The crazy celebrations so many conduct when they score a touchdown — particularly when their team is losing (and often losing badly) — has long struck me as a metaphor for the age.
Are you saying referring to myself as The Super Tax Genius is a bad idea?
For the record I stole it from a Calvin and Hobbes comic.
I’ve found that good content tends to bring in the people you want, where shameless self promotion tends to bring in just…people.
Five years ago, I would have agreed with you completely. Today, I’m no longer so sure. We’ve become so inured to lies and hyperbole that it’s unclear that people grasp humility anymore or see modesty as a virtue.
Obviously, a certain amount of advertising is necessary for many businesses, but brazen self-promotion is a huge negative for me. This sometimes presents a conundrum — on the few occasions where the self-promoter genuinely seems to be the best option for my needs, I am still loath to do business with him. I wouldn’t want to contribute to his confirmation bias about shameless publicity, and I also worry that maybe he’s insufferable in person, too.
Which, I suppose, partly explains why I hate buying cars.
Wait. Stop the presses. Are you actually saying Muhammad Ali wasn’t “The Greatest” and that Famous Amos wasn’t really famous?? Because I believed them, man, I believed them . . .
Ali was the greatest, but not because he said so. Amos, well, may have been aspirational.
But I bought a lot of those damn cookies, which really weren’t all that good, because I thought he was famous and must make awesome treats. I attributed the less-than-pleasing taste to my faulty palate, not his outlandish puffery. I was sooo naive back then; shoulda trusted my own senses . . .
They aren’t mutually exclusive.
You hurt my palate’s feelings. Very tasteless of you, I declare . . .
Is it possible that bragging is just something that’s needed to stand out in our society today?
In the context of lawyers, we’ve all seen the hardworking defense attorney who figures his reputation will speak for itself and that high-paying clients will flock to him once they hear how good he is (but they don’t). We’ve also seen the huckster who promises the moon and then takes the first plea offered, no questions asked, and rams it down his client’s throat. People are flocking to the wrong attorney; wouldn’t it be a service to the public for the competent and zealous defense attorney be advertising more, saying “I’m good and I want you to know it; you should hire me”?
Which would distinguish the good lawyer from the scum how?
It wouldn’t distinguish them, but it would mean that the pool of hyped lawyers has a greater percentage of competent lawyers than before, giving the person who hires based on reputation (and it’s hard to do otherwise) a better chance of getting a zealous advocate.
It’s not a great solution, but it’s better than competent lawyers refusing to do the dirty work of bragging and leaving the field open to the hucksters.
Is it better? The distinction between the two would exist if one follows my corollary, and good lawyers wouldn’t be compelled to walk down the boulevard in hotpants to compete with the scum. No, I don’t think it’s a better answer. Not at all.
Lawyers should post their won-loss records, like football teams do.
Thanks for bringing this to a new depth of stupid. We have a special name for people who think “lawyers should post their won-loss records, like football teams do.” It’s not a nice name, which is why I choose to assume you’ve written this to be ironic.
I have indeed. Apparently I’m not as good at transmitting sarcasm as I though. But I didn’t include a link!
From the forgotten genius urban poets the Geto Boyz:
“Real gangsta-ass playas don’t flex nuts
Cuz real gangsta-ass playas know they got ’em.”
You seem to be getting pretty down on non-lawyers lately. Are we really that bad?
Sigh. It’s not that non-lawyer are “that bad,” but what I’ve come to find is that there is a direct inverse relationship between the number of non-lawyer comments and the number of lawyer comments. The more of the former, the few of the latter.
Frankly, the discussion has been at a much lower level for it. So no, I’m not happy about it. This may be fun for non-lawyers, but it’s not much fun for me, which is what this is supposed to be all about.
So, actually it is that non-lawyer are “that bad.” They don’t have to be, but too many just are.
This post is a great example of the problems raised by our constitutional right to double jeopardy.
Slow day, so why not screw with Greenfield, amirite?