3 Epic Humblebrags!

First things first: Yet another thought on ginning up titles for online columns.

This week, I start my title with an Arabic number: “3.” That’s the key to attracting readers. I follow with an adjective. Nothing intelligent comes to mind, so I’ll settle for the generic one that sounds like it means something: “Epic.” And then I’ll use a word that I suspect only recently moved from the Urban to the Oxford dictionary: “Humblebrag.” I stuck the exclamation point on at the end as an experiment. I’ve never tried that before, but maybe hysterical punctuation draws more readers on the web.

Perfect!

(Or perhaps: Perfect!!!)

I have no clue what “3 Epic Humblebrags!” means, but I bet I’ll draw eyeballs like there’s no tomorrow.

Now, what will I write?

Just kidding. I actually have three ideas in mind.

The first “epic humblebrag” comes from my days in private practice. I’d co-author (with an industrious associate) an article to help raise our firm’s profile and convince the world that we knew something about some field of law. I (or perhaps the associate) had represented a party in a couple of cases in the area, which is why we had an idea that was worth publishing. We’d also represented parties in a few other cases that were only marginally relevant to the topic of the article, but with a little imagination you could shoehorn into the article cites to those cases.

I’d naturally suggest that the associate get out the shoehorn and start citing the damn-near-irrelevant cases that we had worked on.

The associate would raise an eyebrow: “Why are we working so hard to cite these cases, when they have so little to do with our thesis?”

“The conflict-of-interest disclosure footnote.”

“Huh?”

“We’re obligated to identify in the conflict disclosure footnote if we worked on any of the cases cited in the article. Don’t think of that as disclosing conflicts of interest. Think of it as an opportunity to brag. If we identify in the conflict disclosure footnote only one or two cases that we worked on, readers will think that we have some passing familiarity with the legal field that we’re writing about. But if we identify in the conflict disclosure footnote a half dozen or more cases that we worked on, readers will think that we’re the leading practitioners in the area. So write the article with one eye on citing every possible case that we’re obligated to identify in the conflict footnote. Those aren’t disclosures of conflicts; they’re proof of our expertise!”

How’s that for a very humble brag?

Epic humblebrag number two.

I co-authored (with a relatively prominent fellow) an article. We sent our draft article out to ten or twelve professors (and other famous folks) to solicit their comments on our draft. Some of the reviewers were quite helpful, suggesting substantive revisions or marking up the entire draft. Other reviewers basically blew us off: “Thanks for sending the draft article. I don’t really have time to look at it. But I noticed there’s a typo in the title: You misspelled ‘securities.'” Or equally silly stuff.

When we wrote the acknowledgments footnote, we acknowledged the efforts of basically everyone to whom we’d sent drafts. (I no longer remember if we acknowledged people who simply ignored us, or who wrote back, “I won’t have time to look at the draft. Sorry.” But we may have.) We dutifully wrote in the acknowledgments footnote: “The authors would like to thank the following people for having provided extraordinarily helpful comments on an early draft of this article: [and listing the famous folks to whom we’d sent drafts].”

This time, I was the neophyte: “Some of those guys did no more than fix a typo.” (Maybe — I no longer remember: “Some of those guys just said they didn’t have time to review the draft.”) “Why are we saying those people provided useful comments? They didn’t provide useful comments. They added nothing to what we wrote.”

“Herrmann, you silly goose.” [Or words to that effect.] “We’re not actually acknowledging help provided by these people. We’re proving that we hang around with famous guys. If we say that some famous person commented on our article, then we’re implicitly telling the world that a famous person cared about what we wrote and took the time to read it. That means that we’re important people, and that our work is worth reading. This isn’t a matter of acknowledging help; it’s all about validating yourself in the field.”

Of course it is. I’m a fool.

Last epic humblebrag.

Okay: This isn’t really a humblebrag. It’s more a routine scam.

Your high school calls to say that you’ve been selected as alumni of the year, and the school will be recognizing you at the annual dinner.

This is great! Your high school thinks you’re a prominent alumni.

Or maybe not: Maybe the high school figures that, if you’re being recognized as alumni of the year, you’ll buy a couple of tables to the awards dinner, allowing you to invite friends to the dinner and the high school to pocket the dough.

Or, alternatively, some online outfit runs a contest to choose the “blog of the year.” Is that really meant to select the blog of the year? Or is it meant to encourage the bloggers competing for the award to link to the outfit that’s running the contest, thus pushing a huge number of page views (and, by extension, money) to the sponsor?

Or, alternatively, a publisher is picking the law firm (or individual lawyer, or in-house law department) of the year. Is that really meant to recognize the law firm, or is it more a way to sell magazines?

Yeah, yeah: We live in a capitalist system, and it’s okay to run a contest that profits both the person who sponsors the contest and the person who wins it. But winning one of those awards isn’t exactly like pocketing a Nobel Prize or receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

It’s more like a humblebrag, don’t you think?

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Mark Herrmann is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel – Litigation and Employment at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].