Timothy Hiatt / Contributor via Getty Images
Everybody at least one thing they can brag about. And try as we might, there are always instances where all we want is to slip that piece of information into a conversation. But what is the right technique to work a in a humblebrag? These Redditors will tell you.
u/HoldMeDownSanta asked: What's one humble brag you always like to slide into conversation?
I mean hey, it's a free $30.
I get royalties for a song used in some movie (Pennies in Heaven, thank you /u/BrodieGirlRealness) in the 80s and Fallout New Vegas.
Back in the 30s a distant relative wrote a song that happened to get a dozen different covers during the 40s and 50s... and it was just the right style for Fallout's radio stations. Thanks to Disney's never-ending quest to make copyrights last forever... here I am nearly 100 years later collecting about $30 a month.
It makes my taxes a pain in the butt, though. Schedule E for rental properties and royalties made it so I couldn't do simple filing EVER.
It's a weird thing to have, and so I try to slip it into conversations because it's something fun to talk about.
I be flossin'.
I floss every day. That's right, every single day!
That's is actually quite impressive.
Power move.
"Did I stutter?" I have a bad stutter, so this helps assert dominance. Works. Every. Time. It's how I actually met my girlfriend, I used that line and she laughed so hard she gave me her number
Bro that's a power move if I ever heard of one GG
Now THAT'S skill.
I've ridden all 47 rides at Disney World in a single day without any sort of VIP tour cheating.
The freelance writer grind...
That I'm a freelance writer and I'm not allowed to disclose some of the people I've written for... you know, since you asked.
What was it like writing for a well known 90's TV show actor?
Now THAT'S cool.
I have an asteroid named after me for my contributions on a currently flying space mission.
I mean, it isn't a big asteroid... but it's a little proof that I've launched at least one thing into space.
Bold and brash.
My Master's degree in clarinet performance. Just because it was so d*mn difficult and would probably never get me a pay rise either. But I started it and finished it. So proud of that useless degree...
Squidward is prolly jealous of you.
Pure talent.
Being able to say the alphabet backwards in about 5 seconds flat consistently
This is good because you can easily provide proof, and it pairs well with drinking.
Ah yes, good ol' fashioned sexism.
I'm a pilot.
Although, as a woman, it often just confuses people and they sometimes respond, "Oh, like a flight attendant?"
Impressive.
I'm naturally left handed, but I'm nearly self-taught ambidextrous. I've been teaching my right hand to do what my left hand normally would do, including writing.
Nice.
My cup size. 99% of the time the girls are a pain in the ass and I'd drop down if given the chance, but that 1% of the time they come in handy makes it worth it. I only mention it to girls, but I make no effort to lower my voice if boys happen to hear.
Talent at a young age.
When I was a little girl, my school made all of us sit down and create little anti-smoking propaganda posters for some kind of PSA or another. Mine was apparently good enough that it got me an award, a picture with the attorney general, and a small write-up in the local paper.
So wholesome!
I have a viral video where I saved a drowning dog at an abandoned waterpark. On my channel is has about 250k views, but on Facebook it has about 35 million views on The Dodo.
Love a good celeb hang.
My dad knows Ed Sheeran's mom, they're friends. My mother is friends with Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid from Harry Potter) and used to go to his parties before she moved. My sister has met Anne-Marie and plays hockey with Ed's wife.
People Describe The Most Basic Things That Humanity Just Figured Out Relatively Recently
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay |
I sometimes marvel at how much society has advanced. Smartphones have only been a part of everyday life for the last decade, but you'd think it was always this way. My mother was a child at the time of the moon landing, which really wasn''t all that long ago, and she recalls watching it take place and thinking she would never see anything grander than that in her lifetime.
After Redditor notokidoki_ks asked the online community, "What is something that seems basic, but that humanity figured out only recently?" people shared their observations.
"That doctors washing their hands..."
<p>That doctors washing their hands after going to the toilet increases survival rates significantly during surgical procedures.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp3pfd5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3"></a><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp3pfd5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">nbfox3137</a></p>"We are going back..."
<p>Glass. Some cultures have had glassware for a long time while others developed without it. Japan and China are great examples of not having it and it impacts their architecture design as they did not have glass pane windows. China also has had arguably some of the best ceramics artisans because of the need for stone wear where glass cups would have worked.</p><p>We are going back a couple hundred years here but that's still fairly recent in terms of mankind's history.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp4b1zo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">666pool</a></p>"Two years ago..."
<p>Two years ago scientists learned that tongues can smell. They can detect some odors as part of the tasting process.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp40g3b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Cattlenfell</a></p>"Scientists knew that nutrition deficiencies..."
<p>All vitamins were discovered between 1913 and 1948.</p><p>Scientists knew that nutrition deficiencies were causing diseases, but couldn't figure out what was deficient. They fed mice highly purified food, but the mice failed to thrive until milk was added, leading to the theory that there was some life-sustaining, but unidentified, component in milk that was not present in the other food. That led to decades of speculation and research until the first vitamin (A) was discovered in 1913.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp4chtt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Enreni37001</a></p>"There's a reason..."
<p>How to tell if someone is dead.</p><p>There's a reason people used to keep family members who they thought had passed in their home for weeks before burying them.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp3t7tk?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Ms_khal2</a></p>But the smell!
<p>What about the smell?</p><p>This is how you know my modern sensibilities would doom me if I happened to be a time traveler and got stuck in the past.</p>"The earliest cutlery..."
<p>Cutlery that doesn't make the food taste awful, and isn't ridiculously expensive.</p><p>Gold and silver cutlery were useful to the rich (besides being a display of wealth) because they could eat without affecting the taste of the food. Copper, brass, tin etc. all really strongly affect the flavour of the food.</p><p>The earliest cutlery is some 4,000 years old, but for most of that time, very few people used it; instead they'd eat with their hands.</p><p>Stainless steel was only invented in the 1800s, and its high resistance to acid and no discernible taste made it suitable for cutlery.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp4u2e0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Ishmael128</a></p>"That hitting kids..."
<p>That hitting kids is bad, and does not enforce positive behavior. Some knew this instinctively, but mostly, nope.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp3utd2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">pearlescence</a></p>"There simply isn't..."
<p>A scientific understanding of what culture is and how it works.</p><p>Before the 1800s or so, people just assumed their culture was the one, single, objectively real and correct way to live, therefore all other cultures were objectively wrong and the people weren't really human.</p><p>It was common for anthropologists to encounter remote societies that insisted "The people in the next valley are monsters, they are not human" - and if you went into that valley, they'd <em>say the same thing</em> about the people you were just talking to.</p><p>That made it pretty easy for actual social scientists to grasp how cultures define reality, but even now the average person has very little social science education and people tend to still believe their cultural norms are 100% real, natural, and objectively correct - i.e., look at how angry people get when you explain that gender isn't biological, it's cultural.</p>"People commonly think..."
<p>How dogs drink water. People commonly think dogs make their tongue into a spoon to lap it up but the tongue curls backward.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp4emag?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">inkseep1</a></p>I took care of a friend's dog very recently...
<p>...and now I'm poring over the image in my head of her lapping at the water in her bowl. <em>It's so cool</em>.<span></span></p>"Pretty much everything used in statistics..."
<p>Loads of math that gets used all the time. Pretty much everything used in statistics wasn't known until the 20th century. We had a good grasp of probability theory and a few distributions, but not many statistical tests as we know them today. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The idea of a null hypothesis as it is used today wasn't codified until 1935</a>.</p><p>Same goes for a lot of linear algebra, computers kinda made linear algebra really important, so people are still discovering heaps of useful things about it today.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ltz79s/what_is_something_that_seems_basic_but_that/gp5ku4h?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Cytokine_storm</a></p>Now that we've gone through all of these examples,
<p>I can't help but think of others, such as the fact that the chocolate chip cookie wasn't invented until the 1930s, and that pockets in clothing didn't become a thing until roughly 500 years ago. I know, right?</p><p>Got some of your own observations to share? Feel free to sound off in the comments below!</p>If there's one thing I think most of humanity can agree on, it's that people are annoying. People are the worst. You'd think they'd get the simplest concepts into their heads but they don't... and then they have the audacity to fight you on it. Take this pandemic, for example. Why are we still arguing over whether people should wear masks? The fact that so many people refuse to wear a piece of cloth is ridiculous when there's a deadly virus going around. What's up with that?
After Redditor moneybot13 asked the online community, "What are you sick of explaining to other people?" people shared their stories.
"There is no law..."
<p>Legal does not equal moral. Moral does not equal legal.</p><p>Example: Yes, I agree that the executor of the estate should notify you of what's going on with gram gram's estate. Yes, I understand being left in the cold sucks. No, I cannot do anything about it, because while s****, it is NOT illegal. There is no law against being an a-hole.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/govqs2s?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Reaper0329</a></p>"As long as it's not hurting anyone..."
<p>You don't have to understand someone's hobby to just accept that they enjoy it. As long as it's not hurting anyone, let them have fun.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/goupbv9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">fennecfur</a></p>Believe it or not...
<p>...it's really as simple as that. Why bother other people? Why "yuck their yum," so to speak? It's pointless, isn't it?</p><p>Exactly.</p><p>This next one is super relatable.</p>"That being depressed..."
<p>That being depressed isn't (necessarily) about lying in bed all day.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/goufu1g?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">smellslikereason</a></p>"Wanting others to have a better life..."
<p>Wanting others to have a better life than we had should be the GOAL, and forcing hardships on others simply because you had to endure it is a really crappy way to live your life.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/goubdbs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">ntrusivethots</a></p>"That's it's okay..."
<p>That's it's okay to let people live their lives even if you don't agree with them.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/goudnhn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">tommytster</a></p>"That I'm not an introvert..."
<p>That I'm not an introvert for not wanting to go to a family gathering. No, Mom, it's because they're constantly being annoying.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/gouqve5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">ChonkyRaccoon3</a></p>Yes!
<p>I have memories of all the annoying family members whose BS I had to suffer through because I was being forced to attend some ridiculous gathering.</p><p>Thankfully I'm an adult and spared that nonsense now.</p>"I just don't like..."
<p>That me being a quiet person doesn't mean I'm angry all the time.</p><p><span>I just don't like talking as much as most people. Unfortunately, I don't even get the chance to explain before they judge me anyway.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/govg5j4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">HansOTP</a></p>"I'm just sick of them..."
<p>How to sell things online or in an antique mall.</p><p>I'm relatively successful selling on Etsy and in person and it's a hell of a lot of work. People ask me how I do it and I could talk till I'm blue in the face and they'll list 10 crappy things which will never sell like Norman Rockwell Collector Plates and complain they never sell anything like it's my fault. Or they'll get a booth and put those damn plates in and never ever make their rent and ask me how to make it better and then not do anything I told them to.</p><p>Funny how these people are always victims. "I tried but it didn't work." No, you didn't try. Not even close.</p><p>I'm just sick of them asking me for advice and then not doing anything I told them. Like, why ask?</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/gouhhvt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">Maleficent_Mink</a></p>"People either think..."
<p>That I, a woman, don't want children. People either think you're lying or you'll grow out of it.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/gov9m3j?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">PirateClayton92</a></p>"That there is still so much stigma..."
<p>That there is still so much stigma towards mental illness. Especially mood disorders and those that are deemed "f**** up enough" to sensationalize through film and television. It really affects those of us who are just trying to be okay, not harm others, and not harm ourselves.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/lt0qob/what_are_you_sick_of_trying_to_explain_to_people/govagya?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3" target="_blank">kemkem97</a></p>If only people weren't so insufferable.
<p>Life would be a lot easier, don't you agree?</p><p>Good thing I'm indoors and not looking outside at all the people passing by who aren't wearing their masks, otherwise I'd be going a bit crazy.</p><p>Have some of your own complaints to share? Feel free to talk about them in the comments below!</p>There is a world full of mysteries to explore right at our very feet.
Do we engage with it on a level that might make us more uncomfortable? Well, if we really want to learn everything there is to know about our planet earth, we have to engage in the unsettling facts. They appear across every discipline.
The Easier Way Out
<p>During the French Revolution, where the guillotine was introduced, the people to be executed fought to be first, as the blade would dull after multiple uses and wouldn't cut a head clean off at the first attempt.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Back2Bach/" target="_blank">Back2Bach</a></p><p>And the last execution by guillotine in France was the same year Star Wars came out.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/CaptainPrower/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CaptainPrower</a></p>At LEAST One?!
<p>You have probably unknowingly encountered, or walked past at least one murderer in your lifetime.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/theprettyunicorn/" target="_blank">theprettyunicorn</a></p><p>For sure encountered. Worked night shift at a convenience store, guy pulled in to put gas came in the store used the atm and left. 3 min later swarm of cops surrounded the store. He had just murdered his family a couple states over and cops got a hit when he used the atm machine.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Cool1Mach/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cool1Mach</a></p>WELP
<p>For a long time it was believed that babies were too underdeveloped to be able to feel pain, and as such, did not need anesthetic for any kind of surgeries.</p><p>Up into the 1980's.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/FartKilometre/" target="_blank">FartKilometre</a></p>Internet History
<p>Eventually, most of the content on the internet will have been created by dead people.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Phaesporic/" target="_blank">Phaesporic</a></p><p>Now I'm imagining a class like English literature but for internet culture and picturing a bored class with some kids sleeping while the teacher is saying some shit like "Okay class this meme is 100 years old and it says Me and the Boys going out to get some B E A N S what do the B E A N S symbolize and how does it reflect what was going on in society ? " lmao.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Cheshire_Cat8888/" target="_blank">Cheshire_Cat8888</a></p>Awful, Awful
<p>There are estimated to be at least 25 active serial killers in the United States alone at any given time. Very few will be detected, much less apprehended.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/brideofchuckydoll/" target="_blank">brideofchuckydoll</a></p><p>Derrick Todd Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis were both active serial killer in the same city from the late 90s to early 2000s. For most of this time, law enforcement did not realize they were trying to catch multiple individuals, much less that they were acting completely independently of each other. On top of that, there are additional unsolved murders that neither was ever linked to whose evidence raises the possibility of a third active serial killer in the area during the same time period.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/see-bees/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">see-bees</a></p>Viewer, Beware....
<p>National parks are not all swings and roundabouts. Over 1600 people have gone inside Yellowstone National Park and never come out.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/I_Am_A_Master-Baiter/" target="_blank">I_Am_A_Master-Baiter</a></p><p>Yellowstone is known for boiling water and pools of acid. People on this earth put gorrilla glue in their hair. I don't have any questions about what happened.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MCqStep/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">MCqStep</a></p>Statistically....
<p>If you end up being the victim of a violent crime, you probably know the perpetrators. You probably trust them, most likely, you love them.</p><p><span data-verified="redactor" data-redactor-tag="span"></span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Double-Kicks/" target="_blank">Double-Kicks</a></p><p>People find it weird when the police declare most family members and close friends of murder victims to be suspects, but this is precisely why. You are FAR more likely to be (deliberately) killed by someone you know than a stranger. Also, in most countries and demographics, the most likely person to deliberately kill you is you.</p><p><span data-verified="redactor" data-redactor-tag="span"></span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/kutuup1989/" target="_blank">kutuup1989</a></p>Our Brains Are Unsettling, Too
<p>There is a rare genetic degenerative brain disorder called Fatal Familial Insomnia. FFI starts as a mild inability to sleep followed by short bouts of intense nightmares/dreams and progressively deteriorates until the sufferer is completely unable to sleep, at all. Eventually impacting the human ability to microsleep as a last ditch effort of self preservation. There is no cure for FFI and eventually sufferers lose their minds and die of sleep deprivation. But it gets so much worse.</p><p>Due to the degenerative nature of the condition as it progresses you begin deteriorating mentally and physically. You lose the ability to regulate body temperature and may swing between freezing and sweating, you develop severe memory problems, confusion, agitation, weight loss, paranoia, hallucinations, speech problems, double vision, loss of motor controls (similar to parkinsons), inability to swallow, increased blood pressure and production of tears as well as many other unpleasant symptoms. The combination of your mind going and your body shutting down eventually kills you.</p>Rise Of The Machines
<p>There so far at least two fatalities as a result of robots, both of industrial type.</p><p>The first was in Flat Rock, Michigan in 1979 when an engineer was killed when he was hit in the back and crushed while retrieving parts at an automobile factory. It was due to a malfunctioning industrial robot he was fixing. The second was in Akashi, Hyōgo, Japan where a maintenance worker was fixing a broken-down robot when it came to life by mistake. Both locations happened in factories that are well-known for manufacturing vehicles.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MissSara101/" target="_blank">MissSara101</a></p>So Can We Fix The Justice System Now
<p>One to five percent of the US prison population is estimated to be innocent.</p><p>Combine that with the fact that one percent of the US population is incarcerated and your chance of being wrongly imprisoned in the 21st century is around 1 in 1000 in America.</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Crocoshark/" target="_blank">Crocoshark</a></p>People Who Thoroughly Read The Terms And Conditions Share The Strangest Things They've Found
Let's be honest, most of us don't read the Terms and Conditions before we click that little "I Agree" button. Most of you probably aren't even going to read this intro.
A huge chunk of you are going to open this article and immediately scroll to "the meat" because we're all about getting to the good stuff. But that rush can sometimes mean missing out on some seriously important tidbits of info.