Jennifer Horgan: We put up our defences and present ourselves as nothing less than perfect

What I’m noticing is this: sometimes, people are not just chatting; they are selling themselves to you. They are no longer connecting; they are advertising, promoting — and that creates a kind of competition that usually leaves one person (me, in this case) feeling worse than before. It’s like I’ve lost a contest I didn’t even know I’d entered.

Listen out for it next time you’re socialising — how some people present curated impressions of themselves in their chat. Trust me, there are walking, talking, three-dimensional humans, chatting in pubs and shops right now, but the content of their chat is identical to their Instagram feed. It’s a performance, a fantasy — designed to elevate themselves above the dross of reality, and yes, the dross of you — the listener.

It’s not even a ‘soft’ sell any more. There is no effort whatsoever to camouflage the self-promotion. It’s hard, unapologetic, and exhausting.

I met a man at an event recently who, within 10 minutes, had made me very aware of a recent conundrum he faced. The poor soul had been forced to choose between two highly prestigious and lucrative jobs.

Another person, a few hours before, had managed to assure me within minutes that he came from a very wealthy family indeed, and that he was finding considerable fame and recognition in another country.

One of them, in an impressively executed slight, humbled himself to ask me a question. Ten years ago, his choice of question would have cut my ego in half.

Self-promotion

That said, I don’t think either was out to hurt or offend me. Not at all. Their entire focus was grounded in self-promotion. I may as well have been a cardboard cut-out.

I’ve noticed also how adept I’ve become at handling these LinkedIn profile feeds in human form. I’m far from proud of my survival tactics because, if anything, they perpetuate the problem.

Depending on my mood, I sometimes opt for over-praise. It’s a way to calm the performing person down a bit. I mean, I drown them in the stuff, commenting on how awe-inspiring their achievements are to the world at large. I provide the verbal equivalent of a celebrating emoji — all bells and whistles and party hats.

It doesn’t stop them, far from it. In fact, they’ll often talk over my praise to continue in their own flow of self-adoration. My praise is superfluous it seems — an interruption.

The whole thing is yucky. It feels dirty to feed the beast rather than starve it. And of course, a part of me feels bad for the next poor shmuck pinned by them at the next event.

I’ve also tried a counterattack by shoehorning in some achievement I would usually keep to myself. It never works. It’s recognised straightaway as a counterattack. Their boasts get bigger and again, I walk away as the loser, often feeling even crappier than before for having engaged in their not-so-subtle ego war.

And yes, call it hyperbolic, but ‘war’ is appropriate here. Fragile egos are terribly dangerous — another column for another day.

The question is this: have people always been so self-promoting? Has the world always been so plagued with insufferable boasting or is it, at least partly, a modern phenomenon?

I’m old enough to remember the chat before social media, and egotists, or deeply insecure people, have always existed. That said, I believe people’s eagerness to sell themselves is partly tied to a fear of the online world. We observe how quickly someone can be crucified for making a single mistake in a conversation. So, we have developed a reflex action — you know, to sound as good as possible, as quickly as possible, thereby avoiding similar ridicule.

Put simply — we’re paranoid.

Social media has made us hyper-aware of the impressions we make on people. Elon Musk tells us traditional news is dead because we all get to tell it, create it, share it on multiple platforms, and, sadly, we do. One false move and we could be taken down online, spied upon, laughed at, or even cancelled. So, we put up our defences in how we present ourselves — as nothing less than perfect.

Is the art of unself-conscious conversation dead?

So… Is the art of genuinely private, unself-conscious conversation dead? Has online communication killed it?

Two hundred years ago in Cork, news was hard to come by. It was old by the time it got to us. People would travel from Berehaven over two days to reach Cork by horse and cart, stopping in Bantry on the way. 

A few days later, they’d return home with the Cork Weekly Examiner. The paper would be read aloud to a gathering by the old pump near Murphy’s shop. That was it, and then the everyday chat would start up again.

Nowadays, news is as immediate as it is relentless.

Who hasn’t viewed Simon Harris’s catastrophically poor interaction with disability worker Charlotte Fallon by now? The political world has been this way for some time. Simon Harris’s disaster recalls another brief yet explosive conversation, or the aftermath of one.

‘Bigotgate,’ almost forgotten, was coined when, in his 2010 pre-election campaign, Gordon Brown forgot to remove his microphone having ended a conversation with Gillian Duffy. His ‘bigot’ comment uttered from inside a car torpedoed his own campaign. Will Simon Harris’s gaffe prove as harmful to the Fine Gael campaign, one offering a ‘new energy’?

We will see. And to a degree, it’s fair game. Simon Harris is a politician, a man in the public eye, who invited cameras to follow him in his interactions.

Most people are not Simon Harris. Can’t we afford to chill out a bit in our chats? But watching the impact of his gaffe, within the endless storm of immediate and intense news coverage, possibly has an impact on us nonetheless. 

It makes us all more insecure, and sadly, more prone to an aggressive, attacking self-promotion. Beyond these public put-downs, we’re also spending more time online, where people’s lives are curated, made perfect by filters. The language of the online world is possibly seeping into our offline interactions, making boasts sound reasonable.

Well, for anyone who cares, if we ever do get to chat, please, no matter how great your achievement, don’t sell yourself to me because I am not buying. I’m a fan of chat that is what it should be — simple chat. You don’t need to talk about yourself in the most glowing terms. 

I don’t mind a gaffe. I’m not voting for you. I’ll forgive it. My relationship with social media is timid at best.

In my world at least, chats are meant to be about connecting with other humans in a physical place and time. They should be more of an exchange than a transaction, and nobody should feel smaller walking away.

I enjoy a pina colada and walks in the rain. I also enjoy self-deprecation, sincerity, vulnerability, dark humour, debate, silliness, and connection. Of course, I want to know you, and how you spend your time but please, don’t feel you have to present a perfect package with strings and bows and flourishes.

The picture you paint of yourself need not be perfect — honestly, honesty is good enough.