We are what we say we're doing

My friend Adam writes that #226 on the list might be the stress of crafting a witty retort for the comments field on a blog.

I would argue that this worry actually goes much higher up on the list. In the modern age, we put ourselves under much much more pressure to show off with our Facebook status, Twitter twits, blog barbss, or pity responses in email reply alls.

Scrolling down friends' status on Facebook, for example, you can see the landscape in one sweeping glance. It's a daily (or hourly) game of one-upmanship. We pause to draft the best latest status to catch eyes and then edit it just so to earn a smile.

 

Let's call it stagus — our bragging status.