I Don’t Care How Much Money You’ve Made on Medium
This story is an open letter to all who write posts with helpful-sounding titles that, once you open the story and start to read, find they contain little more than boasts about how much money they’ve made and how many followers they have on Medium.
Didn’t your parents teach you that it’s not polite to brag? Didn’t they tell you that it’s a sure sign of underlying insecurity and low self-esteem?
But hey, I shouldn’t talk. We all are prone to being a braggart from time to time, not to be confused with a braggot which is a form of mead made with honey and barley malt. Yum. Say you just won the chicken wing and hot dog eating contests at the Sleep ‘N Fuck motel. You’d want to put that shit on Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, QZone, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Medium, and 10,000 others. I know I did…I mean, would.
As I sat down to write this post (actually, I’m standing at my colonial marble kitchen countertop in my 500 sq ft kitchen with a Viking stove, giant farmhouse sink, and a special spigot over the stove for filling pots with water…yeah, it pretty much rocks) I searched for quotes online about bragging. I wanted to see what famous and successful people throughout history had to say about it.
Tell me what you brag about and I’ll tell you what you lack.
Spanish Proverb
Rock on.
He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.
Leonardo da Vinci
Love him.
The feller that brags about how cheap he heats his home always sees the first robin.
Kin Hubbard
I don’t know what that means.
He who is humble is confident and wise. He who brags is insecure and lacking.
Lisa Edmondson
Yes!
If you done it, it ain’t bragging.
Walt Whitman
It’s not bragging if you can back it up.
Muhammad Ali
These two are coupled because they’re almost the same quote. Is this a case of Ali ripping off Walt Whitman? Seems so. Gentlemen, please. Did you go to the same school for braggartry? Let me give you my own quote that will clear the muddied waters.
If you’ve done it and brag about it, it’s called bragging. If you haven’t done it and brag about it, it’s called lying.
John DiFelice
And that goes for you…and you, and you, and you. Cue “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music, which is a musical I wrote. Honestly.
