Like my status.
Then, watch my YouTube video.
Check out my photography blog.
Read my article.
And above all, like my status. Just like it, it won’t hurt you. Make me feel popular, come on, make me feel funny and appreciated for my witty commentary that is most likely a run-on sentence about how loud people are, how much every building smells and how I want nothing more than taco Tuesday to be taco every day.
Since the dawn of time, we as humans and, more specifically, as the rising generation primed and ready to take on the world’s problems (no pressure), have adopted a habit named Self-Promotion. Some people do it more graciously than others. Some people do it more than others. Some people do it so much that I wonder if they are even that talented at all; far be it from me to actually watch their YouTube video or look at their photography blog and judge for myself. Nah, I think I’ll stick to just judging from the outside.
So this Self-Promotion fellow. He’s kind of annoying, overgrown and likes to blush a lot because he fancies himself humble. He reminds me of that guy nobody likes but can’t quite figure out why. It’s not like he’s malicious or does something so heinous like cut in front of you in line for tacos (is it Tuesday yet?), but still.
It’s something so delicately obsequious and nearly profane, but not quite bad enough for anyone to call us out on it because this is a passion of yours, mine or ours. This is something we want to be recognized for, even if we have to crawl on the floor of Twitter to do so. Lord knows I’ve posted links to my own articles many a time, always with the knowledge that what I am doing should guarantee that I never have any friends because everyone will judge me for my self-obsessed, ranting articles that never seem to go anywhere. Except to get more guacamole, the chunky kind.
Herein is where I find my point: We may hate self-promotion, even if we do it sometimes, but it seems as if there is both a gracious and a non-gracious way to go about this dreadful ordeal. There can either be the guacamole with onion pieces as big as my head and jalapeño up the yin yang or there can be guacamole with just the right ratio of onion to jalapeño to avocado. But in the end, just know I will judge you, no matter how gracious you are.
My advice is this: Keep self-promoting yourself, if it makes you happy. By all means though, be careful of the onions — they can make you cry with their pungent odor. And spare me any jalapeño overdose — I would prefer to not sustain a numb mouth and deadened heart. If announcing your greatness as a person gets you more friends, fulfills your dream of being a YouTube superstar and guarantees that someone other than your mom reads your articles (love you, Mama Nam!), then by all means storm the gates of social media heaven with your stab at gracious pride in, well, yourself. You are proud of yourself. Go ahead, applaud yourself. It’s not exactly cool, but we will forgive you for it. After all, we do it too.
Ayo waves.
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Follow Taylor Nam on Twitter: @nam_nam330
