30 Things People Are Proud Of But They Could Be Considered A Weird Flex, Shared In This Online Group

If you’re on the internet, you’re probably well aware of what flexing is—it’s bragging, in simple terms. But bragging as a concept and phenomenon is anything but simple. Because people.

And so because people are complex beings, it should come as no surprise that bragging is nuanced. There’s boasting, there’s being proud, there’s humble-bragging, there’s flexing, and then there’s just straight up bragging.

Interestingly enough, not every kind of bragging falls into the same general category of “annoying as all heck” and “avoid it like the plague”, though it’s all essentially on the same continuum depending on the intentions.

On the positive side, for instance, being proud of something is actually a display of self-respect and personal worth. Psychotherapist Richard Joelson pointed out that pride is a feeling of satisfaction in one’s own, or maybe another’s, achievements. It’s a very normal (in fact, inherent) part of what it means to have a healthy level of self-esteem and understanding of what they’re worth as people.

Though being proud can be misinterpreted as bragging, especially if it’s the being proud of oneself part. Or at the very least, it can come off as humble-bragging, which is a form of actual bragging that draws attention to something the person is excessively proud of, though they’re trying to play it down in a fake modesty way.

No, the ultimate goal of pride is, as previously stated, celebrating a thing to keep up healthy self-esteem and boosting confidence and self-worth. But you are now beginning to see how much intentions are at play here.

Flexing, on the other hand, is nearly always done for a number of reasons, all of which essentially boil down to self-promotion. A Harvard study from 2012 that utilized five different brain imaging experiments found out that most people have a very strong urge to share about themselves. So strong, in fact, that the level of sensation that it triggers is instinctually akin to eating food or even partaking in sexual activity.

What is more, participants of the study were even offered money to respond to questions about other people, but many passed on the opportunity and preferred to answer questions about themselves instead.

“Looking at areas of the brain that were activated in their study, the Harvard neuroscientists discovered why 40 percent of what we say relates to telling other people about the things we think or feel: ‘Self-disclosure is extra rewarding.’ Not unlike eating food and having sex,” concluded Susan Newman, Ph.D., on the topic.

There’s also a kind of conditioning whereby social media provide a slew of opportunities for flexing. These inevitably tickle a number of very human reactions, including things like the desire for attention and competition.

What’s more, when you compare bragging on social media as opposed to “in real life”, the paradigm of why we brag stays the same, but the means seems to provide a bigger reward and more motivation to do so in the first place.

“It’s not technology that amplifies bragging in itself—it’s the fact that digital platforms mean your bragging has a potentially global audience,” elaborated digital sociologist Mark Carrigan in an interview with Bored Panda.

“The underlying mechanism is the same in that people enjoy being recognized and celebrated by a group for their capabilities, it’s just on social media that celebration can spread far beyond a group of friends or acquaintances.”