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Original poster

When people boast, I want to downboast

67 replies

brasty · 26/09/2017 18:51

When you meet someone who really boasts a lot, I always want to go the other way,

For example, we are so proud of Lily, she is only four but can count up to a hundred in Russian and can write her name in 10 different languages.

I really really want to say something like - We are so proud of Chloe, she is only 4 but has finally stopped trying to peel and eat the wallpaper in her bedroom.

Is this a British trait to feel like this? I am guessing Americans don't feel like this? I probably ABU as I think I connect it to the idea of showing off.

OP posts:
ErrolTheDragon · 27/09/2017 08:26

So long as you don't go full 'Four Yorkshiremen'Grin

Witchitywoo · 27/09/2017 08:35

I just say 'mine are alive and breathing unaided. That's good enough for me!' That tends to shut down most beastly boasters!!

Singap0reSling · 27/09/2017 08:35

I have a friend who is Lily's parent. "Did you know, Lily's reading Dostoyevsky?!!!!"

My response: "how nice for Lily".

Maybe if I showed more enthusiasm they would stop boasting?

Or maybe they're not "boasting", just extremely proud? Either way, it makes me feel bad because I'm not enthusiastic / impressed enough for the parent. And also because I naturally do not go around extolling my children's talents and virtues.

Adviceplease360 · 27/09/2017 08:39

I am exactly the same op! I do it to make a point tbh, that I will not be competing in who's kid is the best at everything competition

PointingandStaring · 27/09/2017 10:12

So long as you don't go full 'Four Yorkshiremen

Hadn't heard of that so I Googled. I then got sucked into a monty python vortex for an hour and a half! Brilliant Grin

coddiwomple · 27/09/2017 10:37

Perfectly reasonable, I do it all the time with boring people who barely know us but feel the need to boast - when truly, one way or another I could not care less if Lily eats or read war and peace as long as she stays away from my own books.

It's even more funny when the boasters then find out on their own that one of the kids is doing brilliantly in some competition or other.

You can tell when people are just proud, or they think they are being clever.

guilty100 · 27/09/2017 10:39

This thread has made me realise that I have a disproportionate amount of close friends who downboast. Self-deprecation is so much more witty and clever.

guilty100 · 27/09/2017 10:41

Ooops, posted too soon - meant to say, I would like to aspire to comical downboasting, but I generally just freeze when someone starts self-praising, into a kind of rictus grin of embarrassment which I fear is mistaken for interest/admiration. I know someone who can literally boast for an hour non-stop as a result.

thecatsthecats · 27/09/2017 10:49

I have this thing where I would tell you all my friends are lovely/gorgeous etc, but I have this one friend who a) boasts about her own looks and b) is openly bitchy and cruel about other people's (to their faces).

Now putting b) aside (I only really added it so the next bit doesn't make me seem so bad), as soon as she starts with a), I always think, 'well, actually, you are highly ordinary looking, and you have massive nostrils'. I never say it out loud, which I feel like I should, because that is exactly the kind of thing she'd say about other people. Wish I could avoid seeing her, but we get together as a group, and I'd miss out on the friends who aren't twats if I did.

Sequence · 27/09/2017 10:49

I don't mind hearing from someone who is really pleased for their DC for some recent achievement. Likewise if they mention their DC has spent the weekend playing rugby for England, translating their latest book into another language or reciting poetry while playing the bagpipes upside down, I just think that's nice, hope they enjoyed it. It doesn't mean they are trying to turn it into a competition, they are just chatting about their weekend, so I wouldn't automatically try to make them feel silly by making a snippy underboast. Deliberately trying to put people down and "take them down a peg or two" isn't kind, and I think some people are a little too quick to do so. On the other hand, I have occasionally met extreme boasters who always counter anything positive you say by changing the subject onto themselves and how they had done better. Another aspect to this is whether men would feel the need to minimise any perceived success in a similar way?

fakenamefornow · 27/09/2017 10:49

I'm a bit the opposite.

My friends were talking about somebody else's child who had just been accepted to do medicine at Cambridge and how the parent shouldn't really show off about it. I replied that if one of my children was doing medicine at Cambridge everybody I'd ever met in my entire life would know about it. :)

Pithivier · 27/09/2017 10:53

I worked selling luxury apartments. There were 15 apartments and they were situated just outside of a really high class area and were priced well above the surrounding area. People would come up in their big cars, fancy clothes and jewellery and sneer at everything. Then they would criticise everything in the apartment and compare it unfavourably to their own home. Everything was 'so small' 'not good enough' . Each apartment had a massive sitting room, so when they started on about there own wonderful home, I would say,

"Oh how lovely. I can fit the whole of my Council House into just this room". Stoped them dead

guilty100 · 27/09/2017 10:54

"making a snippy underboast."

That's not an underboast to me, though. That's some weird passive-aggressive reverse thing. Underboasting should be funny and genuinely self-deprecating, pretty much by definition - it's not a comment on someone.

I know what you mean by snippiness, though. I had a drink with a colleague recently and every time I or one of my friends said something critical (we were talking about politics, poverty, pretty heavy stuff - it was at an event on housing) she replied with a positive, "bright" view of it. It was so obviously a snippy correction of any viewpoint that simply acknowledged problems or suffering, it was super-annoying.

guilty100 · 27/09/2017 10:55

pithivier - HA! That made me laugh! Star

MyBrilliantDisguise · 27/09/2017 10:55

Did anyone read Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet (think it was that - last read it years ago)? He talks about how in the Chinese culture you can't accept compliments (in a kind of Mrs Doyle way), not even for your children, so that if a woman says your daughter looks nice you end up saying she looks really ugly but that HER daughter is like the Mona Lisa. Very, very funny (but sad) scenes.

LaContessaDiPlump · 27/09/2017 11:02

I'm not sure what downboasting is, but I am driven by the desire to counter with a really shit boast every time someone else does a big one; i.e. "Lily's on Dostoyevsky" vs "DS1 wrote WEE the other day!" I can't top them, but can massively undercut them for laughs Grin I don't do this for modest claims or to people I actually like though. Just braggarts.

permatiredmum · 27/09/2017 11:07

I like Mrs Brown's 'That's nice' and change subject

Zaphodsotherhead · 27/09/2017 11:10

See, I do the 'inward cringe'.
I am moderately well-known in my field and moderately good at what I do. But sometimes people who don't know me come up and tell me allllll about how they've just done something I've been doing for ages and have been openly praised for, like they are the first people to discover it. I'm always super-positive about their achievement, and give them my card and tell them to get in touch if they need my particular expertise. And then cringe, because, if they google me they will see that they have been quietly patronising me, and I feel bad about that!

Gromance02 · 27/09/2017 11:11

People that boast are just insecure so I just feel sorry for them. Especially when it comes to money. You just know that someone mustn't have had much money when they were young so feel the need to show off if they've made a bit of money when they've got older.

strongasmeringue · 27/09/2017 11:13

Could be because when one does say something about their children that praises them they are sneered at, criticised, etc.

I am proud of something my dc did but you'd think I was trying to take credit for it with some responses Hmm. Genetics only do so much.

SandSnakeOfDorne · 27/09/2017 11:14

I live in a country where people just state facts about stuff and sometimes it sounds like boasting and sometimes like bizarre underboasting, but they just don't see it like that. I find it very tricky to get the tone right in any conversation about DC. People will say 'how was parents evening?' and give you an unblemished account of theirs. I just sheepishly say stuff like 'oh, better than the last one.' Being British is a bit of a hindrance sometimes.

ravenmum · 27/09/2017 11:16

Yes, it is very British to boast about how modest you are.

ShotsFired · 27/09/2017 11:20

@brasty For example, we are so proud of Lily, she is only four but can count up to a hundred in Russian and can write her name in 10 different languages.

There has to be a way to combine a sympathetic head tilt with a sadface and a downbeat "oh.." to stuff like this, with not one word as to WHY you feel so sorry for them at this revelation of utter inadequacy.

SandSnakeOfDorne · 27/09/2017 11:20

Haha, was that to me? Not really. DS is very clever but not very well behaved, so an unblemished account would be more mixed than boasty. I think Brits have more of a problem with directness than excessive modesty.

Kipi · 27/09/2017 11:23

we are so proud of Lily, she is only four but can count up to a hundred in Russian and can write her name in 10 different languages.

I’d follow that up with either ‘aww, never mind - I’m^^ sure she’ll catch up with the other kids eventually, they always even out in the end’

Or a simple Thats nice... in the style of Mrs Brown.

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