Humblebrag or Love Note? Internet Weighs In On Law Student's Viral Post
Which is a more important life achievement: graduating from an Ivy League law school or meeting the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? For one University of Pennsylvania law student, it's definitely the latter. The legal-world blog Above the Law recently published a mushy Facebook post from a Penn law student to her boyfriend, in which she says that finding him was more important than being the first person in the family to go to college or landing her dream job.
The post, titled "YOU ARE THE BEST THING EVER HAPPENED TO ME" (yes, there seems to be a missing word there) continues with a list of the love-struck lawyer's life accomplishments, including getting a college scholarship and "winning 2nd place at national moot court competition," and then her insistence that her man trumps all of them.
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Above the Law editor Elie Mystal called the note "a humblebrag," a term popularized by "Parks and Recreation" writer and producer Harris Wittels that refers to a boast or self-adulation disguised as a humble comment, usually in social media. The humblebrag has become such a widespread phenomenon that Wittels's Twitter account – dedicated solely to retweeting humblebrags, including those by celebrities like "Entourage" star Jerry Ferrara and radio host Cody Alan, eventually reached 258,000 followers. (Though the Twitter feed is no longer active, the hashtag remains popular.) He even published a satirical book on the topic, "Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty," in 2012.
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One commenter on the Above the Law post, who claims to go to school with the boyfriend, says that the couple is "annoying" offline. Another, who claims to know the woman who wrote the Facebook message, was upset that a friend submitted the private Facebook note to the blog in the first place.
However, not everyone agreed with Mystal's characterization of the love note as sappy. The woman's boyfriend responded to her post with "Babe, this is the nicest thing anyone has EVER said to me. I respect the strong woman you are and can't wait to spend my life with you."
And even among Above the Law's own editorial staff, there was some polite disagreement. "I actually thought this was cute," the blog's managing editor David Lat posted on Facebook.
The couple behind this blog post have not been publicly identified. But it's pretty likely that from now on, they'll be writing their love letters with old-fashioned pen and paper.
