99% of the news & stories they share is related to money
Ah, December. The season of peace, goodwill, and getting a glossy, high-bound marketing brochure from people you haven’t spoken to since the Obama administration. It’s the time of year when a very specific subset of the population emerges to do what they do best: use the holidays as an excuse to speak their native tongue.
Because let’s be completely honest—these individuals don’t actually communicate to connect, share warmth, or check in on you. They are people who communicate exclusively by bragging.
You open an envelope expecting a simple “Merry Christmas,” and out falls a double-sided, multi-photo manifesto. It’s not a holiday card; it’s an annual shareholder report for the family ego. It is a desperate, ongoing popularity contest by people who never quite outgrew the psychological warfare of high school, and your mailbox is just collateral damage.
The Dialect of the Achievement Obsession
When your entire communication style is rooted in bragging, normal human moments are entirely filtered out. You’ll never read a line like, “Little Atticus finally stopped biting the drywall, and we are so grateful.” No, the dialect requires every update to boil down to two things: Wealth or Notoriety.
If Atticus or Sloane isn’t securing a venture capital seed round, making the junior varsity equestrian team, or getting a nod from a local politician, it doesn’t make the cut. These people don’t share good news out of a sense of humility or genuine gratitude; they treat their relatives like thoroughbred racehorses. They don’t just want you to know their kid is doing well; they need you to know their kid is beating your kid.
And if it’s not their own kids? They will gleefully pivot to a grandkid, a cousin, or a distant acquaintance they met once at a charity gala. “We were just so thrilled to attend our dear friend’s yacht christening!” It’s secondhand clout-chasing—a frantic attempt to rub elbows with success because they are terrified that if they aren’t adjacent to money, they are invisible.
The Travel Variant: High-Altitude Humility
Then we have the digital, multi-channel version of this communication style: the Holiday Travel Bragger. This is the crowd that treats group texts, social media, and Christmas letters like a luxury travel catalog.
The Golden Rule of the Bragger: If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to see you drink a $28 cocktail in front of a Santorini sunset, did you even actually vacation?
Because they only know how to communicate through the lens of one-upmanship, they are physically incapable of sharing regular, everyday happiness. You will never see a photo of them doing the dishes, stuck in traffic, or eating a normal sandwich in their kitchen. They only exist in a state of high-end consumption. It’s an endless parade of infinity pools, Michelin-starred tasting menus, and activities so far outside the realm of normal daily life that they look less like humans and more like AI-generated lifestyle influencers.
It exposes a massive, glaring inferiority complex. They are so starved for external validation that they cannot experience joy unless it is witnessed, quantified, and envied by a captive audience. It’s bad taste masquerading as “blessings.”
Translation Guide: Bragging vs. Normal Communication
To really understand the sheer delusion of people who communicate by bragging, let’s look at how they translate normal, well-adjusted human experiences into their preferred language of insufferable flexes.
| The Scenario | The Normal Human Response | The Bragging Communication Style |
| Child’s Accomplishment | “Atticus really got into drawing this year, his finger paintings are taking over the fridge!” | “Atticus (9) was fast-tracked into an elite, invitation-only STEM collective and received a personal commendation from the Swiss Consul.” |
| Vacation Updates | “We took a road trip to the lake last July. Rained two days, but the kids loved the arcade.” | “Reconnected with our inner harmony during an exclusive, off-grid eco-safari. The local shamans legally declared Sloane an honorary deity.” |
| Career & Finance | “Work is busy, looking forward to some time off over the holidays.” | “Bradford’s boutique hedge fund experienced unparalleled synergy this Q4, allowing us to acquire our third ‘decompression property’ in Aspen.” |
| Daily Gratitude | “Just glad everyone is healthy and we get to spend time together.” | “We are just so humbled by our immense abundance and our undeniable genetic superiority. Blessed!” |
The Verdict: Save the Postage
Let’s clear one thing up: nobody is jealous of your second cousin’s acceptance into a prestigious preschool. Nobody is envious of the fact that you ate truffles in Tuscany while looking like you were posing for a pharmaceutical ad.
We aren’t jealous; we’re just exhausted.
True happiness doesn’t require a press release, and real relationships aren’t maintained via a marketing campaign. True gratitude is quiet, it’s messy, and it’s lived in the mundane moments of daily life. If your entire identity relies on printing a glossy, four-color reminder that you have money and your circle is overachieving, you aren’t winning at life—you’re just shouting into the void, begging for a gold star from a middle school teacher who forgot your name thirty years ago.
This year, if you’re one of those people who only communicate by bragging, save the postage. We already know you’re insecure.