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Flaunting Your Own Goodness
I have seen many people do this, both in real life and on the internet, and I can't begin to describe how much it annoys me. Don't fucking scour for opportunities to ramble about your supposed good deeds, with no context whatsoever other than advertising yourself as the next Mother Theresa. People don't like it, and will think that you are either making that up in order to look good or are just a self-righteous little prick. Seriously, don't do it. Celebrities are especially egregious when it comes to this - there ain't a single charity that they would be part of without a dozen cameras and the press recording all of it.
We have a saying that goes "Do good, but silently." It is there for a reason - if you want to do good, do it, but out of sincere conviction and good faith, not to please your own vanity.
Comments
Yeah, self-righteousness is seriously annoying.
I hate this too. Would never do it. I mean, I'm generally a nice person, I help people all the time, but you don't see me bragging about it. I like to style myself more as the silent saviour, and when I think about it, it actually suprises me how modest I am.
Too predictabo. Anyhow, celebrities gets attached to charities precisely for advertisement reasons: the cameras all being there is kinda the point.
Milos,
We have a saying that goes "Do good, but silently." It is there for a reason - if you want to do good, do it, but out of sincere conviction and good faith, not to please your own vanity.
I definitely agree with that idea and most of what you said in your post. Still, even if celebrities can be vain sometimes when they talk about charities, I cannot totally blame them for bringing a bunch of attention to a good cause.
Often though, the cause is either misleading (anything that involves buying products to "support" it; bonus points if it's environmental as then it becomes ironic) or outright unethical (KONY 2012, anyone?)
I can't stop reading the thread title as "Flaunting Your Own Goddess".
THat was the first thing I read it as, too.
Abyss_Worm,
You may be right. Still, I guess my point was that it is possible for someone to publicize charities/good deeds in an appropriate way. To the extent that people look to athletes, singers, actors/actresses as role models (rightly or wrongly) I think they may be in a better position to encourage people to do good stuff.
Granted, whether they use that position of influence correctly is another question, and I definitely share your cynicism about that.
I can imagine Hindus actually doing this.
More generally, it's hard to stand up in favour of self-righteousness when it's so generally regarded as a bad thing. However, I agree with Don Zabu that people being flat-out pricks is probably more of a problem, especially on the internet. Self-publicizing celebs are easier to ignore.
Beats flaunting your own edginess and irreverence, at least, like "Yeah, I'm an asshole, and I don't care what you think, come at me, bro!" (I forgot how to quote)
Hey, at least then you have an excuse to punch their throats.
Well unless it's on the internet.
I wonder how people would act if "trying to be edgy" was outlawed, with the punishment being a fine or a minor prison sentence.
Sort of thread hop: A dangerous corollary to all this is when people think someone is being self-righteous when they're not. My poor despised high school girlfriend...in addition to finding her ugly and stupid, everyone thought she was flaunting her goodness too. She never was, she was basically incapable of it...she was just a massive idealist with a huge amount of energy who could never resist telling the world about all the good she was trying to do because it made her happy and sharing it made her happy, not because she was looking for recognition or praise or anything.
She wasn't socially adept enough to realize that when discussing the environment, you do NOT proudly remind your jaded and cynical senior classmates that both your family cars are Priuses. It was terrible. I could feel the hatred coming off of people and I just wanted to shout "They're basically poor! They're some of the nicest, humblest people I know! They bought the second Prius in a hurry after their 15+ year old Geo died suddenly because it was something they knew they liked!"
Actually, as resident car guy, I get particularly annoyed at the Prius generalization. Which is rampant on the internet. When people aren't calling it "gay", they're insisting that all Prius drivers are self-righteous well-off liberals who just want to be seen driving something green to look good for whoever falls for such things. As widely true as that might be, fuck generalizations. Seriously.
^ Poor kid.
^^ If "trying to be edgy" were outlawed, the court system would be overwhelmed by 15 year olds who'd respond to being told they were guilty with "Yeah, but that's just like your opinion."