Ruminations on showing off

Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies

So, who among you has never been a show-off? Be careful now because this is a trick question. If your answer is no, we will need to send you straight to the Pinocchio corner. Admit it, you probably do. Often.

A Gentle Reminder (That I’m Brilliant)

Me? I show off constantly. At the bare minimum, once a week, right here on this blog. Realistically, it’s more like a daily performance. I type things to parade the vocabulary I’ve hoarded, to nudge you into noticing that I’m clever. Not just clever, cleverer. Than you. Than most. It’s a reminder. To you, and also to myself. (Mostly to myself.)

Oh, and before I forget, I’ve got a PhD. It involved solving differential equations. Thought I’d just drop that in, no reason.

The Glamorous Gutter: Where Status Goes to Die

But the important thing isn’t that we show off, it’s how.

There’s a spectrum. On one end, you’ve got the glittery bottom-feeders: flashing handbags, driving flashy cars, posting first-class boarding passes on Facebook. These are the ones who believe their worth is tied to logos and square metres. It’s not just vulgar, it’s sad. Desperate. It’s a cry for attention disguised as a lifestyle.

The Revvers: Sub-Vulgar and Proud

And then, beneath even the vulgar, there’s the sub-vulgar, a kind of evolutionary dead end in the taxonomy of showing off. Below the handbag flashers and the dinner-party name droppers, we find the bottom of the bottom-feeders of the show-off ecosystem: the revvers.

 Johannesburg is crawling with them. Men (always men) who modify their car exhausts to mimic gunfire and thunder, believing the volume of their rev equals the size of their… importance.

They rev outside restaurants and petrol stations, engines howling, desperate to be noticed. This isn’t status. It’s a cry for help in V8. And yet, they rev. Because they still believe attention is the same thing as admiration. It isn’t. But try explaining that to someone whose entire identity lives in his exhaust pipe.

I Show Off Differently (Obviously)

I don’t show off like that.

No, my currency is sharper, subtler. I show off with ideas. A casual drop of an obscure reference. With sharp turns of phrase. With surgical metaphors and perfectly timed rhetorical flourishes. I show off by trying my best to be intellectually intimidating and slightly inaccessible.

A Whisper of Doubt in a Very Loud Mind

But sometimes, late at night, or mid-blog-post, a little voice wriggles in. A doubt. A small, quiet question, wearing sensible shoes and no makeup: Am I really as clever as I think I am?

If I were truly brilliant, stable genius brilliant, wouldn’t I be too busy reshaping the world to bother writing smug little essays about how clever I am? Wouldn’t I be out there winning the Nobel Peace Prize, not just winning it, redefining it, making peace so great, so unprecedented, they’d have to give me two? Making peace great again.

The Ones Who Don’t Need to Show Off (Unfortunately)

The really clever ones? They don’t blog. They don’t post. They certainly don’t say “look at me.” They’re building something vast and quiet and inaccessible, and if they notice you, they might offer a smile. Or they might not. Because they don’t need you.

They don’t need your applause. They don’t even need your awareness. And that, more than the handbags, more than the revs, more than all the carefully curated cleverness in the world, is what truly terrifies me.

The Secret Shame of the Show-Off

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth I keep circling like a vulture over my own ego.
What if showing off isn’t power? What if it’s a weakness, performing for a half-interested crowd?

What if every act of showing off is really just a symptom of insecurity? A performance staged to distract from the gnawing suspicion that without all the clever turns of phrase, or the PhD, or the irony, or the metaphor, or the blog… I might not be enough.

The real power move, perhaps, is silence. The real flex is doing something exceptional and telling no one. Not because you’re modest, that’s its own performance, but because you genuinely don’t care if anyone notices. Because you know.

Do I show off because I still need something from you? Recognition? Agreement? That small flash of admiration in your eyes when you realise, yes, he really is that clever.

Is it pathetic or is it vulnerable?

And maybe that’s the cleverest thing I can admit today.

So yes, I show off. Not because I’ve arrived, but because I still want to be seen arriving. Maybe it’s weakness. Maybe it’s just theatre. But at least I try to make the performance interesting. The truly brilliant can stay silent. I’ll be down here, exposed, and clapping for myself if I must.

Until next time, proudly clever, slightly unsure, and always performing.

Bruce