‘Some personal news! Delighted to announce I’ll be joining [insert major company] as the new [insert extremely impressive-sounding, well-paid, prestigious job title] this week! It’s been great working at [insert other major, if slightly less gleaming company] but I’m so [insert word denoting excitement or thrill, including “excited” and “thrilled”] at what the future holds! You can find me at [new prestigious institutional email address].’
It is no exaggeration to say that over the past week, half of my Twitter feed has been composed of alerts that follow this exact script. As the trickle thickened to a deluge, I wondered if there was some secret spoof going on. Were they all in on a new year joke? Sadly, a bit of clicking – not least through the dutiful versions of ‘Well done you absolutely totally deserving superstar’ replies – revealed that these posts were sincere.
And therein lies the rub. They are not, in fact, sincere. Heralding (and one can almost hear the courtly trumpet in the happily employed person’s head sounding) a new job as ‘personal news’ is about as sincere as a marketing manager claiming to be ‘passionate’ about the product they’re promoting. And are such changes in professional status really ‘news’ that merits a public declaration? Perhaps – if the person was announcing that their new job was President of the United States.
In Britain, it should be like getting blood from a stone to get anyone to tell you about their professional successes or breakthroughs
Indeed, it is odd, and rather sad in Blighty of all places, to consider that humankind’s dirty little secret – that each of us think we are the centre of the universe – is now out in the open. The NHS is imploding, China could invade Taiwan at any moment, Putin is still rampaging, fraud in Britain goes virtually unpunished and we are in an inflationary spiral. Getting your own breakfast show or becoming assistant professor or getting poached by this or that website hardly seems to be, in any accurate sense of the word, ‘news’.
And for pity’s sake, this is Britain. A land where you were never supposed to bold-facedly boast – nor to humble-boast for that matter. Where you should rather die than do so. In Britain, it should be like getting blood from a stone to get anyone to tell you about their professional successes or breakthroughs. I found out a close friend had become a QC months after it happened – because his wife, a school friend from an older vintage (mine), eventually let it out with embarrassment. And that’s how it should be.
What made British humour – this isle’s enigmatic, swampy charm and biting wit – famous the world over was the seriousness with which Britons committed to self-deprecation. Doing the self down was the absolute cornerstone of British character and manners, licensing everyone from the poshest lord to the woman on the street to keep their cards close to the chest until their interlocutor had earned enough trust for intimacies. It came with a tacit value system that wanted, among the best sorts, desperately to spare others feelings of inferiority, and that declined to indulge in the crass pleasure of making others jealous – not out of the goodness of their heart, but because it would be beneath them to do so, and embarrassing too. Of course, self-deprecation could sometimes be exposed as false modesty, or even the obnoxious manifestation of a superiority complex. But then it was fair game to despise that person for letting the mask slip.
The sea change in British norms and manners has been stark – as the barrage of job ‘announcements’ makes clear. There is no mask any more. Many, though certainly not all, of these bulletins come from people in their twenties. Back in my day, one’s twenties were very hard indeed, at least professionally. Nobody cared what you thought. Nobody gave you a leg up, or wanted to (unless you had nepotistic assistance, which I unfortunately did not). You spent most of your time being rejected and not knowing if your casual shifts at this or that newspaper would eventually lead to a job or if you’d have to be a temp the rest of your life. The idea of actually being promoted or, God forbid, headhunted quite simply belonged to a different universe. And on the occasions that one’s peers got something more permanent and juicy, tearful blinding envy was the main reaction.
But how lucky we were. Had I been confronted with the wall of ‘personal news’ today’s workers produce and rub each others’ faces in, I’d have been in a permanent state of apoplexy.
Or maybe I wouldn’t. Perhaps if I had evolved in an age in which it was perfectly fine – even expected – to share your dreamiest holiday snaps and other enviable life moments to all and sundry, without so much as a glint of irony, I’d think nothing of my peers being ‘thrilled’ and ‘delighted’ to announce their professional successes.
But still, it’s odd. We live in times of heightened self-awareness. We also face a cost-of-living crisis, a period of hideous uncertainty and dubious graduate prospects, particularly in academia, media and the arts. Why, then, the blind spot when it comes to broadcasting achievements?
It is this, more than any other change, that suggests to me the death of Britain as we knew it. Of course cultures change. And Britain certainly has form when it comes to the helpless importation of American norms, styles and tastes. But this feels the saddest. Not because people are getting such good jobs, or being promoted or poached or whatever. But because they want to tell us all about it – unapologetically.
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