Photo illustration by Breanna Denney

There are two types of people in this world: those who do things for personal gain and those who do things for commendation from others. While it is natural to seek out peer approval from time to time, there is a fine line between casually mentioning your mission trip to Africa and shoving it in others’ faces until they believe you are the reincarnation of Mother Theresa.

This annoying phenomenon has manifested itself in the art of humblebragging.  The widely acclaimed language resource urbandictionary.com defines a humblebrag as the act of “subtly letting others know about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or ‘woe is me’ gloss.”

We see it all the time: in our classrooms, homes and, most commonly, social media. When a person tweets about “how hard” it is to run in a marathon, we all know that is simply code for, “Look, I’m running in a goddamn marathon and the world needs to compliment me for it!”

Outside of being obnoxious, humblebragging detracts from other people’s perceptions of you. If you constantly need affirmation and praise for the things you do, people will start to question your motives for making good choices to begin with, so stop doing it. Unfortunately, most people hardly even realize they’re humblebragging. For that reason, I’ve compiled a list of some common humblebrags you should avoid at all costs.

The gym humblebrag

After all the mini Snickers and shots of Fireball from Halloween weekend, you’re probably ready to hit the gym. If you’re like a number of humblebraggers throughout the world, you probably thought, “But the calories won’t burn unless I post it to my Snapchat story!” That is usually the point at which the humblebragger snaps a quick selfie with a whiney caption about how much they’re “struggling” at the gym, just to prove they were there at all. Believe it or not, your body will still respond to the workout, even if your friends don’t know you’re there. You may not get as many compliments about your self-discipline, but you’ll probably get a few more reps in.

The all-nighter humblebrag

Most college students have pulled an all-nighter to study for a test, but that has never stopped humblebraggers from showing off how much harder they’re studying than everyone else. It seems that after midnight, Instagram becomes a breeding ground for pictures of frowning faces and textbooks that scream for attention.

Instead of actually using the time to study, a humblebragger will go to great lengths to capture the perfect image that tells the world that they’re doing their homework, and because they have to pull an all-nighter, they’re working much harder than you. That way, when they’re fishing for compliments about their work ethic the following day, they can use their Instagram photo as proof. That’s when you should hit them with the witty retort, “Maybe you would have gotten some sleep if you spent more time reading your textbooks instead of posing with them.” You can thank me for that one later.

The community service humblebrag

There is nothing worse than a person who seeks praise for doing a good deed. To a humblebragger, however, a good deed is the perfect opportunity for attention. They will most likely lead a conversation by complaining about how sore they are in hopes that you’ll ask them why. If you are naive enough to take the bait, the humblebragger will go all in on how hard the community service was. They’ll recount the harrowing task of picking up trash in a park or the dangerous neighborhood where they cleaned graffiti; essentially, they will make themselves sound like Jesus Christ himself. Instead of indulging the humblebragger, beat them at their own game.

Try to one-up them until they have nothing else to complain about. If they went to 4th Street, then you went to Compton; if they scrubbed floors, then tell them you scrubbed dirt; if they saved a life, then you defused a bomb in a preschool. Prove to them that whining does not make you seem any more impressive.

It’s OK to talk about your accomplishments. In fact, you should share the things you’re proud of, but complaining about them in hopes of a compliment is not the way to do it. People will be fonder of you if they believe you’re confident and don’t constantly need praise. Besides, in the time it takes you to humblebrag, you could actually be putting more time into the things that really matter.

Daniel Coffey studies journalism. He can be reached at dcoffey@unr.edu and on Twitter @TheSagebrush.