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Comment by T_S_ | Hacker News Reader

Why are people always feeling "honored and humbled" these days? I think they must be confused. Just feel honored and get on with your day.

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People aren't. Obnoxious bloggers are. and this guy is particularly bad.

That's the surprising thing -- Patrick's an exceptionally nice guy in person, but his social-media wankery is, for whatever reason, completely insufferable to me. Especially when he's overtly gunning to claim Gruber's pulpit. In that way, he's much like Zed Shaw from the Zed's So Fucking Awesome days: A kind, down-to-earth guy with a strangely abrasive online persona.

Citation: I attended undergrad at Patrick's last employer, and worked indirectly with him in IT Services for a year. He really is fantastic in person.

I didn't mean to pick on Patrick. This "honored/humbled" thing has been going on in our culture for a while now.

According to Google, it's been on the rise since the 40's.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbl...

Pretty interesting graph. It started growing exponentially in the 90's.

I always was thought people were just puffing words when they said that...until one day I had that exact feeling. Trust me, it does exist.

Basically, the feeling is a combination of being built up, and honored, and as a result suddenly having a realization of how little you are.

In this story, a powerful, important person honored someone lower on the totem pole. This person felt honored beyond their deserts -- thus they also felt humbled.

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