Lebron vs Dictionary: What does #humble even mean?

By Kevbrochill 

Do kids these days know what the word “humble” means??? 

Yes, I used the term “kids these days,” but as a now officially late-20s guy (I’m 28), I think I have the right to use the term “kids these days.” It was probably close to ten years ago where I started noticing that athletes use the word humble in a way that is essentially the exact opposite of what the word humble means. Now, I’m not saying that everyone needs to take a class from the legendary Coach Arnold, but it kinda started to piss me off because I think that in some of these athletes’ heads, they are actually being humble in the way they use the word.

Let’s first take a quick look at an example of what I am talking about…. 

I don’t want to rip this random kid who is the first tweet that came up when I searched “humbled” on twitter so I’ve left out the name and handle. Anyone on social media has seen quite a few of these types of tweets. It has become so common that I am sure many of you believe that this is actually a correct use of humble.

Webster’s dictionary defines humble as “not proud or not arrogant” and “having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance” and “to lower (someone) in dignity or importance”. When you announce to the world (read: Internet) without anyone asking that you have been offered a scholarship to play a sport at a school, this is by no means a show of being not proud or lowering your own importance. 

In fact, the main purpose of this post is too brag about how good you are at a sport and show off your importance to everyone. Especially considering that every single one of these posts is followed by retweets that are then retweeted by the original tweeter in an effort to make sure as many people as possible see how important you are. I believe that this type of tweet is a true epidemic.

The biggest issue I have with it is that everyone now wants to be part of the self-promotion party leading to something even worse….kids “committing” to a D3 school. There is nothing that makes me cringe more than seeing someone “commit” to a D3 school. The reason that commit is in quotations is that there is literally no such thing as committing in D3. I am humbled to inform you all that yours truly was once a D3 athlete, and I can say without any doubt that as a D3 athlete, you are no different from a regular student at the school. This would be like any old regular student having a press conference or tweet to announce that he is going to East Carolina to be a frat legend (shout out P-shiz). But, as my Nicaraguan boss Jelly likes to say, I digress.

This epidemic knows no bounds. I have been picking on these high school athletes as they are an easy target but the misuse of the word humble is everywhere…. 

I’ll be sure not to miss next year’s Jazz Congress! 

 As you can see, the humble movement is not restricted to sports or kids but I still maintain that it is the most annoying in sports.

And look, I don’t blame the kids. Afterall, they’ve had to look up to Lebron their whole childhood. Yes, this concept and whole intro was just a long way to get to what I really love to do…make fun of how whack Lebron is (Read: he is whack; not saying he isn’t good at basketball or a decent person/father…he’s just so corny and whack that it must be talked about).

No one can compete with the king when it comes to being humbled by talking about how great he is. I will give him that…he is the goat of saying he is humble while bragging about what he’s done. 

As a side note, I think the king has some trouble with keeping consistent within his posts overall. For example, he is famous for saying he has no words and then following that up with a long post filled with many words.  

Apparently he does have words…I’m just surprised he didn’t say how humbled he was to have scored so many points.

Let’s take a look at just how humbled our friend the king has been over the years. 

So humbled that everyone follows me. Very humble of the king. 

Is he humble because he credits himself with bringing joy to an entire city??? Definitely showing just how low an opinion of himself that he has.

This one might take the cake…retweeting an article calling him one of the world’s great leaders and that is making him humble? Right.

All of this is to say, please kids, when you receive a scholarship offer or receive any other accolade, please just say look I got a scholarship offer…don’t pretend that posting about it has anything to do with being humble…it’s okay to self-promote sometimes. Or potentially, you could not post anything but I don’t think that’s happening. 

Thanks to the millions of readers out there. I am just trying to change lives out here. I am humbled to have the opportunity to write this top quality and possibly award-winning  world changing blog post.