Such Good News

“Some personal news.” It’s a phrase that most users of social media will be familiar with as a precursor to a positive announcement about someone’s work or life—anything from a promotion to a pregnancy. The use of the phrase on Twitter has rapidly increased over the past decade, and is now even a meme. “Some exciting personal news: I have had enough,” one tweet announces, capturing all of our feelings on the subject.

We encounter such declarations from people we barely know more frequently in the digital age. It’s no coincidence that the word “humblebrag” was coined around the same time as Facebook and Twitter took over our lives. The purpose of posting personal revelations on social media, it seems, is mostly to fulfill a craving for praise and congratulations; if the motive was simply to spread joy, we’d only tell our nearest and dearest.