ducks
why are we so self-deprecating?
Stanford Duck Syndrome is a concept I was fixated on when I first came into college. The term was originally coined on the idea that, like a duck, on the surface Stanford students look calm and collected, but below the water they are furiously paddling to stay afloat. In general, the idea applies to people who try really hard, but when prompted, shrug the grinding off or mask the work they've completed, swirling into a strange melange of pain and humility that ends up being neither of those things. Someone has probably described this sort of disease to you before, or maybe the people you associate yourself with are caricatures of this phenomenon: friends who arduously trudge through their p-sets and research projects while putting on a visage of effortlessness. The kinds of people going out until 4 am then waking up at 8 am to keep doing more work, and making it seem like it’s all okay.
The usage of this term has almost completely phased out as I've transitioned from university, but I think the core principle of humility behind the idea continues to universally apply. When it comes to the presentation of self, there's a strange utility to compressing ourselves into a tiny dot, to hiding behind an aegis of words designed to knock us down a few pegs. I've been thinking a lot about the questions that spring forth from this. What makes us hide? Why are we humility addicts? And why are we so incredibly self-deprecating?
Let's be honest, deprecation is no longer a mannerism that people spontaneously interject to seem quirky. It's almost a necessary precaution we engage in so that you don't get immediately exploded by the armada of words and critics that awaits you around every corner. Lots of 'relatable' writers, creators, influencers, etcetera, do exactly this: dousing themselves in an enveloping film of reflexivity. Whenever there's dialogue that can come off as remotely braggadocious or slightly ego-inflating, deprecation and self-awareness is an impenetrable shield — external assaults will slide and bounce right off.
The prevalent usage of deprecation is evident upon examining the fragments of language we commonly splice into conversation: creators proclaiming It's just an experiment!, your artsy friend saying Nah, I'm really not a painter or whatever it's just for fun, or most commonly, when tearing into our own thoughts and creations, Lmao yeah I know it's cringe/stupid/trash, I’m just rambling. Anything to delegitimize ourselves in an act of safety, protection against judgmental eyes riding our razor-thin edge. At any moment someone may latch onto your shortcomings or misconstrue something for boastfulness. However, I think the nuances of deprecation go a bit further than this.
I feel part of the rationale is that if you lower the expectations of the work, then the work itself is often pleasantly surprising to the audience. For example, mentioning you've only been doing [ACTIVITY] for a few months, to soften everyone's hardened interpretations. Wow, this person isn't even a [TYPE OF PERSON WHO DOES ACTIVITY], but they're so good!! We leverage what we can to be a source of security, ensuring that a negative light never sweeps over us. Adjusting the idea of our work to the audience smooths the rough edges that inevitably surface.
Or perhaps the issue of deprecation stems not from the people, but from the vat we use to dump and dispose our words and work into. After all, the vast digital sea can be awfully unforgiving at times if you're trying to be something and you're just not yet good enough at doing that something or respected enough to be saying that something. There's a backlog of files I keep on my laptop that I probably would post somewhere if I was bolder, but I have a prodding voice in my mind that keeps reiterating, This new stuff will undoubtedly get you torn apart. You can’t say shit like that online. Being too open in your thoughts or taking pride in work can be misunderstood — they’re just more liabilities against your own humility. Especially when online presences start to intertwine and you hold simultaneous identities that encompass work, social life, esoteric interests, saying things that are too inflammatory or out of character from even a single persona is a narrow tightrope to walk.
There's also another component to this puzzle: deprecation makes us feel like a unique individual, painting us as a person who has overcome the struggle of being Bad and is now suddenly Really Good.
From Has Self-Awareness Gone Too Far in Fiction:
"You want to feel special — which is fair, who doesn't — but you won't allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you're especially bad."
Deprecation is the conduit through which we artificially induce negativity into the narrative of our roles, equipping us with the tools to make it okay to feel proud of what we have done. In an odd circular way, it's like we have earned the luxury of our accomplishment and satisfaction. By engaging in a separate moral struggle, the things that arrive to us, even if we have struggled to obtain or craft them ourselves, are given an extra shadow of legitimacy which welcomes the triumph back into our arms.
As if it was never ours to begin with?
There's (obviously) a lot of things that factor into why we self-deprecate. Maybe it's about becoming more impressive by adjusting the expectations of your outputs, maybe it's protection against the internet which can critique anything at any time, or maybe it's just that deprecation supports our individualistic inclinations and keeps us morally stable as we ride the schizo merry-go-round of life. I’m probably scratching the surface here. As with everything when you drill deep enough, it's likely a murky grey fog of all of these and more that funnels together and determines how we act.
I will say though, many of the most interesting stories seem to have a bit of negativity doled out to underscore tasks of achievement. A spoonful of insecurity or an admission to a shortcoming helps the world swallow who we are: the savant painter struggling with alcoholism, the famous performer who has anxiety attacks. But for some reason, this type of foil has breached the masses, cascading down into more commonplace adoption. When omnipresent mobs have a gnawing desire to strike every single person right to their naked core, the intravenous injection of doubt and self-degradation is the most foolproof way for us to pass the humility drug tests growing in frequency.
"The insecurity is instrumental, a servant to the wish-fulfillment. It helps the fantasy go down."
We are terrified of legitimacy. We do not want to assume all the compounded strains that come with standing our ground and speaking for ourselves. I'm guilty of this too when I talk about product design work or writing or anything I've ever created. Combing through the files and bits of creations I've made over the years, I make sure to line the documents up to execute them, piercing holes with the lethal commentary of .50 caliber words. Yeah it's no big deal/It's kind of garbage/I have too much time on my hands lol. Everything must be qualified.
I'd argue we lose much more by attacking the self than we gain from the moral safety of performing the attack. We cowardly hide behind the protection of cascading deprecation. We walk up to the checkpoint, hand in our papers for review, and by some divine social arbitration we receive the stamp of unspoken approval without directly proclaiming anything ourselves: Why yes, you're an artist, Yes, you're smart, Yes, you're talented, and above all else, Yes, you're humble too!
We may not sense it yet, but there’s an unseen price we pay to drown our words until they are dragged back up, dripping, limp and lifeless — but much more humble.