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What is a humblebrag? Let Taylor Swift demonstrate.

Taylor Swift, your best friend who’s infinitely rich
Taylor Swift, your best friend who’s infinitely rich
Taylor Swift, your best friend who’s infinitely rich
John Shearer/Getty

No one likes a braggart, but humblebraggers provoke extra scorn, because of their attempts to hide pompous, flaunting behavior behind self-effacing false humility. In other words, humble-bragging is the worst.

Still confused about humblebragging? Let’s turn to the tweets of Taylor Swift, pop princess, high-waisted shorts aficionado, and queen of the humblebrag, for a few prime examples:

Let’s start here. This is a straight-up brag:

Remember the days before Taylor Swift was worth $64 million dollars and part of a normal family? I don’t. This is a humblebrag:

Decisions, decisions:

And there’s this:

Here, she demonstrates how she’s just like you — eating Chinese food and watching Law & Order … with her People’s Choice award:

Here, she acts as if she is surprised that she—the richest and most popular artist of 2014—could have a birthday party that people would attend:

This, though, is the ultimate humblebrag:

Swift is not just like all of us. She is worth an obscene amount of money, famous world-wide, and talented enough to sustain one of the biggest fan-bases in the world. Her Twitter account, with all of its selfies and personal anecdotes, is a humblebrag all its own.

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