I know that I said this at the time because it’s something that I have often said, and often felt. In a world where every party is a Facebook party—meaning that it comes with expectations about the public advertising and dispersal of essentially private acts—the idea of self-promotion starts to operate with the pernicious force of routine. But, over the years, I have worked to understand and see that routinization as a side effect of what life in a hyperconnected world looks like, and not as a worthy or desirable end in itself. The point is not to work toward self-promotion but to discover ways to live within a system that favors self-promotional tendencies while still carving out a space for what feels genuine and real. This is what I was trying to communicate to my colleague who, apparently, took personal offense at what I was saying.