What's it (un)acceptable to boast about?

obviously it's fine to boast abt yr grebt erudition!

boasting abt sex is stupid and usually conjures up 'protest too much' thoughts in me. it's not something you can rank or quantify...

Boasting of the "wow, this is so great, everybody be happy for me/with me" type is almost never going to annoy me. (Unless I think they don't deserve it, in which case I get jealous, which is a different story.)

Boasting of the type of "I rock, therefore I am so much BETTER than you!" really gets on my tits, especially if combined with an attitude of "Everyone else who has NOT accomplished my heights is lazy or stupid or otherwise worthless and needs to shut up and stop raining on my parade" MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH PEOPLE.

Vindication boasting, however, I'm more likely to forgive and tolerate. (Unless I think the vindication crow is done in the direction of someone who is not deserving of the abuse.)

Sexual boasting, I generally just roll my eyes and ignore. Because sexual boasting is about making the boaster feel better about themselves (Yes, I'm guilty of this myself) rather than trying to impress anyone else.

The person doing the boasting may not even be aware they're boasting - they're just having a normal conversation about their lives, which is interpreted by someone as boasting.

There's also a huge cultural cross-pond divide on this. The English, as would be expected, are far more uptight about boasting. One of the complaints from my grandparents when we moved to the US was that we "boasted", when we were just crowing about our accademic achievements in a way that was just totally de rigeur in our American prep schools.

i'm AMAZING at boasting.

of course -- but then the rich don't boast becasue in their minds the way things are is entirely natural. they don't need to boast because it's incredibly obvious what they are.

Is there a difference between bragging and boasting? ANyone? Bueller?

hmm

I don't think you can lay down specific guidelines for what sorts of things are alright to boast about and which aren't, not in the least because 'boasting' is such a context and receiver-specific term.

I think I need a kitten.

Kitten, not chicken.

On that thread Mark suggested it was boasting in the same way as posting about my score on I think pinball (or was it Minesweeper?). In fact, these games are indeed things I feel inclined to boast about, directly because they are such lame things to be really good at. In the same way, as I've said to a few people (inclusing Suzy and others last weekend), I really like namedropping names that 95% of people haven't heard of.

Ah well, fortunately things improved for me today and I don't feel so bad and this bothers me less than it probably seems from the above.

Another important aspect is if the person seems genuinely happy for themselves at what they've achieved or received. In almost all cases, I would then be very happy for that person (with maybe a little tinge of jealousy). If, though, they seemed blase and the purpose of their telling seemed to be only to impress to me, I would probably resent them, plus not be happy for them, and probably not be at all jealous (well, maybe a little).

As for boasting, that sounds like a something you should do at boarding school, to keep an even level with your friends, who are already boasting themselves.