Are you a Showboat?

We live in a time where privacy is often not as valued as it used to be. In earlier times it was easier seen as pretty cool to be mysterious and private. Nowadays, many have bought in to the idea that the cooler thing to do is to constantly tell the world who you are by showing off your identity, successes and uniqueness. And as more times goes by, more and more privacy continues to be exchanged for more publicity, fans and followers. But even if this happens to be you (or someone you know) at some point you have to stop and ask, “Are you a Showboat?”

What’s a Showboat?

There was this guy I once came across on Facebook, a friend of a friend. You could have logged in anytime and were sure to see “a particular type of post” from him. The posts were very visual and usually showed something like the following. You would see a pic of a happy couple posing while facing the camera with a caption that said, “Me and my boo”. On another day you would see the couple wearing matching clothes and sunglasses while lying on a tropical beach. The caption this time would read, “3 years strong. Inseparable!”. Sometimes you would have seen them simply showing off only their toes or fingers as though it were just romantic or artistic. And of course there were many other scenarios.

When being a Showboat becomes a problem

About 8 months later something strange happened whenever I logged in to Facebook. I realized I would no longer see pictures of the overly cheery couple. Wanting to confirm that the dude was still alive, I checked his Facebook feed and noticed he hadn’t posted anything for several weeks. I reached out to him and asked if he was okay. He responded that all was well and good.

Two weeks later I met up with my friend who was also the guy’s friend. And ironically the guy coincidentally showed up at the same time. Three of us collectively met and immediately my friend began teasing the guy. “What’s up, man? Where’s your girl? Did Facebook take her back?” The guy showed a sort of half-baked smile then responded, “Man, that’s a long story. Don’t wanna talk about it.” Then we moved on to talk about other things.

Consequences of Showboating

Using the above as an example, there are many consequences to showboating that people do not consider. They showoff all of the good things happening in lives, thinking that life will always be good. No matter who you are life will constantly be filled with ups and downs. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to show people that you’re happy. But a lot of people show off too much of their happiness, especially when in love, till it just becomes sheer annoyance.

Showboating can cause you to become more delusional, less empathetic and more or less very full of yourself. It’s like for some people a consistent deluge of positive emotions puts them on Cloud 9. And while on that happy cloud you cannot reach them on any normal level. Suddenly if you’re never feeling as good as they do at any given point you may be blamed for either doing something wrong or being too negative; you will be blamed primarily by them of course.

And the only way for them to return to reality is to wait till the bliss of their love (or whatever it is that’s keeping them on that high) wears off or disappears. Most times whatever they love that much will slap them off the cloud at some point. Afterwards they will fall back down to earth and remain very low for a while.

So are you a Showboat?

If people are honest with themselves they will accept that a part of them may sometimes feel like showing off something good to someone. It’s just the way humans like to connect and stay in touch with others. This is all good. But while doing so, always remember to ask yourself a few questions.

Is my showboating affecting anyone? Is it okay if I don’t care if it does? Aren’t I allowed to be happy no matter what? If you answered yes to all of the above questions then you indeed may be a Showboat. And this is okay as long as you also accept that it should also be fine for people to ask you random questions in return. Why did you suddenly move away from posting about love and happiness and now seem to be obsessed with talking about beards, cars and making money? Why, huh? Maybe if you spent less time showing off your girl to everyone and more time showing her love and appreciation you would still have many lovely things to post. You think?”

As the saying goes, the show must go on on … even if the jokes and entertainment all happen to all be on you. You can be a showboat or you can focus more on showing the world so many other things that are more important.