Taking credit for someone else’s accomplishments is a tale as old
as time. But you do it much more often than you realize and for some of the silliest reasons.
[Intro music]
Three people in my life
have recently found an abundance of success and I couldn’t help but feel happy for them.
Only I wasn’t feeling happy for them. I was feeling happy for myself – because I knew them,
in one way or another – and I feel like I’ve shared in their success.
First up, Tessa Violet… also known as meekakitty.
Sup
I liked meekakitty before she was cool.
Sup
She’s had a successful youtube channel since the beginning of… time. And she’s been making
music for who knows how long. But she recently released an EP named Halloway which flew up
the charts – it’s epic by the way, go get it. I didn’t help her work on it, quite frankly I
wasn’t even aware that she was working on it… but she released it and I can’t help but feel
that I’m somehow partially responsible for it. I paid for my copy of it… I’ve tweeted at her a few
times and she’s actually replied… and I’ve watched a few hundred of her videos so I’ve helped her out
with a few cents here and there. Aside from that I’ve had pretty minimal impact on her success.
So why do I feel this? Because we all do it. It’s called
BIRGing or Basking in Reflected Glory. Some else is successful, and you know them or you’re part
of their fanbase, and you do nothing to actively help in their success… but you still feel part of
it. It may sound ridiculous, but how many of you wear the same shirt as eleven guys on TV and yell
“we did it!” every time THEY score a touchdown? When it comes to celebrities – even minor YouTube
ones – there’s another effect that makes us like them even more… the halo effect.
[Awesome music]
It’s when we automatically see famous and attractive people as smart
and morally good. [Angelic choir sings] So we want to associate ourselves with them as
close as we can – even going so far as to have claimed to have helped them in their successes.
But let’s get a little more down to Earth. A lot of you know that I’m friends with the guy
who runs the drama channel SnaggleTeef. [Music] Turn down for what.
We trade tips and tricks every now and then to help each other get better at what we do.
Sometimes we do it though even when we know the other person is already going to do it.
This is called overhelping – and it’s a strategy used in BIRGing. You overhelp when you know
the person is already going to succeed and you just want to steal a little bit of the credit.
It’s important to remember that BIRGing, the halo effect, and overhelping aren’t usually
conscious – you don’t knowingly do them to steal success or credit. Although now that I’ve said it
and you’re aware of it... Sorry to ruin your fun. Anyway, Snaggle was recently streaming when
another youtuber named Chubbs came in – who then called down the thunder
and Snaggle was forced to reap the whirlwind. And the minute I tune in, I got this ****er that
I’ve never seen before, sittin here going on about how I’m not famous. He’s like “Keemstar OMG”. So I
just, I’m here to let you know that I am super famous. I’m the most famous person on YouTube.
Within seconds he had hundreds of people in his stream and he had gone up nearly
a hundred subscribers. He’s continued to grow at a rapid pace and he’s getting the
opportunity to interview a lot of big names in his genre. He’s made me a mod to help out.
That’s right, I’m a mod… because I know a guy who talked to a famous guy once. {Mod
life is not the life, stay in school kids!} This is a form of BIRGing that everyone takes
part in. Success by association. Maybe you don’t have a successful friend but you are
the great great grand nephew of Thomas Edison. Or your second cousin is the sound editor for
Beyonce. The closer the person is to you the more self-worth you get out of that reflected glory.
Think you’re above all of this BIRG nonsense? Have you ever seen or used
a bumper sticker like this? Yeah, thought so. Recently my best friend DonnyTheNuts bought a
house. And for some reason, every single one of you quietly in your mind just said “wow,
good for him.” Stop, [Hammer time] he’s my friend. My reflected glory. You can’t have any.
Anyway, over the past few months I am completely guilty of overhelping – he would ask me questions
he already knew the answers to, or asked for opinions that he had already decided on,
all in an effort to make me feel more part of his success. When I’m totally
not. In fact, I haven’t even seen it. But we share that reflected glory in
our friendship – recently he bragged that “I know a YouTuber”… saying that out loud kinda
makes it seem sarcastic… Anyway, that’s also BIRGing and it’s something friends naturally
do in order to enhance their own self-concepts. And now to the ugly opposite with an even uglier
name. CORFing. Or cutting off reflected failure. For the past several months people have been
quite proud to support a candidate and bask in his reflected glory. But as past and current
statements have come out that cast him in a more negative light, people are slowly starting to
withdraw their support and take down their lawn signs. They are cutting off reflected failure.
People like this might even deny that they ever supported the person in the first place.
This is often amplified by the halo effect for celebrities because they’re supposed to
be held to a higher standard, like when people burn their jerseys when they find out that they
used performance enhancing drugs. This can also happen on the small scale too though,
like when you’re cut out of family photos. [Sad piano] They ask you how you are and
you just have to say that you’re fine. But BIRGing and CORFing are just ways
that we enhance our self-worth and forge our self-identity. Can you really stop it? No. Can
you be more aware of it? Probably. Especially when someone is doing it to you. So the next
time you put on a team’s jersey or you offer help to someone who totally doesn’t need it…
or you have a friend who wants to tag along to your after-party, maybe now you’ll know better.
Hey guys, if you enjoyed that video or you learned something, make sure to give that like button a
click. If you’d like to see more from me, I put out new videos every weekend, so go ahead and
BIRG on that subscribe button. Also make sure to join the conversation on Reddit and look me
up on Facebook and Twitter. But in the meantime if you’d like to watch one of my older videos,
how about this one?
[Outro music]