I am looking for a commonly used phrase, idiom, or simile that describes people who like to talk (brag?) about their difficulties, especially self inflicted or easily avoidable ones, as if having those difficulties were an indication of achievement or valuable experience.
I think young boys often exhibit similar behavior when they proudly show off their scars, as if getting hurt were a bigger achievement than not getting hurt. The behavior I am interested in is exhibited by adults though.
The word "humblebrag" seems to be in the same ballpark as what I am after, but I think "humblebrag" describes a person who talks about an actual achievement as if it were a problem whereas I'd like to describe someone who talks about an actual problem as if it were an achievement. In a sense, I am looking for the opposite of "humblebrag." (Unfortunately, googling "opposite of humblebrag" didn't turn up anything usable because the results are crowded by people who just want to brag about something and not be humble.)
Thanks!
Best Answer
An activity closely related to this is sometimes called misery poker. This refers to when two (or more) people are comparing how bad they have it, playing their miseries as you would cards in poker – as in the Four Yorkshiremen sketch that Michael quoted, though in general you don't bluff (much) in misery poker, at least not to the extent the Yorkshiremen do.
The term was in common usage at Swarthmore College when I was there (2007–11). It seems at least somewhat spread beyond that: there's a tvtropes article, and you found a WSJ article. But it's not common enough in print to be in Google ngrams, my officemate who's a Brown alum from the same time period hadn't heard of it, and looking through Google I'm seeing primarily Swarthmore-related results. It seems that non-Swatties likely won't have heard the actual term, but its meaning might be sufficiently transparent to use.
There's also a new version of it that I like a lot: "misery Pokémon." I recently saw it referred to in this recent article from one of the campus papers1, but the first instance I could find was in the 2010 orientation play2, which was probably most students' introduction to at least the name of it. (I'm fairly certain I was introduced to the concept of misery poker by the 2007 version of this play, though it didn't contain misery Pokémon.) There's a video of the play on YouTube, with the misery poker component beginning here and the Pokémon part starting at 1:12:20. They also give passing references to "Trivial Pursuit of Happiness," "Torment Yahtzee," "Bitchy Bitchy Hippos," and "Apathy to Apples."
1. Full disclosure: I was once editor-in-chief of that paper, and my cousin is currently managing editor. It's a perfectly legitimate student paper, it just feels weird not mentioning that. :p
2. I was actually in the audience at that play, but I forgot about it until finding a reference to the clip....