Really? You Write About Yourself in the Third Person?
I thought it was pompous but it turns out it’s good for your mental health
Brace yourselves, I’m now about to do what a grumpy Finn does best: make enemies and alienate people, so buckle up buttercups because here we go.
After years of biting my tongue and keeping schtum about this subject, I can hold back no more (tell a lie, I’ve never been schtum about this, it’s just the first time I’m writing about it). My gripe — and this really cracks my cranium — is people who write about themselves in the third person.
They are the absolute worst. The worst, I tell you. Anyone who commissions their imaginary friend as their publicist to write their bios and personal histories should be locked up for the safety of the public, not shouting about it on LinkedIn.
Writing about yourself in the third person is pompous and has an appropriately pompous name to go with it: Illeism. It’s a rhetorical technique loved by politicians in an attempt to give their opinions an air of objectivity. It doesn’t. Don’t do it.
There are only three types of people who should be allowed to speak of themselves in the third person:
- Toddlers
- Parents of toddlers to their toddlers
