Some personal news? Announcement culture has gone too far (but this is my final column, farewell)

Oh no, a girl from my high school has taken to Facebook with the three most powerful words in the English language: Some Personal News. After three long years, countless ups and downs, so many laughs (and even more tears!), she and her husband can finally announce … they’re doing a renovation.

Based on the 89 comments – all of which are some variation on OMG! Congrats guys! – this is an important update and I should probably throw them a like or a house emoji, perhaps? Thankfully, I can stay up to date with the renovation on their specially designed Instagram page, which promises “daily updates from our wild ride!”

Unfortunately, there is no time to digest how I feel about this news because a guy I met briefly in an airport lounge two years ago wants me to know he has started a wellness podcast (and I must watch this space). Oh, and my cousin is beginning a new chapter at a consultancy firm. And did I mention that a friend of a friend, who I forgot to unfollow, has just picked up their new dog? An adorable cavoodle introduced to the world in the only way that seems appropriate: Some. Pawsonal. News!

Welcome to the exhausting world of announcement culture, where, on any given day, on every corner of the internet – from Facebook to Instagram, X to LinkedIn – someone, somewhere, is announcing something.

First coined by British fitness influencer Grace Beverley in her 2021 book Working Hard, Hardly Working, the term announcement culture refers to “our ever-growing need to announce everything we’re doing, therefore perpetuating our anxiety of having ‘things’ to announce in the first place”.

In many ways, announcement culture is an offshoot of hustle culture, a trend that gained momentum in the early 2000s, boosted by the entrepreneurial boom in Silicon Valley. The success of high-profile startups such as Facebook, Google and Netflix, which each championed the always-on narrative, created a generation obsessed with rising and grinding.

Then came the explosion of social media, and with it the realisation that being a self-starter was meaningless if you weren’t also a shameless self-promoter. What’s the point of rising and grinding if you don’t post about it?

According to research by Refinery 29, between 2020 and 2021, Twitter registered a 59 per cent rise in mentions of “some personal news”, and as with all social media trends, what began as an earnest way to update people about your accomplishments soon became a punchline.

All of a sudden, there was too much personal news, and the internet’s cynical sense of humour took over, using the term to announce non-achievements (Some Personal News: I sneezed) or celebrate jobs they didn’t have (Some Personal News: I’m the new pope!).

Somewhere along the way, a backlash to the backlash emerged. Once again, we find our timelines flooded with self-serving announcements, forced to celebrate one another’s milestones (no matter how trivial), while pretending we’re not in constant competition with each other.

Ultimately, no one is to blame for this situation, not even the girl from my school who is excited about her renovation. In an age where we must regularly reassess our Hopes and Dreams to ensure they remain realistic, you need to take the wins where you can get them. Sadly, the byproduct of our collective desire for public validation is that, in private, everyone else ends up feeling a little worse off.

So what does one do when you find yourself with Some Personal News that you’d genuinely like to share? Announce it in a newspaper, obviously. After four years, 120 odd columns, hopefully some laughs (yours) and definitely some tears (mine), I am leaving The Sydney Morning Herald, and by extension, this weekly column.

At first, being invited to join the stable of regular columnists at this masthead was very exciting, if not a little intimidating. Each week, the opinion section provides a critical space for critical thought, with my esteemed colleagues sharing expert perspectives on various issues of public interest.

Might there be space in this arena for someone who’d like to discuss why hot chocolate isn’t suitable for adults? What to do when you find yourself on the same bathroom schedule as a colleague? The power of crying in public (and the joys of falling asleep on public transport!). Or why the family WhatsApp thread remains the strangest place on the internet?

If I’ve learnt anything in four years, it’s that fear of missing deadlines is a powerful motivator, and so I just filed in the hope that the column would connect. As it turns out, we’re all just as weird as one another, and it’s been a career highlight to cover an array of absurd topics and watch them find an audience.

Thank you to everyone who has ever read, shared, commented or emailed. Especially that guy who contacted me most weeks, quite rightly asking why my face featured on every single column. A fair question.

Please keep supporting the journalism that fills these pages, but for now, that’s just about enough personal news from me.

Find more of the author’s work here. Or email thomasmitchell55@gmail.com or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.