Sean Penn & Myself

Myself is a pet peeve of mine. I’ve written about it before, on my oft-neglected blog Needless Words.

Myself is not literally a needless word. It has uses, needs, purposes. But most of the time people say “myself”, they’re wrong. 

Here’s a meme that sums up whey people say myself when they should say either me or I:

I’d started to forget about how much I hate the misuse of “myself” until I saw this dumb tweet by Sean Penn:

Myself & two colleagues walked miles to the Polish border after abandoning our car on the side of the road. Almost all the cars in this photo carry women & children only, most without any sign of luggage, and a car their only possession of value. pic.twitter.com/XSwCDgYVSH

— Sean Penn (@SeanPenn) February 28, 2022

Now, I don’t care about Sean Penn. He’s not important to me. But this tweet reminded me of his existence, and I suspect he’s someone who thinks of himself as a smart guy.

Sean said myself when he should’ve said I, confirming that Sean Penn isn’t as smart as he thinks he is—and that, like a lot of people who say myself when they shouldn’t, he’s afraid of looking dumb. 

Anyway, we should all use Sean Penn as an example of how not to use the first person singular.