one-upping

To help balance the budget, Mr. Pawlenty would cap federal spending at 18% of gross domestic product, one-upping former Massachusetts Gov.

Pawlenty Stakes Out New Tax Ground Jonathan Weisman 2011

Ah, but one-upping those around you with your ability to brag about how more conscious one is of one's biases and flaws can indeed be pretty obnoxious.

Here is Wisdom, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

With Tuesday's changes, Google is "setting the stage for one-upping" Facebook in terms of being able to better target online ads to website visitors based on what it knows about their interests, said Brian Kennish , a former Google programmer who runs Disconnect Inc., a firm that offers software to block Google and other companies that collect information about Web users.

Google Widens Its Tracks Julia Angwin 2012

To help balance the budget, Mr. Pawlenty would cap federal spending at 18% of gross domestic product, one-upping former Massachusetts Gov.

Pawlenty Stakes Out New Tax Ground Jonathan Weisman 2011

Or a challenge by one side that evokes a one-upping response by another, that then... you get the picture.

Rajan Menon: Iran, the West, and the Lessons of the Great War Rajan Menon 2012

But if art these days is like a teenager -- sarcastic, ungrateful, and existentially conflicted -- staging anti-art stunts as your art no longer makes you radical in what is now a competitive and often vacuous theater of ironic one-upping.

Selby Drummond: Artists Anonymous: The Irresistible Earnestness of the Bruce High Quality Foundation Selby Drummond 2011

But if art these days is like a teenager -- sarcastic, ungrateful, and existentially conflicted -- staging anti-art stunts as your art no longer makes you radical in what is now a competitive and often vacuous theater of ironic one-upping.

Selby Drummond: Artists Anonymous: The Irresistible Earnestness of the Bruce High Quality Foundation Selby Drummond 2011

But if art these days is like a teenager -- sarcastic, ungrateful, and existentially conflicted -- staging anti-art stunts as your art no longer makes you radical in what is now a competitive and often vacuous theater of ironic one-upping.

Selby Drummond: Artists Anonymous: The Irresistible Earnestness of the Bruce High Quality Foundation Selby Drummond 2011

But if art these days is like a teenager -- sarcastic, ungrateful, and existentially conflicted -- staging anti-art stunts as your art no longer makes you radical in what is now a competitive and often vacuous theater of ironic one-upping.

Selby Drummond: Artists Anonymous: The Irresistible Earnestness of the Bruce High Quality Foundation Selby Drummond 2011

Or a challenge by one side that evokes a one-upping response by another, that then... you get the picture.

Rajan Menon: Iran, the West, and the Lessons of the Great War Rajan Menon 2012