I once worked at an advertising agency that had a huge mural in its reception that declared “Fail Harder”. I’d walk past those words on the way to my desk in the basement and wonder what they meant exactly. Judging by the constant stream of awards the agency was winning, it wasn’t failing as a business and I knew, as a very middling member of staff, that if I failed I’d most likely be fired.

Right now we can’t move for people boasting about what failures they were before becoming totally successful. The popular podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day “celebrates the things that haven’t gone right”, except it only celebrates those things with exceptionally high achievers: Booker prize-nominated author David Nicholls is a failed actor; Dolly Alderton failed to get into Bristol University – now she’s published a bestselling book; Bafta-winning writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge once failed a Downton Abbey audition.

It’s successful people asserting their normality whil​e telling you h​​ow brilliant they are. It’s humblebragging

While it makes for an enjoyable listen and there’s some comfort in knowing that no one races to the top without tripping a few times, successful people bragging about their failures – on podcasts or elsewhere – isn’t very helpful.

I don’t know what we’re meant to do with the motivational words: “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success,” when they’re uttered by Ellen DeGeneres, a world famous comedian, TV host and much else, who is said to be worth $400m. I guess we should be inspired to learn that Richard Branson dropped out of school at 16 – only to build his world-conquering Virgin business empire.

Exam results season is peak time for public figures pronouncing on their glorious failures. Last week the pop star Olly Murs tweeted his GCSE results, hoping his list of Ds (and a rogue E in science) would make 16-year-olds the land over feel better about their own flunks. Would Murs have been so proud to share if he hadn’t been later blessed by the X Factor wand? Obviously no one wants a celebrity to portray themselves as flawless, with zero cellulite and only five-star reviews, but let’s get real about what trumpeting these failures is really about: it’s a self-deprecating way to talk about achievements; it’s successful people asserting their normality while telling you how brilliant they are. It’s humblebragging.

We’ve always loved tales of setback, and rags-to-riches stories. When JK Rowling described herself as once being “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless”, we warmed to her even more. But we’re not really warming to failure itself. That is still not OK. True failure, the kind where you can’t just pick yourself back up and win an Oscar isn’t palatable. And that’s the flaw in the current celebration of failure – where is the room for discussion about failure in real time? You know, the humiliating kind that you haven’t yet reinvented with a positive spin.

On the TED website you can find a talk titled Don’t Fail Fast – Fail Mindfully, which essentially celebrates the success of a collective called Fuckup Nights. The presenter, and co-founder of Fuckup Nights, Leticia Gasca says, “too often, [people] bury their stories out of shame or humiliation – and miss out on a valuable opportunity for growth”.

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But none of these stories truly removes the shame surrounding the failure experienced by normal people (not famous, not bestselling, not rich). As a friend told me, “it makes me even more scared of failure in a way, because of the success that’s expected afterwards”.

Sometimes failure is just failure and it can’t be turned into a neat, uplifting tale. Given that failure is so much part of the current zeitgeist, I hope we learn that it is part of life, not necessarily the road to success.

Closing your business, being made redundant, bankruptcy and divorce are all still stigmatised. What if you can’t turn them around to a film premiere, a book deal or a magazine cover? Then my friend, you’ve failed at failing and you probably need to #failbetter.

• Alex Holder writes about brands and feminism