Maintaining a Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and blog was proving itself to be overload. Something had to go and since my Twitter has been the most neglected of the 4, I decided to scrap it. In all honesty, I felt a bit narcissistic providing constant status updates. Jessica is watching a movie; Jessica is eating an orange; Jessica is picking out toe junk. I guess one could argue my blog is no different. Who wants to hear about my ever-so-eventful trip to Timbuktu? Where is Timbuktu anyways? I need to Wiki this STAT.
I thoroughly enjoyed this editorial by Rachel Gaynes. I'm not sure how to properly cite her work, but know that I am not taking credit for it, though I wish I could...it being such a well-worded article.
Facebook takes narcissism to new level
Generation I is my term for the slightly self-absorbed generation at the forefront of the social media movement. Each member has an arsenal of social media tools, Facebook being the most prevalent. Not surprisingly, a study published in September 2008 by researchers at the University of Georgia found Facebook could be used as a means of gauging narcissism. In the first analysis of its kind, researchers observed that the quantity of friends and wall posts people amassed on their profiles was indicative of how narcissistic they were in daily life.
Facebook provides a rather accurate method of ego estimation because this quantity-over-quality online attitude mimics real-life behavior in which narcissists concern themselves only with how things appear to others. I am by no means condemning every one of Facebook’s 175 million users as raging egomaniacs, but the whole concept really is a transparent spectacle of self-promotion.
Facebook permits any narcissist with Internet access to assemble an army of pseudo friends, employ the help of a thesaurus in writing contemplative wall posts and upload only photos in which the subject’s nose looks almost proportionate. By controlling every aspect of one’s profile, a user can create a compelling identity similar to the one that person implements in reality, but better.
When I created my own Facebook profile, I justified it by saying it was a means of staying informed about the lives of my friends as we chased our dreams and the miles between us multiplied. Then I discovered the “info” section. Later, as I was doing the final spell check on my alphabetical lists of interests, favorite music and must-reads, it was pretty useless denying, even to myself, that Facebook is designed more as an outlet to showcase every detail of one’s life than to stay in touch with friends.
It’s this kind of blatant egocentricity, popular among members of Generation I, that has enabled Facebook to flourish. In preparation for writing this article, I spent an evening appraising my friends’ Facebooks. After a few hours of procrastination barely disguised as research, I concluded egotism isn’t just for the egotist anymore. Mark Leary, a psychologist at Duke University, told ABC News that social media such as Facebook promote narcissistic behavior, even in an unpretentious person. It seems everyone has an inner narcissist who is responsible for the Facebook status.
The status is uncontested as my favorite component of Facebook. Not only does it bestow upon users the far-too-rare opportunity to speak in third person; it allows them to habitually update their friends on the most inane details of their lives. For example, “Rachel Gaynes is writing her editorial,” or “Rachel Gaynes is making a marshmallow sandwich,” or “Rachel Gaynes is hung over and still writing her editorial.”
This isn’t, however, merely the work of the inner narcissist. The Facebook status is the result of a significant shift in thinking within Generation I. The concept of being social has adapted, now requiring that a person be eternally connected and no longer differentiate between personal and public information. Young people have accepted that sharing private information about themselves is simply a part of having friends. The advice your mother provided long ago finally makes sense: Sharing is caring.
Facebook is the embodiment of an online world in which users share secrets as if they were shaking hands. It is a strain of narcissm, but it’s far more evolved than that. We are witnessing the initiation of a modern custom of absolute exposure, a side effect of the information age. I can only imagine the ways in which this candor will continue to grow.
2 comments:
Great post! That article was really informative, I especially enjoyed the whole "Generation I" bit! I more or less gave up on my myspace for the same reasons you gave up on Twitter. Too much to keep up with!
Everybody just wants to be heard, as though to be heard is to exist. If this is narcissism, then even Jesus himself is guilty-
Even if a 'pseudo' friend doesn't do more than glance at your name, or your profile picture, the act in of itself has allowed yourself to be expressed. And if they do more and read about you, your voice has just been heard.
And is not yourself who you perceive the entity which you know as yourself to be? In life, no clock will stop, for you to put on the best self you've always known yourself to be. But in facebook, you can truly express that person whom you know yourself to be, with all the time that boring lectures allows you.
Narcissism, they call it - are muttered by those who cannot see a better self than what others will only allow them to be. In facebook, they see others who can, and in their hellish state of self-pity on a high horse, they dare to take away that last piece of our humanity - our thoughts, pure from our minds and onto the web - perhaps to be heard.
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