Social Media Narcissism
Narcissm by definition is “the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.
That’s how I started my talk on Tuesday night at BettaKultcha. In 20 slides,15 seconds each, I set out to prove how every single one of us in the room, including myself were narcissists. While narcissism is said to be a trait that all of us carry in a healthy way, social media has provided tools for us to vent our narcissism more freely and slowly become more and more obsessed with ourselves.
I discussed the ways in which narcissism show through our actions on Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and blogging. The talk covered attention-seeking status updates to obsessing over follower counts to using blog analytics to boost your ego. What started with the intention of a light-hearted laugh must have struck a “cultural nerve”, as I had people squirming in their seats and the ‘convicted’ continued talking about it the next day.
I know that I certainly let some narcissism come out on my social networks and it’s probably pretty narcissistic to post tweets talking about me on Twitter on my blog. Oh well.
I’ll update this post as well when BettaKultcha gets the photos and videos up from the event. (I’m a bit nervous about friends seeing that I used them as examples)
Filed under: Social Media, Word of Mouth | 1 Comment
Tags: @pwakeman, bettakultcha, blogging, blogs, Facebook, Leeds, narcissism, Social Media, social media narcissism, Twitter
Egoist – Altruist
.
Night – Day
Bad – Good
Life is made of opposites that creates a healthy us/others/the world if they balance each other well over a lifetime (or part of it). Sometimes we ought to think more about ourselves, sometimes we have to think more about others. Sometimes we’d better listen, sometimes we’d better talk.
Narcissist (high dose of me above the average prescribed for a good balance) – clearly a personality disorder
I see both in SM, as in real life
L