The Internet Breeds Narcissism & Conceit
I am afraid that the internet breeds two dangerous traits in people.
The first is narcissism. I believe social networking sites like MySpace and Face Book are the major culprits here. I bet everyone who reads this has at least one “friend” on one of those sites who seems to constantly post trite & meaningless photos excruciatingly chosen out of a pool of thousands to portray them in the best possible light – both figuratively and literally. How many times have you been out at a restaraunt when a group of bubbly idiots comes in (they are usually teenagers, but I have seen plenty of 20-somethings guilty of this also) and no sooner do they sit down do they start snapping what my girlfriend and I have called the “myspace photo lol” ad infinitum.
They do this for one reason: to prove to all their online stalkers how much fun and exciting their lives are. “Look at us, we went out and had zany hijinx!” The implication as you look at these photos is, “I went out and a had good time, but you are sitting on your fat ass stalking me and trying to live vicariously though my awesome pictures that were totally worth the battery life of my digicam. Aren’t I so f’ing special?”
After long enough people start to believe this shit themselves. I mean, look at Tila Tequila. She managed to elevate herself from a dime-a-dozen cheap asian nude model on a 2 bit internet porn site into a pop culture… icon? I’m sure she’s made millions of dollars for posting softcore porn on her MySpace page. Did Tila have self esteem issues before MySpace came along? Maybe, who knows. But I know one thing for certain: she doesn’t have any self esteem issues now.
FaceBook and MySpace encourage people to stretch the truth of their boring and routine existences to appear as cool as possible. The danger here is that a lot of young people start to believe their own social networking site lies and live as if their profile and MySpace LOL pictures are an accurate portrayal of their actual lives.
Practical advice: don’t associate with people who have excessively cool online personas and a lot of picutres taken with large groups of interchangeable friends at shitty chain restuarants in mediocre suburban towns. These people have an unrealistically elevated perception of themselves and the meaning of life.
The second negative trait that the internet breeds is equally common and more ubiquitous, and that is conceit. I could be accused of succumbing to this conditioning, but at least I am aware of it. What I mean by “the internet breeds conceit” is the confrontation-free confrontations that can occur on the internet – any time you can post a message about anything, you can flame the hell out of someone without any of the instinctual situational stimuli that prevent the kind of internet flaming from ever occuring in a verbal interaction between two people in the same room. If internet flaming happened in real life, everyone would be bandaged and bruised all the time because people would get hurt.
The result of this kind of passive, easy-to-deliver opining is conceit, because there are never consequences to flaming. If someone gives me shit about my true and accurate Messianic musings on this blog, they can hit the “post comment” button, browse away from the page, never bother coming back, and feel as though they corrected my incorrect view point. In real life, that kind of interaction is absurd. When you’re in the same room with someone and you’re having a conversation, there has to be some kind of resolution when you disagree. Sometimes that resolution is that one of you gets up and walks away, but that leaves a very real, emotional, lasting imprint on your head, and at the very least, makes you realize that the person you were just interacting with has vested emotions in their position and if you respect that person at all you might be willing to give rise to the idea that while you still believe your beliefs are right, other beliefs can legitimately be held by people you know and interact with on a daily basis.
Not so on the inernet. Every time I write a blog post, every time I comment on one, I am right in my own head and therefore I simply disregard any other written opinion by anonymous people I don’t know and haven’t evaluated on any other metric aside from their screen name. I leave 100% of my online encounters with the belief that I am always totally right.
This is a real problem.
I believe the result will be that the internet generation that is growing up now in this kind of environment will be highly polar on the issues I like to talk about on this blog. People will not respect each other’s opinions because they’ve spent a lifetime in a social medium in which there is no good reason ever to respect anyone else’s opinions and where people like me can spout theirs all day without ever legitimately being challenged.
I plan on keeping a very keen eye on both of these behaviors in my future children. The internet is a very dangerous environment in which children will be raised. Aside from all the R-, X-, and MA-rated content that we will be unable to protected our young children from, it might develop these personality characteristics in them also. The only solution is strong parenting. No, not ban the internet. Just explain it like I’ve explained it, and explain why the internet is so freaking fake. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the point across.
5 comments so far
Leave a reply
People with 650 myspace friends are shallow and full of themselves. Oh my FUCKING God thank you for that revelation that I would never in my life have figured out on my own. Where do you come up with such incredible insights into politics and society? I’m really amazed.
“People will not respect each other’s opinions because they’ve spent a lifetime in a social medium in which there is no good reason ever to respect anyone else’s opinions and where people like me can spout theirs all day without ever legitimately being challenged.”
From the person who thinks that anyone who disagrees with him and/or is more liberal is a moron.
Right. It’s really rich to see you call ANYBODY conceited.
I could be accused of succumbing to this conditioning, but at least I am aware of it
http://www.daveexmachina.com/wordpress/?p=2297
I came up with such an incredible insight into society from reading your blog, Tim. I owe it all to you.
I don’t know if you want to call it narcissism & conceit but writing a blog takes a little of something. Finding ways to write something that’s interesting about yourself or the world around you requires some sort of non-vanilla personality trait.
internet and narcissism within the same sentence? no, that could never happen to the dear ol’ internet now could it? naw, there ain’t no narcissism out there in internet land. no, really…