Competitive Narcissism [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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Someone on a mailing list I'm on asserted that MySpace and Facebook are, both, equally narcissistic, and using them shows one to be a narcissist, more so than maintaining any kind of blog. Really? Truly?

[Poll #1079747]

I'm also a little confounded by the presumption of the virtuousness of online modesty inherent in the statement, whose author notes he does have a blog himself. By extrapolation, the most virtuous of online users are those who never leave a trace of themselves behind.

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There are 30 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Any site which I don't use... ie I don't think any of it is essentially narcissistic, though obviously all of them can be. Surely a blog at least contains the assumption that one's writing things worth reading, which might be self-delusion, whereas a Facebook profile could just be about keeping in touch with some people more easily?

I think this person was commenting out of ignorance (i.e. "I don't use FB or MS and thus they are only for the vain"), but did so in such a way to make me wonder if this was a more general perception of these two sites in particular.

I agree with you entirely.

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It rather depends on the content and purpose, doesn't it? And how one uses it ... I mean, I have LJ friends who post stuff that sometimes comes off as "hey, look at me, look at me!" -- but I know a good many of my posts must come off that way, too. But I read those posts and comment on them, because I see it as communicating with my friends. And I write those things for the people who are people I consider my friends. So in that sense, it's like a big group asynchronous phone call. My blog, as you know, is a bit different. My Facebook is deliberately about ME - but as a public face of my private self, if that makes sense, because I put it up initially because faculty were encouraged to do so, and I have 6 students who watch my facebook.

This is funny, since I have no problem with students seeing the public posts on my blog, but I refuse to friend any of them on Facebook, which for me is a social rather than a professional thing.

As I think most of us are saying: it ain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it.

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I don't tell my students about my LJ or my blog. In fact, I have an LJ under my real name, from when we had a class blog. I think it's because ADM preceded my job at SLAC.

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Yes, that's the practice of it. But what are the most widespread stereotypes about these sites? (This is the problem with giving a poll like this to an educated and net-savvy audience.)

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Stereotypically, I'd say Myspace is more narcissistic. But honestly, I had pretty much avoided facebook for all the same reasons ...

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FaceBook is a closed book, so to speak. There's almost nothing to see about the service from the outside, so it's easy to presume the worst of it, given its highly faddish state, the amount of other peoples' time studies show it occupies, and how its advertisement infrastructure regularly makes business headlines. Of course, that doesn't make it any-the-less self-indulgent if someone chooses to use it that way.

Given how visually off-putting MySpace is as a non-user, I'd say from a usabilty end, there HAS to be more to MySpace than vanity in order to make it worth using. I've tried reading author's pages on it and my eyes hurt too much to continue.

But does vanity-fulfillment have to be easy? I don't think it does, so perhaps that's false logic.

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no online presence or site in inherently narcissitic. It's all in how you use it.

Yes - but I was wondering if, despite that, these sites might have a bit of that kind of reputation anyways.

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Also: might your last comment be related to the (WASPy Puritanical) notion that a lady's name should appear in print only 3 times in her life (birth, marriage, and death)? Which itself goes back to the Habermasian notion of the bourgeois creation of private vs. public space in the 17th century...?

Yes! And that sentiment seems to be at the root of his comment, the idea that narcissistic sites are bad in the first place. What's wrong with a little self-admiration?

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I'm going for a personal homepage, by which I assume you mean a page all about the author, their hobbies, holidays, 'artistic' output, etc. This is because, unlike the other named options, it works on the assumption that a person will come to that page purely to read all about its author. Whereas, as other commenters have said, MySpace, Facebook and blogs all involve communal / mutual social interaction as well as personal narcissism.

But are homepages acts of vanity or acts of advertising, i.e. with the goal of alerting the world to one's services, even if those are "listening to concerts" or "petting other peoples' cats"? (I suspect you will answer that "it depends".)

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Actually, my answer is not 'it depends', but simply 'yes'. Because if the author wasn't interested in other people coming and reading about these things, they wouldn't put it on a webpage, but simply write it in a diary or Word document stored on their own computer. Ergo, vanity / self-advertisement.

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That's interesting - I wasn't thinking of vanity as a vice which required an audience. Wouldn't that be "boastfulness"?

If most people think vanity requires (or at least tends to have) an audience, that puts a whole new spin on this question.

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I suppose I am interpreting both 'vanity' and 'narcissism' as meaning that the person is so enamoured of themselves that they automatically assume other people will be fascinated, too - much like in 'vanity publishing'. That's not necessarily inherent in the words, I agree, but when they're used in the context of 'tinternet, it's what people tend to mean by them.

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My webpage is for showing off, period. It is 100% narcissism.

However, I don't really track my visitors and I don't have any mechanism (guestbook, forum, etc.) for people to tell me how great I am, which is the element I think the Myspaces of the world contribute.

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Your webpage does double as an information resource though on several counts, so even if it's intended as pure narcissism, it does have a second public service element to it!

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So I like to tell myself, but we all know the truth is I just like to look at pretty pictures of ME and talk about ME.

I do have a Myspace account, but I have no idea what to do with those kinds of things. I haven't looked at it in months and only got it so I could see Jim's band's page. My Facebook page is ever so slightly more active, but mostly because I can use it to play long distance Scrabble.

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I'm going to argue that on the basis that until MySpace etc existed, that was precisely the purpose of most homepages ... connecting, not showing off.

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Also, I'd still rather put out my own homepage rather than use MySpace even though I have accounts on both MySpace and Facebook if only because I control the layout.

MySpace is so generally heinous design-wise that it makes me run screaming. Despite the very valuable music resources I'm sure are on there, I can't bring myself to spend more than a second or two on MySpace because the design makes my eyes bleed.

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connecting, not showing off

I guess what's really coming out of this discussion is that the line between the two is awfully hard to draw. You could also turn my argument around and say that sites with communal interaction like LJ etc. actually provide a far more satisfying form of narcissism than a personal homepage, in that you get a much more regular readership for whom it is much easier to leave comments.

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Is this why polls are often so much more interesting than more self-reflective posts? Polls are about the readership, i.e. everyone else's narcissism.

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Is corresponding with friends and making new ones narcissistic?

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I think it all depends on how it's used.

Be arbitrarily decisive! What's all this subjective nuance about? You'd think the world wasn't black and white or something.

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I'm not sure exactly what it means, or how it relates to your question, but it's very hard to imagine using Facebook (or MySpace, I guess, though I've never been there) for teaching in any practical way. I find Facebook shallow and superficial, which is why I have no problem friending students there, but don't encourage them in here. A colleague and I were having this conversation, and he said that he doesn't like Facebook because it gives him TMI about his students (getting drunk and throwing up and so on). But it does, as someone has said wisely, depend on how you use it. It just seems that FB is used MORE for the "in your face" extreme of public behavior. I personally don't post that kind of "out there" information on it, but a lot of people do. Thus, QED - it's more narcissistic, at least for those who use it that way??
Bleah, I think I'm talking in circles - too early and after a night of insomnia...

If FB permitted fictional character accounts, it could be used for some intelligent historical RP interactions?

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Now wouldn't that be fun. Biting Gandhi, poking...well let's not go there.

Communicating about yourself and your interests to friends doesn't have to be inherently negative. I find FB perfect for 'catching friends' who have slipped off into the ether. I then use email/inbox to keep information private. Enough people now use it that you can find and be found - unfortunately also by people who you don't want to share your personal life with. I keep FB relatively formal.
Blogging/LJ with locked entries and friended entries makes more sense as a diary and friend-informant.
Also, isn't the medium inherently more like a bulletin board than like a narcissistic spider-web? People have to come close enough to read your stuff. So probably they are there because they want to be. (Mixing metaphors but you know what I mean.)
I'd say that these sites are not inherently narcissistic, but instead more about interactions and community and being part of it all. You do want a response and not always one where someone is holding a mirror back at you.

Now I don't make sense, but I should probably go work on my performance evaluation and tell my boss how great I am. Maybe I should just provide my FB link?

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October