Deep in the woods there was a clear fountain with water that reflected like silver. One day Narcissus stumbled upon that fountain, leaned over to take a drink, saw his own image in the mirror of clear water, mistook it for a beautiful water spirit in the fountain, and immediately fell in love – with himself. He was so completely taken by this image in the mirror that he lost all concept of time or rest or hunger. Enraptured by himself, he eventually withered away and died.
Narcissus would have loved Facebook.
Facebook lets anyone with Internet access construct a little army of pseudo friends (531 friends on Facebook? I don’t even know that many people in real life!), pull wall posts from Status Shuffle so as to appear both smarter and funnier than one may be in real life, and post only those pictures which show that we are, indeed, highly photogenic. Narcissus’ silver lake, measured in pixels. Facebook is designed more as an outlet to showcase every detail of one’s life than to stay in touch, as the social networking moniker implies.
Where things truly fall apart is the very wide open status question: What’s on your mind?
When, in the history of all mankind, have we had the opportunity, nay the very platform, to share all the minutiae of our very existence, as though everybody cares?
Guess what? Some of us don’t.
I do care, deeply, that your son just made it home safely from Iraq. For the third time. I do care that you just brought your first (or third!) child into the world, and all is well. I do care that your husband finally got the promotion we all knew he deserved years ago, and that the two of you are now making your way back home – all the way across the country. Good luck to you both; let me know you get there safely.
However, when So-and-So just finished a load of laundry, cleaned her bathroom, and fed her kids, I can’t help but think: Congratulations, honey, you lived your life! But, Naricissus would be proud. Because, really, are you so self-involved that you think all 531 of your friends want to read about that?
Very likely, most of them just finished a load of laundry, too, but felt no overwhelming desire to post as much for the whole world to see.
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. I’m not condemning all 400 million + users of being narcissists; I am a user, too, after all. But when the line is blurred between what is public, and what should remain private, slightly self-absorbed doesn’t begin to cover it.
And I can’t help but wonder, how would Narcissus have responded to: What’s on your mind?
