Social Media Narcissist

The term "Narcissism" originates from a legend in Greek mythology of Narcissus, a handsome greek man. He rejected a nymph called Echo and refused to accept her love. A goddess, angry at Narcissus, cast a spell on him to fall in love with himself. He saw a reflection of himself in a pond one day and fell in love and never left that pond. He died there and turned into a flower.

What does Narcissus have to do with social media? Social media is increasingly becoming a haven for narcissists. It is becoming so rampant that even people who are not narcissists in real life are turning into them. What is it about social media that feeds narcissism? The idea of profiles and photographs of individuals to be cast as a display for the whole world to see did not exist many years ago. The idea of any of the 100-1000 'friends' to be able to post comments to photos and posts did not exist either.

Narcissists are normally harmless but the question arises about whether it affects their real-life relationships. Instead of spending time with family, for example, a narcissist may spend time checking who commented on their photo or who is checking their profile.

Twitter and Facebook are the main players in this phenomenon. Micro-blogging about your daily life can be exciting for you but may not always be exciting to the reader who will be getting updates every two minutes on what you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner or what subway line you take home. Even I am guilty of it occasionally. There are a few obsessive micro-bloggers and facebookers: the ones who post a new tweet or facebook update every five minutes, usually about their daily life. They are what I define as 'narcissistic'

In the new world of web 2.0 we are all players in an increasingly narcissistic but exciting world; it is a world in which we are inundated with micro-information, updates, photos, and events, all of which are still - fun.