Departures: Facebook and other random acts of cultural narcissism

In everyday speech, "narcissism" often means inflated self-importance, 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. In psychology, the term is used to describe both normal self-love and unhealthy self-absorption due to a disturbance in the sense of self. (Wikipedia)

I consider myself a Facebook Pioneer. I signed up to the social networking site in 2009. I spent hours, sometimes days and often entire nights at a time enthusiastically plugged in to the interface and discovered it to be the perfect vehicle for me to make contact with long-lost friends and maintain friendships with people who had influenced my life in meaningful ways. Ways I had become too time-, resource- or genuine interest-poor to maintain in real time. This newfound connectedness had given muscle to a previously dormant characteristic: laziness.

In a world of excuses, resentment and anger, Facebook was titillating, invigorating and entertaining. It was occasionally informative and always distracting. It allowed me, with a click of my mouse, to let someone know I liked what they were thinking and doing. With warrior-like fortitude, I defended it against the naysayers with alarming levels of blindness and alacrity – which is not unusual given that they are two aspects of my character I have always used in my approach to everything I have achieved in my life.

As I mined deeper into the world of Facebook, I ‘liked’ what I saw less and less and I ‘liked’ what I was becoming even less. The big surprise though, was I ‘liked’ my Friends even less. My judgement of them became harsh, erratic, conditional and immediate. My impatient disdain for every detail of their very ordinary lives was like fire. Or gastro. I began to revel in my vastly illuminated life, my cultural superiority, my spelling ability, my grammatical fastidiousness. I became instantly dismissive and equally as hungry for blatant and salacious gossipy detail. Starving. Smug. Superior. Words that would once have been difficult, if not impossible, to use to describe me.

Was my dedication to spending time on Facebook changing me physically, spiritually and emotionally? Or was this version of me simply being given – even by the loosest definition – a life? I have been known to rail against my sea of troubles, and by blaming everyone else, end them. The fascinating details involved in apportioning blame have, eventually, formed the blueprint for the way in which I have resolved personal and professional conflicts in my life. Was my habitual overdosing on Facebook changing me almost physiologically? Why was I suddenly feeling less independent and impossibly lonely?

At the risk of sounding naïve: who decided, and when, that the sharing of fears, anxieties, personal truths – regardless of the extent of their (un)popularity – should be denied us as fundamentals of an honest human exchange?

My frustration with the dishonesty of a Facebook Newsfeed began, subconsciously at least, to disturb me deeply. And given that the internet is an irony-free zone – it’s retarded cousin, sarcasm, became my weapon of choice. Like most passive aggressive bullies, I have a sizable armoury. I have a vicious tongue, an irrational Celtic temper and the purest ability to disable my foe with a well-formed sentence which has formed in my mind hours before it is hurled, precisely, from my mouth. Like a harpoon.

My penultimate Facebook Status Update drunkenly screamed the fact that my life was full of losers. The sad irony, to use another contemporary reference, was that I was the biggest loser. The weakest link in a previously ambitious chain of laughter, creativity and strength.

I had OD’d on Facebook exposure – and like a junkie hooked on any other substance – my substance of choice was a frightening creative inertia. Such is loneliness. And disillusionment. And the fear of being misunderstood. And judged. All of those things that the relative anonymity of a Facebook Profile Page provides for us. Why else is it possible to hide people? You are either interested by human interaction or you’re not. It is too easy to have an enviable number of Facebook Friends, but to also care less about what any number of them are doing, let alone feeling.

It is another irony – and one that belongs intrinsically to social media – that the very fact of how easily we can edit another "friend's" very existence without editing ourselves escorts us to a default position of unhealthy narcissistic indulgence. The denial through censorship (invisibility) of another because, just as in life, it is no longer important that we genuinely care. About anything or anyone. Except ourselves.

*****

I value the act of caring very, very deeply.

People in real time have fuelled my existence. My capacity to help, house, comfort and dissect the complex issues at hand are attributes of my character I am most proud of. They are the characteristics I share with those who I am grateful to count as my inner circle – those people who have fed my soul, my heart and my sense of identity and purpose.

In the essence of its everyday machinations, Facebook has eliminated romance, intimacy and trust – the pillars that define great interpersonal relationships – by trading on the one thing that we value more than anything else: privacy. Consider for a moment the last time you dared to update your Facebook Status with your inner-most thoughts and feelings? Some of us might remember what we used to call “deep and meaningfuls” … D&Ms … those often vast and rewarding conversations between friends over a pizza, a bottle of wine, a meal or that most old-fashioned of past-times – a weekend away with friends by the sea. Or in the country.

Great moments of interpersonal exchange have never happened while everyone was sitting alone in their room in front of their laptop – staring into the over-illuminated void until their eyes start to water from fatigue. Our eyes used to water with tears of hilarity or sadness. Do they still? Mine don’t. And sometimes I doubt that they ever will again.

Which is why I decided to deactivate my Facebook Account, and return – optimistically and determinedly open-hearted – to the real world. And the people that really matter in my life will find other ways of communicating with me. Or maybe they won’t.

I suspect that Facebook will eventually collapse as the whipped whore to commerce and cultural narcissism it is rapidly becoming. There will, I predict, come a time when interpersonal relationships, with all their flaws, become something that we wish to cultivate, share and experience above all else. That sense of liberation that is defined by acts of interpersonal exchange and development that ensures our culture and our spirituality resonates loudly and clearly into the future. My fear is that, as the pioneers of old, we may be in the process of sacrificing a great deal more of our humanity than might currently appear to be the case.