The Narcissists Within Us
In this week’s Sunday Styles, Jan Hoffman writes that narcissism “has become the go-to diagnosis by columnists, bloggers and television psychologists. A term that has deep roots in psychoanalytic literature appears to have become a popular descriptor so bloated as to have been rendered meaningless.” According to Hoffman’s article, narcissism, in a clinical sense, is a relatively inflexible characteristic marked by grandiose fantasies and behaviors, a lack of empathy and need for admiration and attention. Narcissists often experience difficulty forming relationships and face surprise when confronted about how their superficial self-confidence can make others feel miserable. In popular parlance, narcissism is the new substitute term for “jerk,” and applies to anyone from A Rod to Russell Crowe.
May I point out that Sunday Styles neglected to mention America’s biggest narcissist: P. Diddy. Anyone who repeatedly changes his/her name and expects an entire nation to comply qualifies in my book. Can we get a clinician to drop by on the next Making the Band, please?
Of course, cultural alarmists find an easy application of the term narcissism when describing Generation Me. And since this blog is slowly morphing into an extended defense of the Millennial Generation, I thought I would test my own narcissism by following tips presented in Michael Agger’s terrific (and timely) article in Slate: “Your Picture is Going to End up on the Internet”. Agger discusses the agonizing process of choosing a head-shot for Facebook or Myspace and how visually representing oneself on the internet is now an endeavor of deliberate self-creation.
I followed Agger over to website called FaceStat where users can upload a picture of themselves and receive hundreds of judgments from strangers. A classier version of Hot-or-Not, if you will. You select which questions you want answered and can, of course, judge other faces. In the name of narcissistic curiosity, I uploaded the following picture:
I asked fellow FaceStat users to answer the following questions: Age, Political Affiliation, Relationship Status, and Likelihood of Winning in a Fight with a Medium-sized Dog. I also requested that people describe me in one word. After eight hours, partial results are in.
(1) Depressingly, a majority of people guessed my age between 25-29, within the second largest voting block placing me between 30-34.
(2) Equal percentages of people thought I was single vs. being in a relationship.
(3) People placed my political affiliation all over the board, although the majority consensus pegged me as liberal.
(4) No one had much confidence that I could beat a medium-sized dog in a fight.
The range of words used to describe me provided the most amusement, however. According to FaceStat users, I am musical, nerdy, goofy, cheesy, earnest, forthright, gay, straight, jug-eared, mickey mouse, angular, dude, boring, scrappy, shaggy, nervous and a loser.
And there you have it.
