Is narcissism the new humility?
Apparently I’m not the only one. Many of you are also driven crazy by comments or questions that you know are wholly innocent and socially appropriate. And I dare say that any of us who have occasionally been in one of those “Just don’t ASK me how [my job hunt, the dissertation, trying to have a baby, selling that house we've had on the market since mid-2008, recovering from my hip surgery] is going!” moods sometimes feel a twinge of discomfort when we encounter friends or acquaintances who are in similarly delicate situations. Ought we ask? Are they tired of talking about it? Ought we not ask? And risk them thinking we are tired of listening? Oy. One wants to be sensitive … yet it is so difficult! With apologies to Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than being asked personal questions is not being asked personal questions.
The fear of saying something hurtful-if-not-rude reminded me of this post from my Miss Conduct blog, on the pros and cons of friending one’s parents on Facebook. Many commenters rightly pointed out that nothing on Facebook is really private anyway, with one stating, “[M]y worst enemy will never see anything other than banal posts like ‘I took my dog for a walk’ or ‘I’m grilling hamburgers with the family.’” So that’s the reason so many Facebook posts are notoriously boring! Rather than risk giving offense, or giving ammunition to someone who may wish you ill, people cling to dull, anodyne status updates that no one can possibly object to.
And here’s where I’m going with all this. It’s terribly trendy these days to run around accusing the rest of the world of narcissism (I’ve written about this before). I wonder, though: if people are focusing more on themselves, and talking more about themselves, might there be at least some degree of pro-social motivation to this? “Why do you think the rest of the world cares what you have for breakfast?” the anti-narcissism crusader against Facebook thunders. Maybe the person who posted, “Greek yogurt and honey is yummy!” isn’t necessarily convinced that hundred of friends are breathlessly eager for this news. Maybe she simply wants to express herself, a sort of virtual wave hello, but doesn’t want to risk starting a debate about abortion, or having her mother nag her to explain the origin of some private joke, or her employer see that she was out until 3am last night. In short, perhaps all those “Time for bed!” and “Coffee, STAT!” updates are less the result of compulsive self-expression than they are of compulsive self-censorship.
In face-to-face conversation, too, I wonder if we sometimes come across as self-absorbed because we fear asking, or saying, the wrong thing. We hesitate to ask the graduate about his job plans, the mom-to-be about her pregnancy, the groom about his honeymoon, the academic about her grant application. And haven’t we all been taught that when fighting with loved ones, we are to use “I” statements (“I feel hurt when you do X”) rather than “you” statements (“You always do X, you big moron”)? Awareness of diversity, too–of the different ways that men and women, whites and people of color, straights and gays experience the world–can leave the sensitive soul feeling that she can only speak with real authority when she is speaking about herself. (Compare this to some fifty years ago or so, when men and white people felt quite capable of speaking for humanity as a whole.) Certainly, this sensitive soul feels that way. I use a huge number of first-person pronouns in my work–a measure sometimes used as a dependent variable to determine a writer’s level of narcissism! But it doesn’t stem from that at all. I mean, of course I’m in love with my own words, that’s why I’m a writer. But my compulsion to keep qualifying them as my words comes less from hubris than humility. This is my opinion of what your mother-in-law said at the last family picnic. Not God’s. Not Jane Austen’s. Not Oprah’s. Just mine, influenced by my own unique experiences and education. Don’t take it for more than that.
Some people are still self-absorbed jerks, I’m not saying they aren’t. But I wonder if there aren’t other motives at play as well. What do you think?
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6 Responses to “Is narcissism the new humility?”
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You ask a lot of questions in this post. For the situation where you know someone may or may not want to talk about something sensitive, I will sometimes remember to say “I’ve been thinking about you and ” . Sometimes there’s a response, sometimes a quiet acknowledgement and we move on. But I usually get a good clue about how to proceed.
Then I sometimes say “Do you feel like talking about it” That way, I let the person know that I’m open to hearing about the situation (not all listeners are all the time) but that I don’t have to.
I have also been blasted for asking about a current situation. I try not to take it personally.
And finally, I try to find ways to ask questions that could lead to that sensitive situation, but don’t have to, yet aren’t so broad as to provoke a monosyllabic answer. So perhaps instead of “how are you doing” (fine) or “Have you found a post-graduate job yet?” (NOOO!), I might ask “What kinds of adventures have you had since graduation?”
As for narcissism and social media, I think we have to make allowances for several factors. People have varying levels of experience with social media. Some people are getting into it for the first time, others have been using it for decades and know the ropes.
That leads to another factor, which is that it takes a while to get comfortable with your online public persona. You don’t know if your mother or boss or coworker or person you have a crush on is going to see your pithy prose, now, or in three years.
Sometimes, it’s fun to sit back and look at online behavior through an anthropological lens. Do people clam up? Disclose too much? Not enough? You can watch individuals struggle over time to strike the right balance.
As with most things, I try to be forgiving of a wide range of behavior. I’m not always successful, mind you, but I try to make paths in my brain so that others can find their own voice and, in turn, become more genuine.
New perspectives — I love it!
I tend far toward the side of caution when considering asking personal questions. Meaning, mostly, that I tend not to ask them. I (often erroneously) feel that if people want to tell me personal things, they will, and asking is prying. So I know that I occasionally come across as more self-interested than other interested. But I know me, I know what I’m comfortable sharing, and talking about myself/life/work prevents me from having the internal debate about which questions are “appropriate” to ask.
I now need to go reread my FB status page through that self-censoring lens.
Anodyne is *precisely* how I now describe my Facebook updates. A few weeks ago, I posted something about an in-law’s behavior with my toddler. I was frustrated, I was a wee bit sarcastic, but I wasn’t rude or hurtful. I thought it would be seen as the “arrrgh!” of a tough parenting moment.
It wasn’t. A family member saw it, flipped out, spread word through the family grapevine, which made its way to the person about whom I had made the comment. Much public sword-falling and private apologies/helpful discussion followed. All is now well, but I will *never* put something on Facebook that can be remotely misinterpreted.
That is, until I figure out how to set up filters to control who sees what!
There’s certainly an element of self-censorship in contentless status updates — you’re choosing how you present yourself to a general audience. I don’t think that’s necessarily coextensive with humility though — or, for that matter, exclusive of narcissism. You can usually tell, just like you can tell that the “I” statements written by Robin Abrahams are very different from the “I” statements written by Richard Cohen. But for a lot of people, the necessity for watching one’s online persona just transmutes them from passive narcissists (not considering that anyone might be uninterested) to active narcissists (thinking all the time about others’ reactions and wanting them to be as impressed/envious/pitying/whatever as possible).
Not that I’m in favor of blanket decrying of online narcissism of course… I think it’s pretty hackish. Basically it just goes back to your “and why are you friends with these people?” point. I just don’t think that hyperawareness of others’ attention leads to circumspection for everyone… sometimes it just makes people performative.
In non-online communication, though, I have noticed that some people come off as self-centered when they are in fact just trying to participate. It can feel uncomfortable to ask people about sensitive experiences (or even not-so-sensitive ones!), so a lot of people offer their own experiences instead. At best this leads to a lively back-and-forth but at worst it makes them sound like they make every conversation about them. It takes finesse. If you talk about yourself too much you sound self-centered but if you ask too many questions you sound intimidating and reporterish. (I usually skip these approaches and just respond the way I think they would — “man, it’s not like you’re getting paid for this!” “Oh, that’s tough because you don’t know if she LIKES you likes you unless you know she likes girls,” that sort of thing — but even that has pitfalls since you’re necessarily making an ass out of you and mption.)
I’m late to this party, but I just found your blog and find this topic particularly interesting. I think your theory has some merit, but it still begs the question of “Why the need to express yourself to everyone simultaneously?” If you want to talk about your view on abortion, why not call or email a friend who is interested in discussing that sort of thing instead of telling your whole friend group that yogurt is yummy? Why not save the abortion debate for an online discussion group? If you don’t want your boss to know that you were up until 3 am, why not post it where your boss won’t see it? Why is stifling yourself and getting attention from everyone preferable to expressing yourself freely to a more limited group? You can communicate without communicating to every single human being you’ve ever met, and these people are choosing to do the latter. Because of this, I don’t think self-censorship is the whole answer.
Personally, I think it can be a need for attention without the poster thinking that everyone wants to know what they had for breakfast. Once you look at responses, too, you see that the breakfast isn’t always the point. I know that the friends on my own Facebook tend to get over-the-top, barely-related responses to anything they post, and I think that plays into it. Someone posts “I put almond extract in my coffee!” and gets “You are the most incredible person I know. I wish I was that creative.” Someone posts “My teaching job starts today!” and gets “Those children will be blinded by your beauty. No doubt they will never have seen a woman as beautiful as you. I envy them the chance to see you every day.” These are not exaggerations. While self-censorship might be part of it, I think that a desire for validation is also part. I doubt it’s a coincidence that saying you had a grilled cheese sandwich could very well result in a reply about your virtues that Chretien de Troyes would find a bit much.
That’s a very interesting perspective. It calls to mind the old saying “Facebook was invented to hide our thoughts.” But maybe the broader question is, What happened to the lost Ark I mean Art of Conversation? It seems like most social interactions involve people taking turns giving a soliloquy rather than any sort of attention to what is being said. JUST LIKE FACEBOOK. So is this art imitating life or vice versa? It just seems like gadgets are making people more and more isolated while providing the illusion of communicating. If a post falls on a profile and nobody comments, did the post make a sound?