I've always suspected computer networks would cause the ultimate destruction of humanity. I just figured they'd become super-intelligent first. Instead, we have social networks which act as a personality X-ray: I suddenly see through the interesting people my friends pretend to be to the shallow LOLing, Farmville players underneath. With one look at these social networks you'll find they're a bigger threat to society than Skynet from Terminator. At least the rise of those machines forced us to band together and shoot stuff. Social behaviour could be shifting due to these networking sites to a point where pretty quickly we’ll all have to assess how we monitor our own fucked up behaviour and growing personality disorders.
Narcissism is excessive self-love, dilutions of grandeur, inflated self-importance and unjustified feelings of entitlement. Along with pornography, planking and trillions of photo's of cats, it’s the primary active ingredient for the Internet.
Posting huge amounts of information on your profile page is both perceived as a narcissistic move and probably more common among narcissists. A typical interaction on a social networking site is like a whirlwind of self-obsession: You think you're just filling out a profile, but others assume you're a narcissist for expecting anyone to care about your twenty favourite quotes and movies despite doing the exact same thing themselves. Everyone's thinking; Look at this dripping sponge of self absorption talking about things that aren't me. As if you would lmao. Meanwhile, people viewing your profile encourage your narcissism. For instance, another big trend is the provocative pictures. When chicks show some cleavage or something that's one thing, chicks are supposed to be hot, but now dudes are starting to look like boyband album covers on their profile photos. Don't guy's care about being seen as a poser anymore? You're not fooling anyone by casually posting pictures like that. We realize you desperately want people to stare at you. (and we desperately want to see it)
A callous lack of empathy can be found both in a sociopath and a viral youtube comment section for a video titled "shattered testicles." Interacting with a monitor and keyboard means people feel less empathy. Which shouldn't be a surprise as Facebook started after Mark Zuckerberg hacked female students collage profiles and sent their photo's to everyone at the collage asking people to rate their looks; the result? Brutally honest opinions by a bunch of collage kids and a lot of upset chicks at band practice :( We also sometimes don't bother pretending to be nice, which is a pity, because "pretending to be nice" is pretty much what made the non-warring part of human history possible.
The only hope for humanity could be from entertaining quotes, as people who post funny material online are normally the opposite of narcissistic. Which might mean; if you don't think you're inherently worth looking at, you try to be funny instead. I now understand stand-up comedy.
And people haven’t totally lost their capacity for empathy on the internet but I will if (Username) ''just did something they regret'' without any further details or information. These kinds of posts are inevitably followed by dozens of comments like "OMG what happened?" "I hope you're okay" "I'm praying for you" and it just goes on and on. Back in the good old days, a true friend would never leave a message saying "This sux :(..." or "I just did something..." and leave it at that. These kinds of messages would have annoyed our grandparents and be met with accusations of immaturity. In other words: "Hey, it's me. Don't bloody leave vague messages and get me all worried you little drama queen!
We somehow need to figure out how to use these social tools without losing our moral standards and personalities. Or maybe we've always been this bad. Either way I gotta take a photo of my six pack to fit in with the facebook crowd.
Peace.
