Love thyself - and show the world that you do

Narcissist - Excessive love or admiration for oneself.

               - A personality disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance...

A quick google search of the definition of 'narcissist' throws up the above dictionary meanings. Sample specimens can be  an actress spending hours before a mirror, admiring the reflection of her beauty, deluding herself for a moment that she is the most gorgeous female that ever walked the earth.  Or a six pack ab body builder for whom the daily push-ups and weight lifting long since ceased to be mere efforts to improve physical fitness but have now become an end in itself. Or  even the street corner mongrel  which fancies that its bushy tail is the most beautiful posterior appendange on any earthling.  

Or perhaps the face book user next door who spends the better part of his waking hours daily, 'liking', 'sharing' and 'commenting' on 148 things day after day, month after month and displaying no sign of tiring!

The social on-line network has today become the most fertile breeding ground for narcissists the world over.  A typical addict of face-book logs in at least five to six times a day, 'likes' whatever trash appears on his home page, has a comment or two to offer on about anything under the sun, rummages his friends list about twenty times and posts his pearls of wisdom on each one's wall and assaults us with pictures of his whole clan, grand mother to pet dog.  He started net-working initially out of curiosity, which later turned into a daily habit, which later metamorphosed into an addiction and eventually unabashed narcissism. 

Narcissism?  Of course, but I shall come to that later.  We do quirky things in face book which in real life we won't dare to.  Would we ordinarily yank out our kids from our homes and parade them on the streets imploring every passerby to have a dekho?Would not we be too embarrassed to proffer our unsolicited opinion on the profanity your next seat traveller on the train just dished out to his next seat friend? And that too loudly, for everyone to hear?  Would we, in our senses, while walking the streets, spotting a filthy dog rummaging the garbage vat, approach the animal and whisper "like you" in its ears?  Will we, witnessing a particularly gory accident on the road not only "like" the spectacle but also "share" it with others? (Strange, there is no 'dislike' button in FB). All these things and many more weird ones, we routinely do in face book daily.  Because it's cool.  Because it's the fad. Because it's not entirely unlike alcohol, which intake rids you of inhibitions.  You swig a peg or two and you tend to open up.  People seem more friendly and the whole world more likeable, and you enjoy the float and conclude life is sweet, yesterday's hangover not withstanding.  Also because, we may hate to admit, we crave for attention all the time.

I am not sure, but fabbing (if a twitter user can 'tweet', an FB user can surely 'fab') would surely be a subject of psychological research.  About why people do things in FB which they otherwise will not?  It may be because of a deep desire to get noticed.  You post something, you get noticed.  You comment on something, the comment gets noticed. You upload a photo and the thing gets noticed.  With each activity, you get increasingly noticed.  And when you get noticed, you get responses. The responses add to your number of friends. More friends means more posts, more traffic, your wall is splattered top to bottom with posts each time you log in.  So it is more of everything, you can't have enough and eventually you begin to feel important in cyber space. That sense of feeling important is, aha, intoxicating.  You begin to feel big, you start loving yourself and you increasingly yearn to love your alter-ego in FB and you turn a narcissist!

This may all sound warped logic but there is a pattern to this FB behaviour.  Unconsciously we all tend to fall into this trap of bloated egos and megalomania, at some point.

Me not excluded.  So lemme rush and share this crap with FB.  After all, all crap gets noticed in FB, at least by accident if not by intention, once in a while, and mine too will be.  So all you folks, read this once and make my day!