I confess my eyes light up when I see a new blog comment or receive a new email, tweet, or Facebook message. I usually click their web link or look them up on LinkedIn to see who they are. I get giddy when someone thanks me, or asks a question that I can answer. I suppose you might fall into the same boat. Do our (re)actions make us narcissistic? If so, is that a bad thing?
Cory Miller doesn’t think so. He suggests narcissistic behavior is part of the Twitter experience:
I follow people because I want to know ALL about them and their lives and thoughts. I want to know if they are in the Atlanta airport. I want to see photos of everything they do. I click on Twitpics all the time for people I’m not even interested in just to see what other people are like. I love photos! I think many other people do too.
I follow every relevant business person because I want to know what they are up to, if they have a new product coming out, or links to things they share…. I do this because I’m genuinely interested in their lives. I want to know what movies they are seeing. I want to talk trash with them. I want to know about their adventures.
On the other side of the blogosphere is Brett Borders who opines that most social media users are afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder. He writes:
If you go to a big city tweetup or social media conference, you’re almost guaranteed to meet a clique of NPD people and their minions engaged in an ego-stroking circle jerk….. The successful NPD person creates an intricate matrix of positive feedback in the form of fans, friends, followers and partners who fulfill their endless needs. When the sources of these ego rewards (comments, accolades, retweets, speaking gigs) become unavailable or fail, the narcissist [will] experience intense feelings of emptiness.
Would Brett consider Cory to be a “NPD minion?” I wonder.
After categorizing 3,000 messages from 350 Twitter users, professors at Rutgers University published a research study last fall that indicated the majority of updates are self-centered and their writers are less interactive with others. I presume they would include Cory and his narcissistic Twitter voyeurism into the majority camp.
From the press release:
80 percent of regular users are “meformers,” people who use the platform to post updates on their everyday activities, social lives, feelings, thoughts and emotions. The remaining 20 percent – “informers” – share information, have larger social networks and are more interactive with their followers.
…. “Informers” are more likely to post messages that share information (such as news links), where “meformers” tend to focus on what the researchers call “Me Now” messages – posts that update a user’s followers about that users thoughts, location or immediate situation. Informers tend to be embedded and active in social awareness streams. They have more friends and followers and they interact with those people much more than “meformers,” the study results found.
As a 2009 t-shirt print boldly exclaimed, Twitter is at the heart of mental disorders.
Maybe it’s hopeless to argue with academic studies suggesting this addiction or that. Maybe we’re all doomed to be victimized somewhere.
About Ari Herzog
I think it’s more to do with low self-worth and poor self-image. Some people feel excluded from society – for a variety of reasons – and use Twitter/SM as tools to compensate for other areas in their life.
I rarely use Twitter anymore, it seems a rather sterile experience. But that’s just me, others get a buzz out of it. No pun intended!
.-= From Ivan Walsh to you: 5 Careers Opportunities for IT Professionals in China =-.
How is Twitter sterile for you? Can you elaborate? Do you use other online networking sites in lieu?
An interesting post Ari, thanks.
In my opinion, you can tell quite a bit about a person, based on how they use Twitter (and other social media platforms). Those who have always wanted a following can now have one and experience what it’s like, to be “the popular kid”.
In other words, Twitter makes it easy for us to be more narcissistic AND for those tendencies to be more public.
.-= From Jim Connolly to you: What’s your biggest marketing challenge? =-.
By your last sentence, it sounds like you admit to being narcissistic on Twitter?
I really enjoyed the post (particularly the image with Twitter at the epicenter of personality disorders). I think there is some sort of happy medium. Surely many of the folks with massive followings on Twitter tend to be either narcissistic or famous. I think the real distinction lies between those who are famous or a big deal–full stop– and those that are considered to be “big on the internet.”
I think it is hard to become big on the internet without being narcissistic or having really good friends or marketing teams who will do it for you!
Again, people would stop following you if they got fed up of your narcissism, so there is a careful balance clearly at play here. It’s all about the give and take!
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Sam. Does one need a large following to be narcissistic?
That’s a great image there, I haven’t seen that before. I saw an article about how insurance companies are thinking about using social networks to quote premiums and what not. Not sure my social network represents my true circle of close contacts though. I do like Brett’s point above though, that seems to ring very true.
.-= From Scott Scanlon @ New Media Marketing to you: Special Report – Personal Branding is a Joke =-.
Social networking is a great platform for customer service and its ilk, e.g. what you cite insurance companies want to do. Makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing.
I personally think it’s like anything else on the internet or maybe even in life for that matter, you have your individuals that will take the time to really use and interact. You also have your folks that will just try to drive their product or sales pitch down your throat, then you have those that never engage but constantly post status updates expecting people to give a damn what they are doing.
Great post Ari.
.-= From Extreme John @ Blogging CEO to you: A Day in the Life of.. Episode 5 [video] =-.
What is the non-internet equivalent of a status update?
Well. I’m pretty sure that I grew up with someone who had NPD, and if everyone on Twitter had it? There is no way I’d use it as much as I do. I wouldn’t want to put myself through that hell again.
I am sure, however, that having lived with it means I myself am something of an attention-hog, having had it constantly sucked away from me.
But really, so much goes along with NPD — guilt trips, silent treatment, personal attacks for never being “up to par” (the person with NPD wants their attention to come from “worthy” people) — and I just don’t see that on Twitter. Instead, the attention I get enables me to keep giving it back to others. Very positive feedback loop, not the emotional vampirism that is NPD.
.-= From Christa M. Miller to you: When no one is watching =-.
What is hellish about growing up with NPD?
Twitter is becoming less interactive – through my main @RizzoTees twitter account, where I am tweeting constantly, I can feel the dearth of interaction. And it saddens me a bit – I feel less connected to everyone, even with over 38,000 followers. Oh no, I’M NPD!!!
.-= From Chris Reimer @ The Basement Entrepreneur to you: Rory Sutherland’s TED Talk on Perceived Value =-.
I definitely don’t think that MOST social media users have NPD (narcissistic personality disorder)… and I didn’t write that anywhere… but I have never been to a Tweetup, tech conference, blogger meetup or similar event where I didn’t spot a one or two. I doubt most social media users will be able able to avoid these grandiose, ruthlessly-self-promoting “big personalities” entirely.
p.s. I’d love to chat with you some day if you have a moment, you seem like an interesting guy. I’m “BrettFromTibet” on Skype
.-= From Brett Borders to you: The Danger of Stealing People’s Content, Images & Identities =-.
Hi this discussion is really interesting though i must say i have the same personality like Cory Miller. I’ve been following people because i want to know something about them and most of the time i got attracted from their avatar and what they’ve tweeted.
Regards,
Mark
.-= From Mark @Spam Blacklist to you: Email Marketing for Business Success? updated Tue May 18 2010 3:32 am CDT =-.
Ari, I think you have a lot of each type of people on Twitter – you certainly have huge numbers where everything seems to be all about them (narcissistic). I think the one item most people struggle with on Twitter is really being noticed. Sure a lot of followers is nice, but as we all know a large percentage of followers aren’t paying attention to your tweets. So what I think becomes important is tweeting about items that benefit your twitter audience – not just yourself. For example what if you were aware of a super special sale on something people were interested in. Than your Tweet about it would interest your followers, and if you tweeted about this type of think a lot than people would really start paying more attention to you.