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I’m fascinated by cyber-anthropology and the socio-psychological implications of technology, and I think it has improved life in so many ways for so many people, but sometimes it’s not all good news. As with everything in life, there is a Ying to the Yang.

Surprise surprise. Not only does social software encourage vanity and narcissism, it also puts extra strain on relationships. Now just watch location-aware social software add more on top of that. What if your location was never a secret to your partner?  What if your partner refused to join in on the location-awareness social software that you use? As if the divorce rate wasn’t bad enough, eh? Well I guess the positive spin is, more behavioral transparency and no secrets.  It’s gonna be a tough adjustment though.  Ah, social software, you cruel mistress. Here’s the latest:
Facebook fuelling divorce, research claims
Study: Facebook Increases Jealousy in Relationships
Another reason to stay off Facebook, jealousy
Facebook may heighten jealousy in relationships: study
Facebook jealousy sparks relationship woes: study

At the age of twelve I decared to my parents that I was ashamed of three things…. I was ashamed of being human(because of our treatment of non-humans), I was ashamed of being a white westerner(because of our treatment of minorities), and I was ashamed of being male(because of our treatment of women).  To this day, that impression sticks with me, and for good reason. The one thing I left out was my shame for being a consumer…

Watch this, and you’ll feel ashamed of your stuff, and what it says about you.
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning | Video on TED.com

Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?

YouTube – Peter Singer in “Examined Life”

Philosopher Peter Singer explains his thoughts on the ethics of consumption against the backdrop of the posh boutiques on Fifth Avenue. He also discusses the ethics of what we eat, and how to live …
Philosopher Peter Singer explains his thoughts on the ethics of consumption against the backdrop of the posh boutiques on Fifth Avenue. He also discusses the ethics of what we eat, and how to live a meaningful life.

Tattoos | Cracked.com

Just The Facts

1. Tattoos theoretically could be thoughtful additions to your appearance. Unfortunately there are thousands of tattoo parlors (many open 24 hours) and people just don’t have that many thoughts. So most are stupid.
2. Tattoos are permanent. Your motivation/blood-alcohol level is not.
3. Tattoos are now as edgy as a padded watermelon.

Who gets tattoos?

Tattoos are an excellent way to turn a single drunken decision into a lifetime of disfigurement and regret, which normally requires a car. Tattoos are associated with criminal gangs, the armed forces, and whiny white teenagers desperate for attention. Attempts to get all three to attend a common “Tattoo Conference” have unfortunately failed.

Narcissists Can Be Identified By Their Facebook Accounts – Psychologists

Narcissism is not just attention-seeking or wanting to be liked. Clearly everyone who signs up for a social media site wants to interact with others. It is more severe and characterized by an inability to form healthy, long-term relationships.

The tremendous growth of social networking sites (Facebook now has 100 million users, for example) has led psychologists to explore how personality traits are expressed online. Buffardi and Campbell chose Facebook because it’s the most popular networking site among college students and because it has a fixed format that makes it easier for researchers to compare user pages.

Must… vent…..can’t…. stand it. So many twits tweetin’ twash!
I can’t wait until Twitter is relegated to the category of laughable historical meme. Can we kill this little blue bird already? At the very least there needs to be a cultural shift that scorns anyone whose tweets aren’t links to TED talks. Sure, twitter illustrates how humans are social creatures… in the most ridiculous way imaginable. Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a tweet of value I’ll knowledge it, but the vast majority out there are just micro-narcissistic Twash that simply takes up the time and bandwidth of everyone involved. I can literally hear the gears of society’s progress grinding to a halt as the world takes every other minute to tweet about the minuscule nuances of our lives. How absurd it will all seem in retrospect, once the novelty curve has worn off and everyone realizes that they really don’t have anything valuable to say and should get back to actually doing things. In all honesty, it’s the genre of micro-blogging itself that is to blame and it’s likely not going anywhere soon. Status updates are the same thing. Twitter is just the catalyst of the embarrassing trend.

Ah, that feels better. Off the chest. Back to work. Bring on the fail whale.

It’s Twitter trash and I’m sick of it. I came up with this term while thinking about how sick and tired I am of those pointless tweets that serve no purpose other than to feed the micro-narcissism of the poster.

It’s a short life, and it’s an increasingly fast-paced and busy life. Time and mental bandwidth are at a serious premium. The last thing I need to read about is how bad your breath is in the morning or what your baby’s puke looks like. Tweets – or any micro-blogging, life-streaming, persona-feed should do one of four things. It should (1)inspire, (2)inform, (3)educate, or (4)entertain. If your life-feed isn’t doing any of those things you’re spewing Twash, and Twashers are a huge headache – the online equivalent of (insert popular social outcast paradigm here). Twitter whores are very often the most obvious perpetrators.

This relates to one of my favorite subjects – the social psychology of technology – and the logical extension of an observation I made about two hours into discovering Friendster in 2004. And that comes in two parts:
1) Social software will take off because it taps into the inherent narcissism of our culture, and the absurd assumption that people have along the lines of, (using prissy whiny voice here) “I’m special and the world needs to know what I’m doing.”
2) There is a novelty curve to everything in life, and that is excruciatingly apparent with social software. People discover it and go nuts, exploiting it and using it in the most absurd of ways until we’re all eventually rolling our eyes and nauseated by the over saturation of it.

I think it was Nicholas Carr who first made the observation that “The great paradox of ’social networking’ is that it uses narcissism as the glue for community.” Reading that quote was a huge vindication for me because it so eloquently summarized what i was observing around me.

Come to think of it we’re going to need another term after Twitter goes away. So how about ‘Fwash’, which is feed trash. After all, life is becoming one long feed of information.

But on another note, this relates to techno-narcissism in general. Idunno about anyone else, but the idea that I’m unique or special any more than anyone else is a paradigm an thought pattern I try to avoid like the plague. I’m not saying my brain doesn’t try to think those things, after all I’m human. We pop out as pure 100% narcissism, and only through time and experience do we learn that the universe does not revolve around us. It may never be extinguishable completely, but IMHO it’s our responsibility to minimize this inherently human tendency to feel special.

disclaimer: (1)I do acknowledge the irony of posting a rant about narcissistic behavior on the net but it’s also incredibly cathartic and that sensation overrides my aversion to narcissistic impulse in this case. (2)This post was hasty and may involve fragmented logic, poor punctuation, or incorrect grammar.

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