Reconstruction Vol. 13, No. 3/4
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From Digital Narcissism to Triumph of the Id / Kane Faucher
<1> Online, it is all about me. From “GPOYs” (gratuitous pictures of yourself) to the curious acts of self-as-brand promotionalism seemingly enabled by online social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine, etc., the mundane trivia of a completely documented digital life (“I just had a muffin...”) coupled with commercializing social interaction through status-enhancement corporate referencing (“...at Starbucks”), the myth of the instant “everyday” celebrity who seems to rise and fall in the rapid cycle of the online attention economy, the leveraging of the non-operationalized concept of “social capital,” the treatment of other subjects as manipulable digital objects in a sort-and-sift network, the conspicuous self-production of exhibiting affluence and class through the posting of vacation photos, and the value attributed to individuals on the purely numerical basis of “likes,” friends, followers, and comments on posts, we are dealing with a digital form of narcissistic behaviour. Aided in part by the customization options that “personalize” the experience and make the user a central node in their social interactive digital space, we might subject the data-flood of selfies and self-promotional utterances to keener analysis through several lenses such as political economy, psychoanalysis, and subdomains of identity construction (if not “production”). This small dossier aims to both open up discussion in this area as well as showcase two significant essays that each take a particular aspect of a much broader social-digital phenomenon. It would not be too premature to set digital narcissism(s) in the constellatory framework of neoliberalism-informationism (to invoke Robert Neubauer’s term) that shores up the values of free market fundamentalism, extreme responsibiization of subjects that adopt risk, entrepreneurialism, the dissolution of collectivist ideals in favour of arch-individualism, and the assumed markers of class in the form of “digitability”: flexibility, mobility, and choice (however illusorily rendered).
<2> The very term “narcissism” is subject to a wide definitional latitude, and that the conceptual particulars of the term can be expressed and applied in a variety of ways, according to a variety of approaches. However, at issue would be the prospect of a specifically digital narcissism which, under the constraint of this qualifier, might be marshaled multiple perspectives and take on a distinctly inter- or trans-disciplinary character. In assigning the term “digital” to the standard psychoanalytic definition(s) of narcissism might either open up questions of the possibly enabling, amplifying, or ambient effects current digital technology in the form of ICTs may have on the construct of the narcissistic personality, or invite exploration in terms of how the integration of ICTs in everyday life play a major role in identity construction and development. The digital narcissism “tent” is large enough to include the full spectrum of approaches that range from technological determinism to instrumentalism.
<3> In one way, we could point up the neoliberal ideological apparatus that appears to enable such behaviours as simply a manifestation of self-branding entrepreneurialism, the ecstasy of immediacy in communication facilitated by these technologies in an effort to anneal digital presence, and many of the “technoptimist” assumptions buried in the seemingly value-neutral terms of “information society”, “economic growth”, and “democratized global free expression” may in fact be little more - to borrow Mikhail Epstein’s term - than ideologemes (Epstein 1995, pp. 107-8). In another way, we have the constructivist viewpoint that may direct us to understand the digital narcissist as simply an outgrowth of the broader sociopolitical forces that shape both the technology and the formation of the individual, perhaps having its narrative extended into the digital domain from such canonical insights provided by Christopher Lasch (1979). In his work we locate the scathing indictments of CEO worship, enabling sociopathic tendencies, breeding disloyalty as a form of valorizing arch-individualism, the Ayn Rand gospel writ large, a rejection of proportional effort to success and celebrity, and the self-centered practices of everyday life. Lasch’s work may have extended beyond its shelf life, but there are eerily prescient features in his work that resonate with a puissance he might not have foreseen. And, yet, in another way it may be useful to include the insights of political economy, especially the work of Guy Debord (2000) on the nature of the spectacle as another contributing factor to a perceived increase in narcissistic behaviour as part of an ideological agenda that increases our alienation from ourselves, each other, and the world. If, as Debord tells us, architecture is implicitly laden with ideology, why should we regard software architecture any differently?
<4> If we approach the subject of digital narcissism from a distinctly political economy perspective, we might construct a merger of the Lukacsian-Debordian line of the triple register of alienation whereby the individual existing within an inverted construction of the real (i.e., the spectacle) is alienated from him- or herself, from others, and the world. We might also include here the insights of those such as Thorstein Veblen and conspicuous consumption which, in this case, might be reconfigured as a form of online conspicuous production of the self as a kind of ego ideal writ in pixelated narrative. Moreover, should we approach the subject from a broader socio-structural narrative, it might be of some utility to include the insights of Lieven de Cauter’s (2004) rules for capsularization that construct the ordered inside - in this case the walled garden of high-trust culture of the Internet - against the disordered outside, the empirical messiness of the real that cannot be compartmentalized in an easy click-based user interface within the rigidly framed and normative space of social software platforms. From a strictly semiotic standpoint, we may observe the trafficking of signs, symbols, and indices that facilitate the communicative transactions we see online that both point to a technologically-determinist command structure of order-words (Thiry-Cherques, 2010) or a quantitative measure of social capital accumulation as one might witness in the collection of thumb-icon “likes” (Faucher, 2013). Moreover, it might be considered somewhat irresponsible not to implicate the enfolding or enframing discursive apparatus of neoliberalism and its chief expedient of ICTs as a major contributing factor in the construction or enabling of digital narcissism.
<5> There has been burgeoning growth in studying the merger of online social networking and narcissistic behaviour. As the representation of self and its behaviours migrate to the digital realm, with more notable recent thinkers such as Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell (2003, 2009), Soraya Mehdizadeh (2010); commentators like Christine Rosen (2007); or to a somewhat more distant extent the work of Sherry Turkle (2012) in understanding how the digital social domain may have an either causative or correlative effect on alienation from the self. Case studies on the subject of online narcissistic behaviour become more plentiful despite the challenges of employing an objective measure for analysis of a constantly shifting and highly personalized digital landscape.
<6> Whatever the approach to the subject, what remains somewhat ambiguous would be the “ultimate aim” of digital narcissistic behaviours without risking generalization. To that end it is useful to consider a variety of strategic objectives that the online narcissist aims to achieve, be this to increase self-validation, social capital, cornering the market in the oft-mentioned “attention economy,” and online influence, whether these can be treated separately or combined.
Communication Intensity and the Sell-By Date
<7> The intensity of constant communication and the desire to make intensive use of commercial signifiers (translated as “personalized” in status-seeking displays) gives us the portrait of a deeply troubled communicator suffering a generalized communication anxiety. Users of this stripe who cater to their own narcissistic impulses feel it is their obligation to engineer intense presence and make intense speech acts, that generally carry the signifying messages of commercial goods affiliated with the ego being projected into the virtual space. Intensity of this kind is also measured by duration: short burst salvo through aphoristic utterance (we can include photo uploading here as intensive speech acts) with the hope or expectation of long lasting effect (perhaps assisted by the mass circulation of re-posting or referencing the act by others). In this way, the narcissistic user is chained to a belief that s/he is a self-aggrandizing business, not necessarily a human being since that acknowledgement would diminish the grandiose fantasy. When the narcissistic project of maximizing virtual territory and the garnering of public attention is geared toward this project, constructive development of the ego is waylaid or deferred in favour of a quasi-puritanical model of developing one’s online character as part of the regime of social capital. The enjoyment of reaped reward is to be had only after the labour is complete, and even then (despite a frequent return to brief adulatory feedback as a sustaining inspiration for further labour) full satisfaction is never achieved. The desire for self-aggrandizement and larger doses of adulation far outpaces any short-term and ephemeral sense of self-satisfaction. If there is a source to communication anxiety, it may be this deficit of satisfaction, the perceived widening gap between effort and reward. The desire itself becomes monstrous in magnitude and scope, making it virtually impossible to satisfy. For every satisfaction achieved, desire itself is displaced as a +1 out of the narcissist’s reach (bringing the story of Narcissus in line with that of Tantalus). The cluster of particular anxieties experienced with regard to online connection and communication may have their root in a perceived obstruction or failure to make use of one’s time. This tyrannical urge to labour on one’s character for the purposes of self-display only further underscore the narcissist’s dependence on others, but also amplifies the anxiety associated with online ego management, not least of which may be exacerbated further if one’s online character - spread out over a variety of venues - requires frequent modification or alteration. The more social network profiles one maintains, the more exhausting the labour might be in maintaining these profiles.
<8> The megalomaniacal trait present in some narcissists embraces the belief that success is pegged on being “all things to all people.” In online terms, this undergoes a slight modification to read as being “all places to all people” indexed as a form of presence on newsfeeds, fighting for sustaining presence “above the fold.” Immediately, once a threshold is reached where labour cannot maintain so many profiles simultaneously, there is also the threat endemic to most narcissists of attempting to take on all the labour and achieving only superficial results. Yet, the intransigence of the narcissistic disorder will not admit defeat so easily, which may result in a manic attempt to maintain whatever social gains have been hitherto acquired with a view to increasing these. This scenario does not answer all the varieties of online-based anxiety which deserves its own specific treatment.
<9> When these attempts at overextended maintenance fail, the narcissist may repose on another common trait: disloyalty. Given that the narcissist is incapable of forming substantially deep or enduring object relationships, the narcissist may simply abandon the effort and seek an easier method for gratification. If online ego management was the primary goal, it would seem rational that by trimming off a few profile accounts that one would focus with more verve on existing ones; however, this runs contrary to the narcissistic profile that would instead migrate to a new venue. This happens most frequently when the narcissistic supplies are either exhausted in one venue, the desire for recognition far exceeds that network’s capability, or when there is no further means of increasing one’s recognition. This may occur if a mass of attention on a network is refocused on someone else, or if the narcissist has been the victim of an irremediable discrediting.
<10> As the online narcissist is in the habit of accumulation, this behaviour can be explained by the unacknowledged motivation that to collect a high quantity of online social connections in as many places as possible is a means of recollecting the primary narcissistic self to achieve the impossible unity when there was no distinction and differentiation between self and world. This recollection of the (undeveloped) self is not interested in cultivating quality relationships online since that would take considerable investment and self-awareness the narcissist lacks. That is, in the narcissist’s failure to understand or acknowledge that others exist autonomously, quality connections are not desired or cannot be cultivated.
<11> Much of the social communication on the Internet possesses an inherent sell-by date, although there are public discussions where the information becomes reactivated by others who seek to make use of it for different purposes unintended by the original author of that information (this is the case in politics when a past statement online is used by an opponent to launch an ad hominem attack, or by an employer seeking to gain more background information on an applicant’s behaviour or beliefs). Despite the ephemerality of so much social information made public on social networking sites, blogs, and fora, much of it is archived permanently. The inundation of constant information has the effect of diminishing the value quickly. This rapid devaluation of information, of which much is said, presents a difficulty for the committed online narcissist who seeks to make a lasting impression with his or her online efforts, so inasmuch as the Internet provides a seemingly ideal platform to indulge narcissistic behaviour, there are a variety of structural elements on the Internet that make this task difficult or even impossible to satisfactorily achieve. Firstly, individual reach must contend with the high volume of others who are also locked in competition for their share of the attention economy. Secondly, a high volume of new social information tends to diminish the returns for online ego investment. Thirdly, although reach may not extend as far as the narcissist desires, it may extend to such a size that invariably a narcissist will be in direct or indirect competition with another narcissist. When so much of the narcissist’s energy is already devoted to defensive measures (the so-called barrier known as the “narcissistic defense”), direct competition may pose an even higher degree of threat than the usual reserve of envy the narcissist might feel in the presence of indirect competition. Lastly, and due to the previously stated reasons, the efforts to maintain enough presence to satisfy the need for narcissistic supplies can be very labour intensive, involving a great deal of management of both online persona and cultivating a large supply of social connections. Studies continue to indicate higher engagement with SNSs correlated with narcissism (Mehdizadeh 2010, Wang and Stefanone 2013)
<12> So far we have indicated a few of the technologically specific difficulties that the online narcissist faces. What remains to be seen is if these structural elements present the same degree of difficulty for those who are in the more malignant degree of narcissism, those who can be diagnosed as pathologically narcissist. At this regressive psychic state, it is not uncommon that the pathological narcissist lives in an almost invincible self-delusion where s/he will not recognize or acknowledge the limitations present in the external world as anything more than a temporary frustration. For the pathological narcissist, the Internet becomes a mirror extension where the individual will come to expect by grossly exaggerated sense of entitlement the proceeds of adulation and admiration. But when confronted by the limitations of the Internet for the narcissist type presented above, the pathological narcissist’s delusion will take these limitations as evidence of limitation of the self - something the devout narcissist can never countenance. The pathological narcissist seeks to make the potentially infinite Internet a part of him or herself as a bounded infinite in so far as it must not excite the disturbances that come of envy and frustration. In this way, there will be an attempt to integrate the narcissistic self with its online environment so as to make the latter a dependent attribute of the former.
<13> The prevailing view of how the narcissist type forms is generally by way of parental influences that place unrealistic expectations on the child to succeed. In this task to meet idealized potential, the narcissist most often fails to achieve this. But it may not only be parental influence that contributes to the conditions of narcissism. The stressing of potential in young people may occur at a much younger age and with more success in instilling these expectations due to more frequent exposure to screen media. In this perceived environment of one’s peers, the pressures on the young person can be enormous. All around him or her are several other high-achieving individuals posting their own music videos online, boasting of their offline successes, showing precocious expertise in various areas, being socially adroit and witty by exploiting the social networking platform to accumulate a popular mass of contacts, etc. The child, perhaps presented with information on millions of others of a similar age who are achieving extraordinary things, may take it upon him or herself to first emulate and then attempt to surpass these achievements. The more adult reaction in being presented with a gamut of this kind of information would be to acknowledge one’s limits and be content with one’s potential; however, for the would-be narcissist, feelings of inferiority are suppressed in favour of grandiose fantasies and a punitive self-directed expectation harvested from the narcissist’s perception of the peer group. The shortcut to high achievement is, at first, simply believing one is as good if not better than the peer group. Where the child cannot cultivate talents to the extent that they will be accorded with a satisfactory admiration from others, the child may develop an aggrandized view of him- or herself instead. This is the completion of the seesaw effect: from a feeling of inferiority in comparing oneself to others, the narcissist reverses the trend so that s/he feels superior while at the same time diminishing the value of everyone else who then become transformed by the narcissist into objects to be manipulated for further self-aggrandizement. The value of others is no longer in their respective talents, but in what supplies they contribute to the narcissist’s main project: the omnipotent self. The narcissist forcibly shifts centrality to him or herself, occupying a self-constructed nucleus around which only superficial relationships orbit, mere surfaces that are demanded to provide attention. Such a de-subjectifying attitude toward other human beings is much easier to adopt given the nature of online social communication that is screen-mediated rather than face-to-face. Compassion and care for others is easier to set aside when said others are merely point-and-click pixellated object-images.
<14> Narcissistic traits are more readily recognizable in social networking sites (SNSs) due to the software platform that facilitates more options for self display. In such venues, narcissistic traits in users was connected with a higher volume of social networking site usage, and particularly through self-description and strategic use of profile photo (Buffardi and Campbell 2008). Generally speaking, the traits of narcissism involve a fragile ego-construct, a punitive and sadistic superego, and poor object relations. In terms of relations with objects, the pathological narcissist will “identify with an object and love an object standing for their (present or past) self.” (Kernberg 1975). This stands in contrast with the more normal narcissist object relation that attaches to an object as representing the parental image. The online representation of self operates as a far more cognitively comprehensible object that the narcissist can identify with, at least in terms of a relation patterned on narcissistic disturbance. “Both adult and infantile narcissism include ‘self-centeredness,’ but the self-investment of normal adult narcissism is in terms of mature goals, ideals and expectations, whereas the normal infantile self-investment is in terms of infantile, exhibitionistic, demanding, and power-oriented strivings.” (Kernberg 1975). These two modes of narcissism are not yet pathological. For the pathology to emerge, this is done through a series of steps or phases which include a regression from the adult to the infantile, the investment of love toward an object that represents the self, and finally in dispensing with the object-status entirely to allow the full deterioration of object relations so that the grandiose self cleaves to a grandiose projected image of self (323-4). The flashpoint for the pathological narcissist emerges when the economic flow is disrupted; i.e., narcissistic supplies decrease or are removed entirely. In the case of the tributary relations the narcissist relies on for validation (such as the constant praise and attention from others to one’s online representation). It may be at this point that the tributary relationships conflict with the narcissist’s punitive idea of self-reliance and thus a realization of dependence upon those very relationships. With the assistance of online representation, the pathological narcissist can have an externalized object of grandiose self that can be manipulated (or otherwise transformed into a punitive superego that will reflect back at the self with unrealistic expectations). However, the internal conflict emerges in the split between desire for extreme self-reliance meets ego dependence.
<15> This idea of occupying centrality may also affect the pathological narcissist’s attitude toward the Internet where s/he as “user” is the real locus of communicative power. For such a person, the online community may not even exist when s/he is not using it, or it is there “waiting” for him or her to use it. This is not always the case among all narcissists who may have a more developed aspect of persecution mania: these narcissists may feel compelled, out of a perception of losing control over the objects s/he “owns,” to be connected as often as possible to defend against any insubordinate attack against his or her reputation. This habituates the narcissist to online self-monitoring activities such as regularly checking who said what and when via search engines. The obsession for micro-management of digital self-representation is perhaps explainable by the idea that one’s online representation is one’s possession and it, like the name, must be protected from harm.
<16> This manipulation of online representation is a perpetual process of perceived perfectionism. In an astute observation, Christine Rosen (2007) states that the creation of one’s self-portrait used to involve canvas and paint, but that our online self-portraits are composed of pixels. Extending the analogy further, the online self-portrait is always a work in progress, and we can expand “self-portrait” to mean more than just the visual image, and thus include everything that is said to represent the self such as textual posts that convey personal beliefs and affiliations which thus contribute to a multimedia-based narrative of the self.
<17> Researchers such as Otto Kernberg, Christopher Lasch, W.W. Meissner, and Philip M. Bromberg have catapulted the traditional Freudian view of narcissism as a kind of kludge or watershed of various disorders, claiming that there has been a significant deal of conflation in the term. Rather than leave pathological narcissism consigned to a miscellaneous pile of object-relation disorders, affective states, and borderline conditions, there has been a far more robust emphasis on understanding the conceptual particulars that make pathological narcissism unique, and this through the use of different methodologies such as field theory. When we extract the traits most salient to being transposed and applied to digital behaviour, we may find that the digital social venues are more structurally organized to cater to auto-cathexis than we may realize. This shift in social attitudes that makes the self an object of constant improvement, an idealized projection, or a constant work in progress may not necessarily indicate that there is a pathological dimension to a majority of users. What it will indicate, however, is that the need for exhibitionism and validation is exacerbated by a variety of anxiety-inducing phenomena precipitated by broader social expectations with regard to the growth and popularity of digital social communication that may be numerically based (number of friends, likes, and so forth). This splits on the order of self-as-brand management for increasing “social capital,” and “FOMO,” or fear of missing out. The perceived need to have presence, to interact at a sometimes unrealistic rate of volume and speed, and the shift in the idea that the institution of celebrity has been democratized as something achievable without professional promotion or the development of talent, has likely produced a unique signature for many of our online social interactions.
<18> Online social interaction is diverse and difficult to evaluate with any definitive accuracy. The rate at which social bonds are formed or dissolve, the shifting of attitudes, the number of nodes involved, and the rapid nature of of today’s instant-communication networks makes it impossible to diagnose, an analogous scenario to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics where we cannot know both the speed and location of any particle. And yet there is reasoned suspicion that online social networks cater to a growing desire for unstable, superficial social arrangements. Whether or not these depend on high or low commitment varies from user to user, and what we mean by “commitment.” For example, a social bond can be high commitment in terms of expectations to be online and to respond regularly, while also being low commitment because of low quality cultivation of interpersonal sharing. For several users, the quantity of social connections they are involved with are too high to cultivate high commitment connections that possess qualitative depth, and for those who have an unmanageable amount of connections even high commitment at the level of regular superficial responses are not possible. It might be reasonable to assume that the higher the density of one’s online connections, the lower the individual commitment to maintenance or cultivation when taken as a whole since the analog nature of time prevents us from doing more than distributing the limited amount we have available. However, this may suit the pathological narcissist who is not particularly interested in forming high commitment relationships and may seek a return on investment by maximizing the quantity of connections. This strategy was once employed by advertisers who sought to bet on marketing to everyone, but since advertising budgets are not infinite, it made sense to realign a marketing campaign to target niche groups where the statistical odds of getting a return on marketing investment dollar was higher. This is a similar problem the online narcissist must also face given that time is not his or her infinite resource. In such cases, it would make sense if the narcissist would strategize his or her efforts by targeting social segments that would increase return on investment.
<19> Venues such as online social networks are potentially ideal for adopting a narcissistic strategy given the large potential supply of users. Inasmuch as access to a large audience in one-to-many or many-to-many communication opportunities can be developed for noble purposes, as has been lionized by researchers such as B.J. Fogg (2008) in terms of mass interpersonal persuasion, we must not forget that this also casts a long shadow whereby the enabling feature of such communication opportunities can also be a ready source of providing narcissistic supplies that further exacerbate the pathology. Coupled with the heightened expectations of regular and near immediate communication, this may generate an enormous supply of exploitable human resources for self-validation, yet may also exacerbate the dependency/self-reliance paradox of narcissism: the pathological narcissist’s nearly sadistic desire to live up to the value of being entirely independent and self-reliant, yet almost slavishly dependent on acquiring positive social validation from others. The mirror becomes the screen, or rather that the screen functions as a convenient, ever-accessible pocket mirror.
<20> We might come to attribute to the Internet in general all that is possible, our investment of the fantasy of omnipotence and omniscience, all our desires that are impossible to realize in our offline experience. In the same way that gods came to embody the loftiest ideals, we may have done the same with the Internet already, and multiplied this more by shrinking the very distance between our activity and the passive instrument of our social manipulation; we are now closer to our ideals with the aid of online social media. This formulation of making some instrument or deity the representation of our ideality owes a debt to Freud who recognized this point as well as understanding that this shrinking distance between us and the ideal we desire has not increased happiness overall. In fact, as Freud (n.d.) argues in Civilization and Its Discontents, it has succeeded in making us more miserable. Within the confines of a corporately-mediated landscape, those lodged within are bewitched by the illusions of choice as wealth and business power concentrate into fewer hands. The craven masses huddle with their rapidly diminishing purchasing power around an array of pseudo-cultural artifacts engineered as techno-gadget relics they are obliged to consume as a precondition to “social” relevance.
Digital Narcissism and Aggression: This is My Sandbox!
<21> Although there may be no reliably conclusive empirical proof to claim that narcissism has, in fact, increased, or that the web has enabled the traits of narcissism to such a degree as to suggest (as some authors have) an “epidemic,”[1] we can point to the connection between narcissism and aggression. It would be the height of speculation siding with technological determinism to state that full immersion into ICTs and SNSs at a young age arrests development that gives rise to the pathological, but it cannot be ruled out entirely as we consider borderline personalities in a borderless virtual space.
<22> The link between narcissism and incidents of aggression generally arise from threatened egotism where there is a perception by the narcissist that there is an attempt to undermine or devalue said person (Baumeister et al 2000, Konrath et al 2006), or as a result of social rejection (Twenge and Campbell 2003). The ease by which the classical narcissist can treat other users online as mere objects, thus de-subjectifying them, can result in aggressive behavior when the perceived objects either do not provide tributary supplies or seek to frustrate the narcissist’s communicative control. In addition, the narcissist may be imbued with particular ego-attachments that are linked to an infantile sense of territory (Noshpitz 1984). Thus, if the narcissist is presented with a challenge in any self-defined territory such as beliefs involving politics, religion, health, etc., this may result in narcissistic rage where a cathartic discharge results in a hostile and aggressive attack on the perceived threat to that territory. One of the first linkages made between narcissism and aggression is attributed to Heinz Kohut who viewed it as separate from the drives, and so thus a behavioural reaction, especially when the narcissist’s sense of self is perceived to be under attack (Kohut 1984, p. 138). By contrast, Otto Kernberg adopts the more classical understanding that aggression belongs with the drives, and that its manifestation involves defense and resistance. If we take Kohut and Noshpitz’ view of infantilization and arrested development, and transpose these to digital territory, one may question whether the SNSs enable these behaviours in being constructed as infantilizing spaces linked in part to a kind of arithmomaniacal gamification of these spaces of self-interested commitment. Although there may not be a sufficient causal link between the gamification of SNSs and competitive “social” gaming as leading to aggression, there may be a correlation with respect to how the pathological narcissist may understand the competitive nature of said digital milieus, and responds aggressively depending on the social context. In terms of a connection between the digital and aggression, we might recall Marcuse who tells us that destructive “energy becomes socially useful aggressive energy, and the aggressive behaviour impels growth – growth of economic, political, and technical power,” and that ”the more powerful and ‘technological’ aggression becomes, the less is it apt to satisfy and pacify the primary impulse, and the more it tends toward repetition and escalation”(Marcuse 1969, pp. 257, 264).
<23> Many online news comment areas provide both the benefits and deleterious effects for the narcissist through the software architecture of social comparison information such as approbation cues (especially where there is a metric such as up- and down-votes). A general trend in interactive media environments sees users being prompted to compete in acts of self-display, accrue followers/friends, and participate in ranking and liking activities (all of which is ostensibly social capital building, but also a means of immaterial labour since that data is collected by a host and possibly used for targeted advertising), the prospect for the narcissist is a real-time feedback system for where s/he stands in a digital community. On one hand, any praise given to the narcissist in an open comment will provide a higher degree of gratification to the narcissist because the comment may be read by others. On the other hand, if a user provides a criticism, this same effect of public reach may cause severe narcissistic injury. The extremes of gratification and injury are much higher in the online venue, and so therefore are the risks of either increasing the narcissistic reward or the devastation of the narcissist’s self-esteem.
Whither Veblen?
<24> Thorstein Veblen is to be credited for being the first American social theorist to address technology in its more subtle definition, importing German Technik without conflating this with technology more broadly. Veblen’s admiration for the work of Werner Sombart is patent (especially his laudatory appraisal of Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus), but Veblen’s characteristically ironic - and occasionally polemic - prose permits some deviation from the German Technik school of thought whereby he was able to make a critical distinction between technological processes and the machines themselves. In Veblen’s definition, technology involves the knowledge and practices of technology that are collectively owned (one may be reminded of his strong utopian recommendation for a “Soviet of engineers” in The Engineers and the Price System). Veblen vigorously opposed any intertwining between technological workmanship and the “tissue of make-believe” inherent to the pecuniary and predatory interests of business enterprise.
<25> Brabazon’s article in this issue follows the intellectual trail blazed by Veblen that implicated the leisure class for its predilection for transforming wealth abundance into waste by acts of conspicuous consumption. The general purpose of conspicuous consumption is not simply to purchase items that deviate from utility, but that they be visible by others for the purposes of personal status enhancement. During the time of Veblen’s writing, technology - or, rather, the technological devices that were engineered from technological principles - had yet to become fashionable as such (we might make an exception here for the bicycle, which was already being lionized and aestheticized in France by those such as Alfred Jarry who saw it as the definitive end to metaphysics, a point that is only taken up for largely political reasons by Marinetti and the futurists in glorifying a masculinizing understanding of machines and speed). For Veblen, technological instruments, as material practices and technical knowledge, were about efficiency and not innovation, let alone novelty or fashion. Skipping ahead nearly a century since publication of The Engineers and the Price System (1921), marketing and aestheticization of technological devices has become de rigeur as iDevices proliferate in what has been wrongly billed as the great information era of democratization of communication technologies. Behind the oleophobic surfaces or Deleuzian “white walls” of said technologies is another agenda entirely, one indexed on consumerism and not citizenship. self-as -brand and not reflective self. As well, the waste factor in the conspicuous consumption of iPads conceals the full life cycle of the devices themselves whereby the necessary materials for their manufacture such as cobalt and rare earth minerals are extracted from the earth in ways that have serious labour and environmental costs in regions of the world with poor regulations and corruptible governments, the sweatshop labour in their actual manufacture, and the disposal of these devices to salvage dumps in China and some African nations where e-waste is conveniently rebranded as “secondhand goods,” exposing both adult and children salvagers to the toxic, carcinogenic chemicals inside.
<26> Brabazon rightly points out that in today’s context, mobility is a marker of class. What lies beneath the shibboleths of mobility, flexibility, choice, and enhanced personal responsibility (or the “empowerment” buzzword) is the obvious trappings of neoliberal ideology, tethered to and supplemented by widespread informationism (Harvey 2005, Neubauer 2011). There is perhaps no more suitable figure of neoliberalism incarnate than an Ayn Rand hero, or the American apocalyptic survivor against the unthinking zombie hordes. And yet there is also nothing more suspiciously narcissistic than these figures who preach the gospel of personal responsibility as self-development and entrepreneurialism as its own virtue as opposed to anything that might involve social collectivism and sacrificing for the benefit of the less fortunate. Under the neoliberal hood, homo oeconmicus is emboldened to pursue aggrandizing narcissistic values that are dubbed as rational, and authentic compassion for others is deemed somehow a deficiency. The Austrian School of economic theory, including the landmark texts of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, were tireless proponents of pursuing self-interest predicated upon the axiomatic that all economic activity is inherently rational. The counterpoint to such a view can be found in the work of Veblen who spares no attack against the idea that human beings involved in economic activity are anything but rational. But therein is lodged a fundamental view with respect to what rationality means. If it is indexed solely on self-interest, and could be considered narcissistic, then we might ask just how far self-interest should extend. In what is considered “healthy” narcissism, looking out for one’s personal interests, the interests of one’s family and friends, and ensuring that the basic provisions of food, shelter and so forth are met as we attempt to reach full self-actualization in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs seems a fully reasonable and rational pursuit. However, to pursue these at the expense of others is to invite the Hobbesian war of all against all, the underlying motif of any zombie film. One may also question the neoliberal version of human rationality when it is the individual who assumes all risks under the guise of free choice, and yet abdicates critical reasoning by simply trusting the now information system powered free market.
<27> The compression of space and time, or its reordering through new clustering regimes that displace the past and future in exchange for an eternal present (Virilio 2010) provide an illusion of synchronous interaction and mobility options. However, real power and control is not in the hands of the mobile audience of iPad consumers, but centralized in the device vendors. It is precisely those “pecuniary interests” that Veblen raged against that have hijacked the technological processes, transforming technological knowledge stock held in common into proprietary knowledge, and provided an illusion of choice through personal customization options, if not also relying on an enormous pool of un(der)paid labour in the form of hobbyist-entrepreneurs who design software apps for the iDevices. Today, it is not the devices that exist as collective property, but the financial enticements to purchase software development kits (SDKs) to embroider and increase the popularity of the devices themselves. Modders for games and app developers are in no way empowered by their labour contributions, and yet seek to enhance their status for some kind of professional gain (i.e., either to be recognized by a company in having a successful mod or app on the resume, or to become an “appillionaire” through entrepreneurship - after Apple and Google take their big cut - surely a system of conspicuous production). This is far from Veblen’s utopian ideal of a Soviet of (software) engineers.
<28> In a telling statement, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, says “a lot of information people produce is inherently commercial” (qtd. in Farag 2012). This entwining of commercialized social exchange is effectively what generates revenue for several social media sites, playing directly into acts of conspicuous consumption broadcast across networks. Barbara Kruger’s “I shop therefore I am” is now a bit shopworn, but still true, trope. Today, Facebook users can “friend” other users just as easily as they can “like” corporate pages, the gap between the two functions closing. However, status enhancement online takes on other forms beyond the directly corporate; for example, the enticement to document one’s every activity (what I ate for breakfast, how long I went cycling, etc.), as well as the posting of vacation photos, all speak to a deeper connection with flaunting affluence and abundance. All told, the convergence of conspicuous consumption and production provides us with a portrait of what has been called the “prosumer.”
A Civic Narcissism?
<29> As a more optimistic counterpoint, in this issue Boklage brackets certain online behaviours such as blogging through a Foucauldian lens, partially redeeming narcissism as a specifically civic type whereby even self-interested acts of writing can result in possibly liberating and pro-civic discourses that assist in deepening the blogger’s and the readers’ engagement in civic life. Rooted instead in the Foucauldian technologies of the self, this offsets the largely “cultural” understanding of narcissism as a kind of disease, and instead refocuses on how acts such as blogging as self-formative can efface the boundaries between the public and private sphere. Far from defending acts of pathological narcissism, Boklage appears to make an exception for some self-interested online behaviours that do provide both personal and collective benefit. It might be assumed here that Boklage refers to a practice that has much more self-reflection in its operation than simply the kind of status-seeking race that attempts to inscribe the ego ideal in a space where it may be glorified and “worshiped” so to speak. It is also to the credit of bloggers that the constant feedback of bidirectional communication that the blogger can reevaluate his or her own thoughts and perceptions. This in itself would mitigate against the inclusion of the pathological narcissist who, under the clinical definition, is not open to criticism that might lead to self-development and revelation as the pathological narcissist does not consider other human subjects as little more than objects that provide narcissistic supplies in the form of uncritical praise and admiration. A pathological narcissist blogger might view more successful bloggers as objects of envy or inauthentic hero worship, but said pathologized individual takes their cues directly from a sadistic and monstrous superego rather than engage authentically with a reading audience. This sadistic superego continues to berate the narcissist with the constant refrain of not being good enough, of being weak and lazy, while the id compels the pathological narcissist to engage in high risk-taking behaviours and impulsivity (Vazir and Funder, 2006), or to execute the “scorched earth” policy of destroying social relations that no longer provide the perceived necessary narcissistic supplies. The turn to a kind of ruthless solipsism or vicious competition seems also to problematize what relation the pathological narcissistic blogger might have with a readership - especially with readers who are critical of what the blogger posts. It is not uncommon for that type of blogger to, when presented with an error or criticism, to denounce the critic, deflect responsibility, and portray themselves as a victim while only listening to a small core of supporters.
<30> The narcissistic blogger Boklage envisions is the sort that cannot be considered entirely pathologized. Self-interested and self-reflective writing, or diarizing, in itself does not automatically mean that one should seek psychiatric help since such acts are not aggressive or destructive ones where the blogger demands tribute and loyalty while being clinically incapable of reciprocity.
Commodified [Un]Happiness
<31> Phillips and Moberly takes us on a detour through the peripherals on Facebook, such as its games, which are anything but peripheral to the economic management of human emotions in Facebook’s cracked mirror of the unhappy self. Relying in part on Debord’s incisive and pithy indictments of capitalist culture as one indexed on promoting the spectacle and the inversion of the real. Phillips and Moberly’s focus on the game Social Life presents us with a key example of precisely the kind of exhibitionist and voyeuristic tendencies unite in the continued aggrandizement of the online self. Actions performed virtually and by remote are a reflection of a reflection, quantized in part by achieving objectives that increase the length of green status bars that come to symbolize “happiness.” Should the players, piloting their vicarious avatars, wish to engage in one-to-one vocal interaction, that is a feature that must be paid for with real money. The social aspect of Social Life is illusory, a spectacle designed to grant intimacy and immediacy through its prism of the unattainable, while at the same time reducing possible social intimacy among friends to mere utility - certainly hallmarks of pathological narcissism in effacing the subjectivity of others.
<32> What we are left with, in the Debordian sense, is a life indexed on the pursuit of a false happiness where the best result is simply adjustment, and the pathway to this spectacular happiness is littered with signs that tell us to amass virtual objects, to consume our way to self-actualization. By posting updates as content in an act of conspicuous production to enhance our status as happy beings engaged in happy acts of play, all the while miserably chasing after this digitized Fata Morgana, the triple register of alienation - from self, each other, and world - is further exacerbated.
The Triumph of the Id
<33> The proprietary demands placed upon personal electronic devices to facilitate Internet access are an attempt to translate analog time (the time of the external environment) into one of digital time which may be compressed or fragmented. It is in Internet behaviour that the id (das Es) flourishes, pursuing a program of pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance with no conception of consequence. The idea of consequence can only function if there is a corresponding adoption of continuous time in the triadic register of past, present, and future. Instead, the enabling function of an the Internet interface seems to enable and cultivate id-based behaviour (or else brings about a closer communication between the demands of the id and the ego, translated into a reconfiguration of the ego-ideal that the superego will punitively enforce). The time of the id is the eternal present, the epideictic function of self-display, self-disclosure, or self-masking. The participatory nature of Web 2.0 facilitates the expression of the ego-ideal, as well as providing a milieu in which to gratify the id-based impulses. What is particularly of interest would be how digital interaction has splintered the psychological subject by externalizing in materialized form the various levels of the conscious and unconscious. Although many of these online social networks provide a playground for the robust id, the superego’s presence is also felt in the way these network platforms are constructed, announcing the rules and controlling how discourse can appear in these milieus.
<34> Online social relations may be entirely dictated and governed by the determinist function of capitalist ideology in the form of the spectacle so that most communication must concern discussion of commodities. In this way, even the collapse of free and labour time in the presence of the Internet device is the extension of labour, but in the service of corporate influential dissemination. Since capitalism operates best according to a series of crises (Kairos), these are experienced as minor panics or agitation to further retrench one’s self in the act of consumption activities, even if no product is being purchased and only referenced. Since commodities take on the transcendental ideal, promising an end to alienation from each other and ourselves, a promise it cannot honour, we are left with the traces of this which provide us with the particular object rather than the abstract image of self-completion. Since commodities are indexed on pleasure-seeking or the illusion of leisure expansion, these are generally packaged in such a way as to appeal to the id. The violence endemic to the spectacle is expressed through acts of consumption and aggrandized self-display that operate as a means of achieving the ego-ideal of celebrity status. Since the very term celebrity is tautologous and can only be defined in reference to itself, the ego-ideal transfers the demands of the id to the online representation of the self. The quiet merger of the id and superego complete the process of auto-celebration, and yet requires tributary relationships in order to attain external validation.
<35> In The Ecstasy of Communication, Baudrillard writes: “Today the scene and the mirror have given way to a screen and network. There is no longer any transcendence or depth, but only the immanent surface of operations unfolding, the smooth and functional surface of communication.” (Baudrillard 1988, p. 12). If taken to mean that the staged scenario of representation has come to an end because there is no longer any interplay of subject and object in the currency of meaning, then the value of signification has also changed.
<36>Our online consumption is based on images and signs which ensures the illusion of our proximity and access to information while also producing a distance that operates according to a different spatiotemporal order. In a world governed by objects that are imbued with exchange-value as their primary meaning, the next step was to transform human subjects into objectified and manipulable signs. There is both narcissism and solipsism in this attitude toward other users where among the main goals of online social interaction is self-confirmation, ego validation, control, and carrying out the continued commodification of all social relations in the promiscuity of digital networks. The nomadic user is in constant pursuit of recollecting him or herself in the maternal, oceanic milieu of the online world and its promises of unity and completion. In reality, much of the Internet is an abyss of screened dis- and misinformation, stock opinions, and venues for self-display. Online social networks provide for growth for its own sake, be this the accumulation of one’s own images, the images of others, the collection of connection quantities, and the overall expansion of these networks in general. For those who can be classified as addicted to these online behaviours, the offline world presents itself as a nuisance, as a series of irritations and interruptions that distract the gaze from the screen. Yet, online presence alone becomes a redundant marker of one’s actual presence as though a deficit in online presence conjures up the fear of ego-scarcity. Thus compelled by the pressures of contemporary mores that makes of online social networking a cause celebre and a public good unto itself, online presencing is an act of marking one’s territory for fear that non-participation will mean alienation and social exclusion - a kind of digital homelessness, which is absurd given the nomadic nature of the territory and the hyper-mobility of self as capital. Those who are dedicated to the acts of online presence, the aim is to expand one’s presence so that it occupies maximum space - an aim that frustrates itself given that the spatial dimension of the Internet itself is constantly enlarging. In this way, users with this view to maximize space operate under the archaic illusion of limitations in space. This analog way of understanding the Internet does not correspond to a digital order of organization where spatial restrictions are no longer a factor. The real limitations are not in spatial terms, but speed; that is, the speed by which information can travel, and the speed by which one has the energy to expand within digital space. Digital time and digital space are ekstatic in nature in so far as they operate largely outside of analog space and time. They are not governed by, nor do they keep pace with, the natural environment.
<37> The very fact that we can exist as online parvenus that announce our every banal thought or action to an anonymous public attests to the production of waste without the intermediary of producing something with use-value. Just as celebrities may be seen as existing as symbolic of superfluousness and sumptuousness (adding to their banal acts a kind of gilded appeal since we can relate to those actions and consider them spectacular because the cultural icons perform these as well), the online user can also revel in the production of waste which, not entirely ironically, is proof of affluence.
<38> In answer to the narrator in Borges’ “Library of Babel” who declaims “let your enormous library be justified!” (Borges 1962, p. 57) the Internet can and will resist justification because it is also an apparatus of sanctioned disorder, noise, and waste. This is the logic of obsolescence in objects brought to its extreme, now transposed to the user’s productions and the user him or herself that operates as an object in the digital domain: every one of our online productions of self expression is a highly compressed cycle of obsolescence, at times rendered obsolete moments after it has been produced. One could ask, just how long does a status update retain any value? - the answer being that such updates - unless reiterated by a mass of connections or highlighted as newsworthy (as in the case of making a threat to blow up an airport) - have a value that emerges and vanishes with the speed of an artificially created element on the periodic table. This flash or instant of value’s emergence and dissipation in many of our online productions is hastened by the over-supply and constant addition of information as well as a cultivated fickleness with regard to all information. It is our helplessness in the face of so much information that fosters in us a weariness and protective indifference to new information. [2] In such cases, it can result in viewing all information as having an equally depressed value. The scale of information’s abundance operates according to the laws of supply and demand. The one way by which we can prioritize this information is by an appeal to credibility, but even credibility is a transient idea in an era of information self-sufficiency, contempt for the expert, and the rise of the citizen journalist, opinion blogs, and the participatory frameworks that create constant feedback between advertisers and consumers.
<39> It is not the classical psychoanalytic assumption that we are fundamentally irrational creatures governed by the destructive subconscious drives of the id which needs to be contained by state and social structures, Freud’s later work notwithstanding. It is indeed demonstrable fact that psychoanalysts were employed to work in collusion with corporations to channel the id toward the “safety” of shopping and contributing to the success of capitalist economic expansion. However, despite this safety valve on the id, it was not the individual’s id that was ever at issue that would either erupt in anarchic destruction of the state, nor was it simply a matter of controlling individuals in isolation to induce aggressive consumption. Instead, it is the control and perfection of the collective id. Crowd studies point to the abdication of the ego in large mobs, and crowds function as a kind of id-driven dynamo (see especially the two landmark texts by Gustave le Bon and Elias Canetti). It is not just the mobs that erupt in violence against the state, but the spectacle’s ability to marshal the id collectively toward mass consumption movements. Or, in the blurred functions of production and consumption, a flash-prosumption. It cannot simply be the inducement or propaganda of the media, regardless how effective or ubiquitous, that is responsible for the formation and driving of the collective id, for we cannot overestimate the power of the media in shaping identity. The mass media is a contributor within a larger program to collectivize this mass id and to harness it for the advancement of capitalism’s goal which is simply growth by means of frequent crises. This program is not run by any actual social agents, but is a product of an autonomously self-regulating system, powered by both the blind actions of corporations and the state, as well as the further empowerment of the collective id.
<40> In this we add a layer to Debord’s assertion that all social relations are governed by the mediated images of the spectacle. The inherent energy of these social relations, multiplied by the still existing tension (albeit a sublimated one) with the real, generates a reserve of collective id from which all social relations can draw. We leave to others to determine if this restructuring of social relations is a perversion of the global village. By optimization of the infantilization of the digital social sphere, maximizing the “circuit of irrelevance” through strategies of facile mass participation and short-term speculative minimum social engagement via slacktivism and clicktivism, this creates the perfect storm for facilitating id-based behaviours that run the gamut from mindless consumerism to opinion polarization/aggregation that inevitably lead to further online aggression.
<41> Online identities, divested of depth and placed within their hyper-individualized content in a pre-made online social network form, have already made the transition to being commodities that others can collect and treat as on-demand objects. This over and against the natural disjunction between the traffic of actual goods and information about them where the latter can be mobilized at an accelerated rate according to the compression of digital space-time (Harvey 2011, p. 190). These anemic online representations are thus reduced to their exchange value (their surplus value pegged on an infinite potentiality that is never truly actualized), and as well reifications of the communication economy. Baudrillard argues that each lives within his or her own bubble, a self as satellized from the natural world as the natural world becomes satellized from the self. This distance is entirely abstract, as opposed to the closing (or pollution) of that distance through the instantaneity of global communication. This bewitching sovereignty where each is a master at his or her own controls of operating their online puppet, ventriloquizing their identity, is a continuation of a game of personal aggrandizement and narcissism which, in the end, only succeeds via the commodification of all online interaction and social relations, into a further retrenchment of ego by alienation. No longer is it simply the alienation of the labourer from his or her labour since consumption and production become identical rather than symmetrical processes. What was once circumstantial consumption in the early public sphere such as the gathering at coffee houses to discuss politics, has become the driving force by which these social relations can exist at all. At the point which any popular online social utility like Facebook or Twitter make the transition to becoming verbs, these replace the terms associated with social acts as speaking or writing with a new kind of mouth and hand, the prosthesis of communication colonized by a commercial brand and with it the economic interests thereof.
<42> It is at yet another level that subjectivity becomes reduced with the aid of digital communication, and this is in mediating subjects as information. But in returning to production and consumption, we have the conflation of labour and leisure, confined to a single mechanism such as the cellular phone or the computer. Entertainment, information, and work is condensed within a single interface. Leisure itself becomes a nebulous term: “the present ‘liberation from labour,’ the increase of leisure, is in no way a liberation within labour, nor a liberation from the world shaped by this labour.” (Debord 2000, p. 29). Even in “leisure” we are still reifying the spectacle’s economic determinism, still doing the work of capital by engaging in behaviours that give power to the corporate influences that force social communication to make use of its products and services. Furthermore, although antedating the Internet, Debord says: “The economic system founded on isolation is a circular production of isolation. The technology is based on isolation and the technical process isolates in turn. From the automobile to television, all the goods selected by the spectacular system are also its weapons for a constant reinforcement of the conditions of isolation of ‘lonely crowds.’” (Debord 2000, p. 30). This, in McLuhan terms, can be called understood in part as contributive of disembodiment.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank both the editorial and technical staff of Reconstruction for their diligent assistance in providing an opportunity for this topic to be explored. I would also like to thank the contributors to this dossier for providing their exceptional insights on such an important issue.
Notes
[1] Work by Jean Twenge, J.D. Foster, S. Konrath et al have employed meta-analytical approaches to determining that there has been an increase, at least with respect to sampling among college students. However, we must exercise caution here when we migrate such observation to a digital milieu: to make overarching claims that suggest that people are more mundane, narcissistic, exhibitionist, or any other quality must take into consideration that the participatory nature of SNSs and microblogging now facilitates a means by which people can digitally document their lives with more ease. That is, the underlying attitudes and behaviours of people may not have changed, but we now have the digital documentation to see these more clearly.
[2] This may be expressed in a condition this author calls Webschmerz where a cultivated apathy or anomie with respect to the novelty of information production and alleged “information overload” results in indifference or cynical excitation.
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