Employers naturally prefer immigrants who, in addition to working long hours for low pay, do not have the inclination to throw a faux-celeb hissy fit on Twitter
So how was 2013 for youIJ Not sureIJ Don't worry: A new Facebook algorithm collates your ‘personal highlights’ based on the ‘likes’ and comments you've received. To quote blogger Jamie Bartlett, who studies social media for the think-tank Demos, “I can now foist my wonderful year on undeserving friends, forcing them to relive my glories — which presumably they know already, given that their ‘likes' created the list anyway”.
If you're not a Facebook user, that probably doesn't mean much. So here is Bartlett's summary. Social media wants to turn us into narcissists — and it's working: “Young people spend hours pruning Facebook ‘likes', and photo-shopping unflattering photos. There are whole businesses dedicated to brand You. Yuk.”
Yuk indeed. We already know that Facebook, Twitter and Google sometimes channel our personal data to advertisers and Governments. But equally worrying is the endless notching up of our ‘personalised love-in’, as Bartlett calls it.
The Internet is now crawling with men and women — mostly but not exclusively young — who behave like Broadway divas screaming for hand-sculpted truffles and Mongolian mineral water in their dressing rooms. Or they fancy themselves as billionaire CEOs. Or possibly guests on the BBC’s Question Time receiving rapturous applause for their screechy right-on platitudes.
And all from the privacy of their malodorous bedrooms.
When did this narcissism take holdIJ In his book, Mediated, Thomas De Zengotita draws our attention to filmed interviews with ordinary people in the 50s: “They lean into the microphone and glance awkwardly around… they speak in semi-formal tones, as if reciting”. In contrast, when the news cameras capture the modern man or woman in the street, “they are total pros, laughing in the right places, comments and mannerisms pitched just right for the occasion”.
De Zengotita was writing a decade ago, before Facebook went public and Twitter was invented. “Regular folk”, as he calls them, had picked up the flashing smile, flick of the hair and mwah mwah from camcorders, karaoke and reality television. Consumers had switched from keeping up with the Joneses to mimicking the lifestyles of the super-rich. Stir in the excitement of accumulating YouTube followers and being retweeted by a Famous Person and suddenly you're a celeb. At least in your own head.
We're not talking about harmless narcissism, though. On the contrary, the human wreckage of fake celebrity keeps piling up. Consider the plane passenger who earned global notoriety over Christmas by tweeting a ‘joke’ about Aids and Africa. How could a Public Relations executive be so stupidIJ But her Twitter account revealed dozens of ‘edgy’ one-liners: The silly girl thought she was some sort of stand-up comedian, a sadly common delusion.
There's a parallel with addiction. Most people can police their behaviour, but technology seizes on addictive or narcissistic tendencies and magnifies them. Already, countless teenagers are developing celebrity egos that will render them unemployable — except by their own short-lived start-up, of which they will naturally be CEO or Senior Consulting Editor in Chief.
No wonder employers prefer immigrants who, in addition to being prepared to work long hours for low pay, don't have the slightest inclination to throw a faux-celeb hissy fit on Twitter. Good for them. Frankly, it's hard to feel sorry for our home-grown online narcissists. let them air-kiss each other in the dole queue until reality sinks in — if it ever does.