Billy Corgan Says Facebook is Creating a Generation of Narcissists

Coming from a guy who reduced one of the greatest rock bands from the 90s to rubble, because of is own "egocentrism" I'd say it makes him a jealous expert on the subject...

I don't think the young today use FB anymore. If I ask my kids they just laugh about it, saying FB is so old.

originally posted by: CaIIYourBluff
Speak for yourself.I know I'm not a narcissist.I'm the fool on the hill.

I'm too damn good looking to be a narcissist.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
I don't think the young today use FB anymore. If I ask my kids they just laugh about it, saying FB is so old.

Same here with my 15 year old.

I think she uses Instagram and Twitter. Or, was that last week?

It's not facebook's fault. Facebook is just a web-site, like ATS. The real problem is people have become addicted to receiving those red notification balloons. It has consumed them into thinking people actually "like" what they post. It's a way to make their sorry lives, a little less pathetic.

Has anyone ever noticed, facebook's busiest hours are Mon-Thurs, 9-5. They spend their time, during work hours, checking out their notifications and emails.

a reply to: rukia

Billy Corgan Says Facebook is Creating a Generation of Narcissists

Billy Corgan is an Idiot.

Facebook creates nothing.

Facebook is a tool that exposes or mirrors the actions of people.

Always the victim mentality when we blame something else for our own behaviors.

Heh, a bit ago when Fakebook was down due to some technical difficulties, some comedian said something along the line that on this day millions of people probably had to call all their "friends" every few minutes to tell them that they just got up, then again to tell them they just took a dump and how big it was and again to let them know they were on their way to school/work and other such important information all day long.

originally posted by: WeRpeons
a reply to: LSU0408
[...]

-It's sad very few kids play outside today. The video games have really made them home bodies.

[...]

I'm not sure if that has all that much to do with video games. You should take a look at the schedules some kids have:
School till 4 or 5 pm, then extra tuition lessons because they nave a C in maths and then some other crap that their parents think is useful and then homework. Many simply don't have time to play outside or at all, because they need to be primed for their slave-jobs as young as possible.
A few years ago some slimy economy-suit suggested kids should start to learn their first foreign language (English) in kindergarten.

I feel such blanket generalizations get it a bit wrong and miss the target somewhat.

I don't think it's so much that Facebook or other social media create narcissism - and it certainly isn't that if it does, such narcissism didn't exist prior to the information age. I feel it's more that - and this applies to all ages, even if it starts earlier with younger generations as they're born into it - as we shift more and more of our communication away from direct, face to face, or even at least voice based communication, and more towards text on screens... we become less accustomed to empathy. That can manifest itself in a lot of ways, narcissism being just one potential form.

The internet essentially feeds and facilitates our already existing need to serve the id, so to speak. I'm using structural model psychology terms which I know are a bit outdated now, but I still think as an analogy they work here. Normally, the ego sees reality and the superego tries to impose an empathetic or at least ethical filter on both what we do about said reality, and what the id wants - which is always, simply, just that: what it wants.. But when you can't see a person, and there's just text on a screen, the sphere of reality for the ego to perceive is severely curtailed.

And so the impetus for the superego to impose an ethical or empathetic aspect to our interactions is also lessened because we don't SEE a PERSON. We just see text on a screen, or at best, an avatar, which we sort of interpret as this half-person half... thing. This inhuman entity. Not consciously, but on a preconcious or even unconscious level. And then we often turn that entity into an adversarial one, because we're online feeding our id and our own narcissistic satiation (which is basically all the id ever seeks,) so anyone separate from that or hindering that becomes an obstacle. Unconciously we dehumanize them and see anyone not agreeing with us, upvoting us, etc. as an obstacle to our own narcissistic satiation.

The internet in text form is like the collective id of our society. Often - too often - people just react and spew things out without thinking or empathizing because it's unnatural and unintuitive to our minds and brains to see plain, cold text and equate that with a person.

Not everyone does this, naturally. But I do think there's something to be said for how this is a new paradigm in our cognitive evolution as a species, and it stands to reason that it will challenge and muck with our age old means of coping with and feeling empathy and consideration for others both personally and at a societal level.

So I don't think it's quite right to say social media breeds a new generation of narcissists, so much as the internet as a whole facilitates the id's desire for narcissistic satiation because it represents an unnatural, unintutiive way to communicate, and more work for the ego and superego to maintain empathy and rational perceptions of what we're actually DOING when we interact online. In short, it requires more thought, more extra "steps" - it requires mindfulness, constant remembering of the fact that a human being is on the other side of the screen. Steps which, in a healthy human being at least, would happen automatically in face to face communication because it's self-evident that a person is standing there talking to you.

Anyway, that's just my theory. The good news is, if I'm right or anywhere in the ballpark even, things like Periscope, Facetime, Blab, reaction videos, etc. are transforming the internet into a more humanistic, visual experience rather than a purely textual one. So I think with time, some of this will be ameliorated, as we begin to crave more holistic human interaction on the internet and not be satisfied just with text.

Just my two cents. Peace.