Philippe Bénéton, Andy Warhol, and the Narcissism of Social Networking

This morning I read a New York Times by David Brooks about a striking example of modern-day narcissism in Hollywood. Evaluating this example along with the steady rise in narcissistic attitudes since the 1950s, he writes, “There can’t be many people at once who live in a celebrity environment so perfectly designed to inflate self-love. Even so, a surprising number of people share that trait (2010).” Of course, not all well-known people or narcissists and not all narcissists are well known. However, if a “celebrity environment” is a contributing condition for the development of narcissism, then perhaps the modern rise is narcissism isn’t all that surprising. In 1968, Andy Warhol famously prophesied that: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”. Could Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Blogger, and Twitter be giving us enough of the celebrity’s sensation of notoriety, reciprocation, and peer-approval to awake the narcissist within? Granted, the general onslaught of the worship of self pre-dates the conception of modern social networking and “new media” by several decades. In his eye-opening lament of modernity, Equality by Default, Philippe Bénéton draws an example of this new religion from a seemingly unlikely source: the evolution of U.S. Military recruitment propaganda. In an attempt to recruit soldiers for the First World War, the military distributed the famous poster of Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer and sternly declaring “I want you for [the] U.S. Army”. The poster evoked a sense of patriotism and duty. In the 1990s, the U.S. Army launched a campaign with the slogan “be all you can be,” appealing to the potential recruits’ sense of self-actualization. One of the Army’s most recent slogans, “an Army of one,” evokes the modern sense of atomization and even narcissism (2004). In many cases, social media provides us with opportunities for even greater levels of self-glorification. However, the fact that social media allows us to connect with increasingly greater numbers of people clearly indicates its immense power for good. Far from inevitably leading to atomization, these media forms can facilitate collaboration, across distance, culture, religion, and class. The rapid exchange of ideas across social media lines of course allows for traffic of uplifting, true, and thought-provoking discourse that is widely beneficial, along with the violent, the indecent, the hateful, and the self-glorifying. Every technological media development from the printing press to the iPhone, has expanded our ability to influence other people and, by so doing, bring notoriety to ourselves. If we are going to wield this power, we must accept that it carries a certain responsibility. Is social media good or bad? That is entirely up to you.

Works Cited:

Bénéton, Philippe. 2004. Equality by default: An essay on modernity as confinement. Translated by Ralph C. Hancock. Wilmington, Deleware: ISI Books.

Brooks, David. 2010. The gospel of Mel Gibson. New York Times, July 16, Op-ed.

Notes: Thank you to my dear friend Katie Nelson for helping me set up this blog. For one example of the positive uses of social media, please visit another blog that Katie created: Sustain Haiti.