Has social media made us all narcissists?

In a month that’s seen two sites launch that are purely focused on asking and answering questions,we have to ask ourselves if the success of these sites (early reviews enthusiastic and positive) is down to the fact that it feeds our two guilty pleasures in social media : narcissism and nosiness.

I was intrigued by Formspring myself. Firstly, I liked the idea of the site because it seemed a nice little niche, simply asking and answering questions. Then as I joined the site and started looking around I realised that I was enjoying it for 2 very distinct reasons. Firstly, it afforded me the ability a bit of ‘underwear drawer peeking’. I got to see people’s answers to quirky questions, such as ‘what 3 things would you save if your house was on fire’. Then the more time I spent on the site, I realised that, as much as I was interested in what people had to say, I was eager to get my own answers out there. I wanted my answers to be unique, funny and a chance to say a little bit more abut myself (as if I don’t say enough already). Formspring is fascinating, you can just keep asking yourself random questions which force you to think about yourself a little bit more. Then, of course, there’s the poking round other people’s profiles, which can make for endless fun.

Is all this nosiness and narcissism healthy? Probably not. For someone that’s always been a little bit nosy naturally, I find that’s gone into overdrive with social media. I think, in a large part, Twitter is the reason for this. The very openness of the site means you can see people’s updates without ever having to follow them, see who they follow and who follows them, see where they’re going that night (if they share that information) and you have access to a whole host of information about them. I find I follow a pattern, if I hear a bit of gossip about someone on Twitter, I head straight to their Twitter account to see if I can find anything that supports the gossip. Pretty obsessive, but I don’t think I’m alone.

Why do I think Twitter plays such a large part in this nosiness + narcissism (nn syndrome)? Because the most common answer I get back when trying to explain Twitter to someone, is ‘but why do I care what someone else is doing’ , quickly followed by ‘I don’t want people to know what I’m doing all the time’.  For us on Twitter, that’s pretty much the norm. The amount you can know about someone before having actually met them is staggering.

Twitter and social media in general is so popular because it perfectly feeds  into basic human nature. Our desire to know about others and our desire to be known to others. So what if you’re looking to feed this nn syndrome? I’ve outlined a few links below for the narcissist, or the nosy parker in you

Are you internet famous?

Wired have a nice little app that allows you to put in your Twitter, Myspace and your own site to calculate your internet fame. To put it in perspective, I scored 330, Barack Obama gets 5,910

Who’s not following you on Twitter?

If you really care who’s not returning the love on Twitter, this site allows you to enter your username and brings up the names of people you’re following that aren’t following you back.

Spy on people with your iphone

Believe it or not, there is an app that allows you to turn your iphone into a security camera. (itunes link). You can take pictures using a countdown or sound trigger, so you don’t even need to be in the same room to do your snooping. I’m actually quite surprised this made it onto the appstore and I’d advise that you please use it responsibly.

Check out people’s favourites on Twitter

This is a very easy way to pass the time aimlessly and does actually feel a bit like rifling through someone’s underwear drawer. You can see the favourites of people you’re following on Twitter by going to their profile and clicking the ‘favourites’ link on the right hand side.

Valuate my site

If you want to know how your/other sites stand up, you can calculate how much your site is worth. Why not compare it to some others while you’re there?

Set up a vanity search

If you really want to know what’s being said about you and when, set up a vanity search on Google Alerts and you’ll get a nice email every time your name is mentioned online! If you want to do this, I’d recommend using the ” search marks so you get relevant results.

Find your Twitter ranking

If it’s all about the numbers to you, this site will tell you how you rank in terms of followers in your location and the whole of Twitter.

The 365 project

The Flickr 365 project is intended as a way to remember a year in your life, by taking a photo every day. Plenty of people are taking a picture of themselves each day and sharing it with the world. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this is vain or not
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