Of Tweeting, Facebooking &

Self-Love 

By Farahnaz Zahidi Moazzam

Farahnaz Zahidi Moazzam is a freelance writer and editor with a passion for writing. Her focus is human rights, gender issues and reproductive health. She loves blogging, traveling, is a chaai person and a wannabe photographer. Her pet peeve is marginalization on any grounds. She lives in Karachi & blogs here.

When George Orwell, in his essay “Why I Write”, cited four motives behind why a writer writes prose, the first he mentioned was “sheer egoism”. He described this motivation as “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.”

Orwell mentioned Aesthetic Enthusiasm, Historical Impulse and Political Purpose distinctly after mentioning egoism, and as much more diluted motivations.

When I read this, the narcissist in me lapped up the idea! Because Orwell had termed egoistic people, and especially writers, the “whole top crust of humanity”. He of course differentiated between writers and journalists though, and I felt squirmish at that.

Fact is, no matter how important it is to me to make the world a better place through my work as a journalist, and trust me that IS important to me, I have often in moments of honest reflection confessed to myself that my prime motivation may be something else.

To console my pricking conscience that kept saying “oh, so that’s why you write? To be recognized through your work!” I asked an old friend, a gifted artist. Was it the same for him, I asked? “The desire for my work to be seen, appreciated, loved, bought, talked about – yes, that’s what I love the most. Money is seriously a bonus, as is making a social or political statement for a bigger cause,” he said.

Agreed. Accepted. We all need validation. We all need to be told that we are important, unique, different, above average. Not just writers and politicians and businessmen and successful people. Everyone. For humans are basically hedonistic – a pleasure-seeking species. We seek “highs” all the time. Money, children, sensory pleasures, drugs. Even spirituality or wanting your life to be meaningful. All these are highs. So is recognition, and a very basic one at that.

Narcissism is an interesting term. It can simply mean healthy self-love, or go on to mean conceit, self-centeredness, vanity or an inflated ego. It can progress into the “narcissistic personality disorder” in which people have an exaggerated sense of self-importance and a pre-occupation with themselves. This eventually can lead to an indifference towards others and an obsession with one’s self. Selfishness often stems from this.

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a beautiful young man who rejected all potential lovers, but then tragically fell in love with his own reflection in a pool.

Enough psycho-analysis? Perhaps not. Enter present day, the age of “digital narcissism”. Where every move, thought, photograph, achievement (or lack thereof) is not just to be relished, but to be seen. Some of us may be able to keep that under control. Others like me can’t. They simply have too much to say, to share, to tell and the desire for all of it to be “liked”. Many are more subtle in how they do this – they don’t do it in an overwhelming manner. They weigh each facebook entry and every pretty little tweet, and though they secretly check every few minutes how many have “liked” it, they appear non-chalant. And then there are those who really don’t care, ironically, whether people recognize their desperation for recognition or not. They are there, in your face, all the time.

Dutch visual artist Willem Popelier exhibited the controversial project “Showroom Girls” that raised a debate on a topical issue: How does the Internet and social media affect users’ privacy? Popelier believes that people often expose themselves in an obsessive way and become fascinated by their own face and image. He calls this phenomenon “Digital narcissism”. Popelier sees a paradox in this type of social behaviour:  “We don’t want the state to control our every step and listening to every word we say, we don’t want strangers in our homes and [we don’t] put curtains in front of our windows. When talking to a stranger we don’t share our intimate thoughts or our private life. But as soon as we are on the Internet, we forget all that and can only think of one thing: exhibiting ourselves, marketing ourselves as nice, funny, great, good people.” (Ref: http://owni.eu/2011/11/16/social-media-or-digital-narcissism/)

A blogger who calls himself “The Man Who Fell Asleep”, wrote in an interesting blog titled “Social Media and Digital Narcissim” that social media has changed his inner landscape in many ways. At one point, he says, “The other way in which my inner landscape has changed is that I no longer have any inner monologue. Instead, I have Twitter. If I have a thought, before I am even aware of it, I find myself editing it down to 140 characters and reshaping it, lopping off the messy parts that don’t fit neatly with my established online brand identity. Rather than having a thought and passively reflecting upon it, turning it over in my mind, examining it, I find myself packaging it as a product: a tiny parcel of characters to be consumed by my hungry followers. Which begs the question: what happens to the other thoughts of mine?” (Ref: http://themanwhofellasleep.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/social-media-and-digital-narcissism/)

On second thought, though, may be this is being too hard on ourselves. May be that’s who we are. Gregarious animals, not islands. We relish attention, and we often deserve it. In the Hollywood movie “Shall We Dance”, Beverly Clark (the character Susan Sarandon plays) says, “We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean?” That’s what it’s all about. The desire to be witnessed. Even the mundane, the insipid and the ordinary parts of our lives. Life is absolute bliss if you find a real witness to your life. Even one real witness would do. But often, that doesn’t happen. If in the real world people have stopped witnessing each other, and “virtual witnessing” makes up for that, so be it. Enough said. It is time I go and update my status.