Are We All Narcissists? The Pseudo-Narcissism of the Internet

The term “narcissism” derives from a Greek myth that the Roman poet told in the Metamorphoses. In this myth, Narcissus is a man of exceptional beauty, so immensely proud of his appearance to refuse any female or male suitors. One day, Nemesis, the goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to arrogance, decides to listen to the many victims of rejection and avenge them: she forces Narcissus to be infatuated with his reflection in the waters of a pond. He contemplates his image for days, despairing to catch his reflection until he finally dies in the waters. Today the American population is experiencing an increase in narcissistic behaviors, recent studies conducted by experimental psychologists say. The topic is controversial in academia and popular magazines. It concerns Internet users and specifically those who use social networks. A few years ago, in The New York Times, professor Jean Twenge from San Diego University shed light on a contemporary disease that affects the Internet, claiming that pathological narcissism causes the intensive use of social networks. However, an attentive reader might already have noticed that the story is missing the second point of view, Echo’s one. The nymph Echo was one of Narcissus’ female suitors. When Narcissus died in the waters under Echo’s very eyes, she kept repeating after, “Alas! Alas!” The introduction of her standpoint makes it possible for analyzing the notion of pseudo-narcissism by René Girard. Girard is a philosopher of social sciences who coined theories applicable to different domains; the co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, admired him, as did his colleague Michel Serres, who dubbed him the Darwin of social sciences. While at John Hopkins University, René Girard developed the theory of mimetic desire. His theory states that the “man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires” (Girard 1987, 122). Recontextualizing this statement in Narcissus’ story, we can say that Narcissus is a pseudo-Narcissus because he is not attracted by his image but rather by his suitors’ desires who foster his love.

Narcissists are only apparently self-sufficient, masking voluntarily the imitation of others’ desires. In Instagram, influencers are not in love with themselves but with the image in the eyes of their followers. “The subject desires himself by imitating others who desire him,” Jean-Pierre Dupuy says (1989, 494). The followers are contaminated by the pseudo-narcissist’s self-love, which they imitate as positive feedback by reinforcing the apparent narcissism of the pseudo-narcissist. Or influencers imitate followers’ desire by taking themselves as a reference and expressing indifference toward others through a fake manifestation of desire. Self-lovers constantly need to reestablish the attraction toward themselves by provoking it. Despite the suitability of pseudo-narcissists to social media, the Freudian theory of narcissism is still the most acclaimed one on the Internet. Based on the Greek myth of Narcissus, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud built a theory of narcissism stating that “the individual acts as if he were in love with himself” (Freud [1938] 1995, Ch. 3.3). According to Freud, adult narcissism is a pathology. It entails the renunciation of the outside world and the redirection of the desire towards the individual, also known in the Freudian terminology as the ego. The investment of desire in oneself implies that the narcissist doesn’t require approval, exerting only a great charm on others. The more one loves oneself, the more one is supposed to be popular and praised. René Girard harshly criticized the Freudian analysis of narcissistic individuals (Girard 1965, 105–107), stating that Freud doesn’t explain why narcissists attract non-narcissistic individuals (Dupuy 2005). The theory of mimetic desire offers a simple solution: narcissists don’t direct a self-generated desire on themselves but rather imitate the desire of others toward their person. Narcissists, indeed, do not admire themselves ex nihilo. In John William Waterhouse’s painting, it is clear how Narcissus doesn’t attract Echo from the start, but he falls in love with Echo’s desire for him, becoming self-absorbed as if he had always been. Today we have more technology than ever in history to explore our bodies and activities, but are we self-admiring ourselves? According to Girard, we admire our reflections in others’ digital eyes. When we share posts on social networks, we are eager to get rewarded by shares and likes to compare numbers of followers between accounts, to compete for viewers on YouTube, and to break records on Strava and other sports apps. Are we not worried about becoming popular? Are we not already entered in the competition for popularity? The digital era amplified the formation, not of narcissists, but pseudo-narcissists craving for visibility and in competition between each other on the worldwide scale of the Internet. We are more than ever in need of the remote others.

References

• Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. 1989. “Self-Reference in Literature.” Poetics 18 (6): 491–515.
• Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. 2005. “Panic and the Paradoxes of the Social Order.” In Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media: In Discussion with Christian Theology, edited by Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmair-Pösel, 215–233. Münster: LIT Verlag.
• Freud, Sigmund. (1938) 1995. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Translated by A. A. Brill. New York: Modern Library.
• Girard, René. 1965. Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Girard, René. 1987. “Generative Scapegoating.” In Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, edited by Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, 122. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Kaplan, Frédéric. 2015. “Les technologies absorbantes.” Paper presented at Le design de l’attention: création et automatisation, Centre Pompidou, Paris, June 4. https://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/evenement/le-design-de-lattention/.
• Rodighiero, Dario. 2021. Mapping Affinities: Democratizing Data Visualization. English edition. Geneva: Métis Presses. https://www.metispresses.ch/en/mapping-affinities.
• Rodighiero, Dario, and Loup Cellard. 2019. “Self-Recognition in Data Visualization.” EspacesTemps.Net Electronic Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, August. https://doi.org/10/ghmsrc.