A Culture of Self Obsession

No, the irony of blogging about self obsession is not lost on me. And, as a disclaimer, before I start spouting off my opinions I want it to be crystal clear that I do not mean to speak from a position of authority or superiority. I am both a victim and a happily aware perpetuator of this self obsessed culture. But my intention for the next several minutes of your time is not to convince you of a better lifestyle nor is it to make you feel like a bad person. We all seem to be in this boat together, after all. No, my intention is to highlight aspects of our society that I am convinced act as perpetrators of this culture of obsessive narcissism. For the sake of ease, I will divide them into three parts: Social Media, Technology, and Self Help. I'll even bold the parts where each section begins so that your inevitably wandering mind will remain at attention. I might even throw in some pictures. 

Social Media

This one is so trite and overly discussed that it's almost not worth the exasperated breath we all waste on it. Yes, we get it. Facebook is melting our brains and, most likely, our corneas. I'm not as concerned with Facebook and Twitter, however. Certainly, the obsessive need for validation from our peers and a rampant desire to garner as many likes as possible on Instagram are unhealthy aspects of our society. But we all know this. Hell, we are fully aware of the damaging aspects of these platforms yet we continue to use them anyway. Ironically, of course. But before you roll your eyes too far back into your head, hear me out. Irony is the new asshole on the block. Particularly, irony has arrived in the form of Buzzfeed quizzes. Perhaps you've heard of them? They come in all shapes and sizes ranging from which US President you are to what piece of furniture you are. 

My psychological profile.

I'm not saying these aren't fun. Hell, I've taken more than I'd care to say and if you say you haven't you're a damn liar. What I am saying, however, is that they are indicative of something more than they appear. On the surface, they masquerade as "ironic" outlets for entertainment, allowing us to fulfill our curiosity about whatever stupid thing we may be akin to. But below the surface, they reveal something much darker: our craving need for validation. Some absolute genius in the Buzzfeed marketing department realized this and that's why the company is churning our hundreds of these things a week. Why do we take a test to find out which fucking member of Destiny's Child we are? Because we want to know more about ourselves. We are obsessed with the idea of our own personalities. We want to be reassured that who we are is cool and that someone else or something else reflects that. Facebook granted us the opportunity to share every intimate detail of our real (and often overly exaggerated) lives. When we became comfortable with the idea of sharing our outermost world, we started to become anxious about what was on the inside. Buzzfeed gave us an outlet for that anxiety and obsession. But are we growing up to be a bunch of people that identify as Beyonce-William Howard Taft-Coffee Tables? Part of me hopes not. (The other part is thrilled at the prospect....ironically, of course.) 

Technology 

Arguably similar to social media, technology is the second third of the three part mix that defines our culture of self obsession. Once again, it's sort of beating a dead horse to bitch about the damaging effects of a technology obsessed world. Hell, Orwell did it in 1948. But, much like social media, the effects of technology have gone from ruining our interpersonal interactions to making us self obsessed narcissists. In an earlier blog post of mine, I did a quick overview of the nauseatingly self righteous attitude of those who thought that they could help the clean water deficit by merely not touching their phones for five minutes. This is merely the tip of the self obsessed iceberg. Diving below the surface reveals a world full of millennials, each carrying a phone shaped computer filled to the brim with quick updates on world issues and two minute videos about world hunger. Technology has made us into navel gazing pricks that furiously type out tweets about fair trade chocolate from behind the safety of our Apple products. Suddenly, we have the opportunity to vomit our views and morals into the stratosphere and to every phone we can reach. But why?

Many may argue it is to prove to our friends and family that we are globally minded and culturally aware. After all, why else would we pore through websites to find the best (and easiest) ways to help the global community? But really, it's because we want to reaffirm our own morals. We want to convince ourselves that we are not just better than everyone else, but a genuinely good person deep down underneath. We already know that technology and social media are bad for us. With thousands upon thousands of words being written about it, how could we not? So, in an effort to distance ourselves from a downward spiraling society, we try our hardest to utilize our technology to be morally "correct." We use technology to, effectively, bitch about the effects of technology. In a way, it's sort of a laudable decision. To take the shitty world around us and try to use it for good is a noble pursuit. But are we actually doing any good or are we merely masking our own useless contributions by doing them with style and fanfare? Starving children in Africa will probably go with the latter. 

Self Help

Ah, the crown jewel of self obsession. Our parents encountered this multi-billion dollar, profit driven beast in the form of books. We're getting it in the form of vague, unsubstantiated articles written in websites like Thought Catalog and Elite Daily. These aesthetically pleasing websites are chock full of pictures of attractive people and articles that reaffirm how cool life is and how we should just accept that by learning a language, going outside, and reenacting J. Crew ads on the beach.

Look how much better this woman's life is than yours.

The articles are, for all intents and purposes, a constant conveyor belt of rehashed ideas about self acceptance. So why do we continually eat this shit up? Most likely because we're depressed and anxious about our futures. A shitty economy and a culture of fear will do that to you. But, the faults of politicians and bankers aside, there is a sinister and self-serving group of assholes that is hellbent on squeezing every bit of profit and opportunity from our generation's anxiety and depression as possible. They are known as TED. 

TED Talks are incredibly short and entertaining lectures given by interesting and charismatic people about, well, anything. The topics are usually intellectually worthy and the talks are typically given in a way that makes the concepts easy to understand. But there is a major problem with the entire system. It fosters a desire to know as opposed to a desire to learn. TED has already received wide backlash and criticism for oversimplifying concepts. And it should. The problem with TED Talks is that people don't actually want to spend hours learning about complex ideas. They want to spend 20 to 30 minutes learning about the basic concept of something so that they can repeat it during a conversation. TED Talks are incredibly good at getting the main point of something across in a short amount of time. But it's really not good at actually teaching anything at all. Most of it is very vague information aimed at falsely enriching the lives of young people, knowing full well that we are in a vulnerable state of self obsession. 

TED Talks don't just teach academic concepts, though. The organization has a wide variety of self help seminars, aimed at preaching life advice at a bunch of twenty somethings who are shitting their pants at the idea of stepping into the real world. But this isn't actually helping us. Watching these videos and trying to repeat the vague and often senseless advice is doing nothing but confusing us further about how we should live. Because that's the real crux of the whole ordeal. We are so concerned with how we should go about our lives that we look to people we deem experts on the subject for help. TED takes advantage of our vulnerability and that's just shitty. But the real problem, and the problem that I am certainly a part of, is that we are just too damn wrapped up in our own obsessive self image. Not an image to the outside world, but the image we see when we look in the mirror. We are so obsessed with being content with what looks back at us that we spend countless hours listening to people give exciting presentations about problem solving. Lest we forget, those people haven't figured this shit out either. And, hell, maybe we aren't supposed to have it figured out. Regardless, I take solace in the fact that I never will. Perhaps you may do the same.