Jon Dunstan

“I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.”

My Pre-flight Checklist for Tumblr Posts  (Or Why I Only Manage to Post Once a Day):  As you compose and before you publish on Tumblr, did you…

Is there an upside to social media narcissism? 

Love this idea from BrainCraft (also on Tumblr). Sure, this is the era of the selfie, and our eyes often point more to social media than social meatspace. That results in a fair amount of certifiable narcissism in our digital lives (which aren’t really separable from our meatspace lives, which is really the point here).

Are there upsides to social media narcissism? Can it make us more aware of ourselves? Or is it just a digital version of shameless vanity with an Instagram filter slapped on?

I think technology is fairly inert as long as it isn’t filled with bullets. It doesn’t make people act a certain way, it’s more like it gives people outlets and opportunities to act in certain ways that they are already inclined to act, whether that’s accentuating their introversion or inflating their vanity (and all shades in between). Sure, the resulting behavior isn’t always good (and it isn’t always bad, either), but as Mike says in this Idea Channel episode, the distinction between online and offline is increasingly a false one:

And paying attention differently doesn’t mean that people are paying attention badly, it just means that … well, it’s different. Directing our attention at our social avatars or our social networks or at our own ducky faces looking back at us from our outstretched arms can be a good or a bad thing, and maybe both simultaneously.  Check out this video I did last year for more on that idea: