What's with the excess of narcissism in today's society?

[Longwaytogo]

I'm 28 and I recently joined Instagram and while I love seeing beautiful photos, I was amazed at the amount of "selfies" I found in almost everyone's profile. I assumed I'd find a lot of "sexy pose" photos taken by young women but I was amazed to discover that narcissism came it all shapes and sizes. Practically everyone in my newsfeed thinks they are some kind of celebrity. While I praise self-confidence, I was turned off by how many people ( especially women, sadly), populated their feed with photos of themselves in tight dresses, making duck faces or posing a la Kate Moss. Is this what our society's come to? Facebook is no better either. Do people get turned on by this? Where's the substance? Does everyone want to be a Kardashian?

[Amanda]

I read a book about this called "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" by Jean Twenge. Today's younger generation scores higher on questionnaires that measure narcissism than previous generations. The media and social networking and the prospect of instant internet fame have a lot to do with it. My generation (I'm 28) was also told constantly that we're "special" and "unique" and we could be anything we wanted. For the record, the people who scored the highest of any group on the questionnaire were reality TV "stars."

[☢ ASOT600 ☢]

That's why I have never had a Facebook account. It just annoys me.

I've got a YouTube account, Twitter, various online forums, but NEVER Facebook.