Confessions Of A Narcissist

How did we all become so self-involved and to what end?

Have you ever been in a place where you wind up disgusting yourself (just a little bit)? While floating through the Intertubes today, it struck me how narcissistic most of my true engagement is.

Here’s what I am seeing:

• Google News Alerts set-up for my own name, my company, my Blog, etc…
• Twitter is run through Tweetdeck where I have alerts set-up for my own name, my company, my Blog, etc…
• Beyond that, most of us are busy on Twitter really only connecting to those who are either sending us an @ message or a direct message.
• Facebook. If Facebook isn’t about narcissism, what is? The first thing I look for? Who’s saying what about me?

Beyond that, we all do little narcissistic things like an ego search on YouTube, flickr, LinkedIn, and all of the general Search Engines. Every once in a while, I’ll hop over to the Ad Age Power 150 to see how this Blog ranks. I’ll do that over on Technorati as well. Let’s not forget the general web analytics from the Blog, or pumping my Twitter name into Klout to see what’s what.

Me, me, me, me, me… blech!

I don’t like this. I can’t stop this. It would only be half-funny if that was the end. In thinking about it just a little bit more, there are many other spaces, places, channels and platforms where I’m doing the old narcissistic waltz. If you think this makes me sound a little insecure, you’re not alone (I think it does too). On one hand, it makes sense, as it’s important to know who is saying what about you and the brands you represent. On the other hand, the true destination for most of our online endeavors really are the new media equivalent of the biblical statues that were presented as deities. These digital shrines that we create to ourselves. The photos are almost as unrealistic as our expectations that we’ll get some semblance of happiness from all of these digital ego boosts that we live in.

Too bad the portals are dying.

Prior to online social networks and Social Media, we would start off our online journey at a destination or a portal (think Yahoo!, AOL, etc…). Now, the portal is a personal portal. Most people’s homepage is now their Facebook or Twitter homepage.

What have we become?