Narcissus Reborn: The worrying rise of the self-lovers

By Aditya Gupta

It is possible that one of the reasons for which 2013 will be most remembered would be the fact that an authority no less, well, authoritative, than the Oxford English Dictionary crowned ‘Selfie’ as the ‘Word of the Year’. Beating competition from such stalwarts as Twerk, Bitcoin, Schmeat and Showrooming, Selfie declared itself the undisputed champion of evolving vocabulary and the rest, as they say, will soon become history.

As a sign of the times there is something vaguely disquieting about this development.

It is not the fact that there’s something distinctly egoistical about uploading a picture of yourself for the world to view. Vanity, after all, is one of the most common of human vices and is also one which invariably finds an outlet. Before Twitter and Instagram there were the self-important updates on Orkut and before social networking itself there was plain and simple bragging. It is also not the eerily public phenomenon of sharing a picture of yourself with so many people who could be spread all across the globe.

No, what is worrisome is the fact that we are witnessing the creation of a generation, even a population perhaps, whose self-esteem is fast becoming increasingly dependent on the validation from others. People don’t want to just announce their daily doldrums to the world they want active acknowledgement of the same.

A recent ad from a leading telecom brand underscores this trend – a girl suffers a break-up and chronicles her entire journey from depression to recovery – needing a hug, changing her look, shopping away her blues, going on a trip et al – via ceaseless Facebook updates and a positive barrage of selfies. There is something inherently repellent about her neediness in wanting to share what must be a challenging episode in her life with her entire coterie of Facebook friends. One cannot help but wonder whether happiness that has been validated by ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ is the new ideal which we are supposed to gravitate to.

It soon becomes a vicious circle – people feed off the attention and interest generated from an update – be it an opinion, a link or a picture – and get busy thinking about what the next update is going to be (such that it generates even more attention). Any experience that has not been shared with others is curiously deemed to be less ‘real’ than the ones which have been. Have we finally arrived in an age when the Personal has well and truly become the Public?

What gives further credence to such behaviour is that so many people are engaged in it – from the fame-obsessed celebrities who tweet about their ‘secret’ vacations to the next-door neighbour who puts up graphic pictures of her low-calorie lunches. And before one knows it one’s mood has become a variable depending on the number of people who read, liked and commented on the last published detail of their life-story.

Which is why it would be wise to recall the tale of Narcissus and Echo from Greek mythology. The most-remembered version of the tale is as follows:

Narcissus was a young man blessed with breathtakingly good looks but he was unaware of the fact as he had never seen a mirror. Now there was a fair maiden who was deeply, and secretly, in love with him and her name was Echo. But when she expressed her affection for him he cruelly spurned her. She was heartbroken but such was the intensity of her love that, it is said, she kept calling out to him until she wasted away and only her voice remained – an echo – and even that faded away one day.

This led the goddess Nemesis to curse Narcissus and one day, while he was roaming the countryside, he chanced upon a shallow pool of clear water. Being thirsty he bent down to drink from it. The curse immediately came into effect – so entranced was he by his own beauty and perfection that, try as he might, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from his own image. He was lost in admiration of his own self.

And so it came about that Narcissus, too, started withering away because he couldn’t look away from his reflection long enough to even eat or drink. And on his death was born the Narcissus flower – ostensibly from his life-blood – which is often seen peering over the edge of a water body, still engaged in self-admiration.

Cut to the present – the self-lovers are the modern day Narcissi, their virtual lives are the cursed pool – casting a spell upon the vain, and the voices of privacy, moderation and common sense are like those of Echo – beseeching enough but falling on deaf ears.

Here’s hoping that this period of extreme self-love comes to an end one day and people realize that they don’t need their existence to be validated by anyone else for it to be classified as ‘Life’.

Just live. As long as you ‘Like’ your life, well, that’s good enough.

Aditya Gupta: A non-remarkable boy-next-door – mild-mannered ambivert with a middle-class haircut (complete with side-parting) – who somehow managed to survive three years in FMCG sales after being a serial student of Economics (Hindu College) and Management (SPJIMR). Have been writing for quite a while now thanks to the benevolent Times of India who keeps on publishing my pieces. Lover of non-highbrow books, movies and music. If you can forgive eon-long delays in replying to mails, do write in toadi_patronus@yahoo.com (yes, a Potter-lover too).