Are You a Facebook or Twitter Narcissist?

Is it just me or is the world full of narcissists now?

Maybe I'm just getting old and I'm starting to think about how easy and simple things used to be.

I remember when I used to update my friends with accomplishments or things that recently happened in my life--that would happen face-to-face at dinner.

Maybe I'd get on the phone and talk privately with a good friend about something.

If I was in the throes of an amazing relationship, I might write a letter to a friend about it, and enclose a picture or two.

Everything was very personal and intimate.

But nowadays...we're not just telling one friend, we're telling the whole world about how we feel.

During the course of one day last week on my Twitter feed and Facebook feeds, this is what I read:

- One friend broke up with his girlfriend who he found cheating with their kid's Pediatrician. He told all 700 of his friends how he doesn't trust women or organized medicine any longer.

- Another friend of mine made $2 million in a business venture. He did the classic dual Twitter and Facebook posts so that we all knew exactly how much he had in his checking account. You can say that he was really excited.

- Another friend of mine had lunch at Chipotle.

This is an average day in the world of Twitter and Facebook.

People post their sexual accomplishments.

People tell you if they've gone out and done their laundry that day.

People will tell you anything and everything.

We have seriously become a narcissistic world.

Nothing's private anymore. Everything is explained on the Internet because we no longer want to take the time out to connect with other people one-on-one. So we feel it's easier to just tell the entire world all about our life--all at once.

People will tell you if they've been written about in a newspaper.

They'll tell you whether or not they were interviewed on a radio show.

The media loves it; the media enjoys it; the media will interview any "expert" nowadays on anything.

In the land of 140-character drops of wisdom, anybody can be a guru.

We have become a narcissistic world full of people that just want to brag.

People put up pictures of their kids all over Facebook. Wonderful. We are all so fascinated by how many new words your kid has accumulated in his rich 3 months of life.

Recently I read about a some guy who posted about his family's two-week vacation to Naples, Italy. By the time they got back from gorging on antipasti and lasagna, their entire house was robbed.

Social media has created opportunities for us to be brag about the great-yet-totally-unimportant events of our lives to people that we don't truly care about in the first place.

Think about it: how many close friends do you really have? Maybe a handful if you're like most people. But yet you publically broadcast your life to total strangers out there on the Internet.

Why?

Because deep down, most people want to be popular. The hidden insecurities of high school have been unearthed by the Dark Lord Zuckerberg.

And so we write clever little Philosophical statements in the hopes that the bright red circle of validation shows up every time we log on.

Is this what have we become?

A narcissistic world of wannabe cheerleaders and quarterbacks that display all of our personal stuff on public websites so that other people can praise us?

That's not what life is all about.

Life is about being in love, praising yourself and having a handful of close friends you can share personal things with.

So I think we should all do something different. I think we should all take down our relationship statuses on Facebook.

I think we should stop Tweeting about our personal stuff.

I think we should go back to the days where the only way I'd know what you had for lunch is because we sat together and shared it.

Who's with me?

(Meet me at Chipotle.)