Cult of narcissism
YOU are 26, f r om Aberdeen, on a business flight from Alexandria to Cairo in Egypt – and, suddenly, all goes nightmarishly wrong. The airliner is hijacked, diverted.
Hours later you are one of a little huddle of passengers and crew left on the grounded plane, snipers training their rifles at it from all directions, your life at the mercy of a bespectacled madman with (apparently) explosives strapped round his middle. Do you beg? Pray? Make a dash for it or dare to be a have-a-go hero?
Why, no. You ask an air steward to take your photo as you stand beside the nutter and his dynamite waistcoat, beam inanely, and within seconds post the snap on social media, writing: ‘You know your boy doesn’t **** about! Turn on the news lad!!!’
As you do. or rather, as untold millions who splash pictures across the internet now do. All those doeeyed shots of teens with fluffed-up hair and the perfect figure for New York (about two pounds above total organ failure).
or snaps taken mid-air amidst some variant of extreme sport, from parachuting over Perthshire to dangling off some vertiginous bridge. or, of course, with some back-to-the-wall celebrity.
An uneasy Pope, a glazed- eyed Queen and a haggard Hillary Clinton have all been cornered; even presidents and prime ministers jostled to shoot ‘selfies’ during, of all incongruous occasions, Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
In last year’s Irish referendum on same-sex marriage Gerry Adams, of all people, preened leeringly with a drag queen called Panti Bliss.
Nicola Sturgeon is asked to do it so often she can now operate any make of smart-phone with pert and characteristic ease. Far more depressing are those American morons who pose, mighty rifle i n hand, with freshly shot wildebeest; or the baby dolphin which last month allegedly perished in an Argentine resort – because hundreds of tourists wanted to snap themselves with it.
Scorn
Ben Innes, 26, who is a health and safety auditor in Aberdeen and looks as if he has eaten slightly too many butteries, is just the latest to make a prize fool of himself. He is, apparently, a ‘wild man’ and the stunt ‘is totally in character for him’.
Dr Terri Apter, a Cambridge University psychologist could barely hide her scorn on Radio 4 yesterday, saying: ‘ We’ve always wanted to mark our presence and participation in historical events – what is new is the opportunity social media offers in immediately broadcasting this to the world.’
She explained: ‘This opportunity can make us really, really stupid. We’re always monitoring other people’s responses but we can’t do that on social media so there’s just this pure narcissistic spurt. That allows us to be so inappropriate.’
We have long wanted photos of great moments of transition in our lives: my graduation, your wedding, the wee one’s christening. And the rich and mighty – who, till very recent decades, alone had the means to manufacture their own image – have always sought to control it.
No portrait of Elizabeth I could be hung anywhere till she had personally approved it – at least, if you valued your head.
Churchill’s widow Clementine ordered the destruction of a hideous Graham Sutherland portrait of Winston in old age – a gift from the House of Commons, though MPs audibly gasped when it was unveiled.
President Kennedy once sent Secret Service agents after someone who had just snapped him with a bevy of beauty queens. And his wife, Jackie, accepted an informal snapshot with friends but primly inked in a little more skirt.
But this epidemic of the selfie is an extraordinarily modern and indefinably unsettling phenomenon. It may well be rooted in the dumbing-down of TV in this digital, multi-channel age – when networks learned that millions would watch dirt cheap shows about very ordinary, often ridiculous and sometimes dreadfully vulnerable people.
Though ‘ reality TV’ was already tiring a decade ago, it has refused to go away and, from the late Jade Goody to Joey Essex or the preposterous Kardashians, has spawned a legion of talent-free celebrities; gobby, extrovert personalities famous only for being famous.
And, as tragic consequence, it has raised a generation of young people whose overwhelming ambition is not to be useful, innovative, or even powerful, but simply to be famous.
In 1985, a survey asked British youngsters what they would like to be when they grew up. The top three aspirations were teacher, banker and doctor. A similar poll in 2009 established, chillingly, that it was now to be a sports star, pop star or actor.
Between 2005 and 2010, the number of ‘child performance licences’ – permits issued by local authorities granting children time off school – increased by 80 per cent. Admissions to the Stagecoach performing arts franchise trebled in the first decade of this century.
As the fearsomely ambitious Rachel once breathed in Glee: ‘Nowadays, being anonymous is worse than being poor.’
The unhappy blending of the world of politics with that of showbiz – one of Tony Blair’s most unpleasant legacies – has scarcely helped. Fame is no longer identified with meaningful achievement.
As one social commentator observed: ‘once behind the velvet rope, talent show winner Leona Lewis, footballer Theo Walcott and reality star Kerry Katona were as likely to be lumped together and invited to Downing Street as Ann Widdecombe was to appear on Celebrity Fit Club.’
Profile
Even now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the appalling Sally Bercow milks her public profile for all it is worth – a profile she owes solely to an important husband.
Katie Hopkins, meanwhile, remains prominent simply by being outrageous, and even notoriety is now big business.
When John Profumo fell so sensationally in 1963, he withdrew from public life and devoted himself to good works. Neil and Christine Hamilton, decades later and scarcely less disgraced, have remained defiant stars of cheap TV.
And, of course, there are those junky shows – The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent – exploiting in the most commercial way the hunger of millions ( especially those trapped by poor education and deadbeat jobs) for their own Cinderella moment; for discovery, redemption, exaltation and riches.
This is fame, moreover, won cheaply – not the old-fashioned way, by hard work, study, selfsacrifice and respect. Thanks to mobile phones and social media, we have wholesale opportunity to make a public spectacle of ourselves: to be s acked by our mortified employers, perish in a perfect Twitterstorm or be sued by JK Rowling.
Ben Innes is but the latest to be awarded the dubious laurels of Biggest Complete Idiot. But there are great sadnesses among all this neo-narcissism.
First, we are losing our ability to live in the moment. At the opening of the London olympics, it was staggering how many parading athletes were filming themselves on their mobiles – physically present but mentally and emotionally absent.
Second, we are losing our skills of conversation. In an age when it has never been so easy to talk to someone, youngsters are extraordinarily reluctant to chat on the phone. They would f ar r ather t ap out t heir thoughts via some ‘app’. They are masters of assorted devices – but increasingly their slaves.
And, saddest of all, is a veritable epidemic of isolation. We are physical animals who need physical company – as a sheep or hen will pine and die when kept all on its own.
We all profoundly desire to be known and l oved. But in today’s perpetual and selfregarding kidulthood, there is a dark paradox: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.