R. Ethan Smith

The Web is for Narcissists and Voyeurs.

Here is a picture of me wearing glasses and a scarf on an airplane.

I understand that there is an inherent social value to the web.  Many web apps facilitate meaningful communication and personal connection. So, maybe I will have to blame my darkly cynical and skeptical inner-self for what I have written.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and countless other socially focused web apps have given everyone a voice.  In a completely technologically disconnected world, everyone has a voice anyway, but these platforms have given people a louder voice, a more public voice, and a voice that broadcasts in a synchronized fashion across multiple platforms to multiple people ranging from intimate friends to mere acquaintances connected by some sort of impression or obscure bit of data tucked far away into some atom of silicon.

This voice affords individuals a greater freedom to share with others and learn from others. This voice and ability to share and learn is a powerful mechanism.  Where, in the “real world”, it is not exactly normal for you to call, text, or shout to all of your friends and acquaintances that you are about to watch Titanic for the 17th time this year or that you didn’t stop wetting the bed until you turned 12, we practice this regularly on the internet.  Where, in the “real world”, it is not exactly normal to invite your friends and acquaintances to ask you anything, solicit their unbridled opinion of you, talk about how delicious your latest batch of raisin brownies (is there such a thing?) were, or boast that we just received a new small piece of graphic art for visiting the local deli more times than anyone else in the past month, we practice this behavior regularly on the internet.

In life outside of the virtual, that is the modems, bits, and lines of code, it seems that we are generally more protected.  We value the economics of personal information.  We treat them like the scarce resource that they, in fact, are.  In the virtual community, where abundance is prevalent economic force, we are more lax opting to post, tumble, tweet, update, and share information freely.

Why?

I theorize it is because many of us, deep down in the bloody capillaries of our hearts, are narcissists and voyeurs.  It is not generally accepted or well regarded to be narcissistic or voyeuristic in person, yet web apps afford us the impersonality and even anonymity necessary for us to freely feed our egos without fear of being looked down upon because everyone else is doing the same thing.

Try this exercise:

1. Go ask one of your facebook friends what color bathing suits their kids wore swimming yesterday.  Watch them give you a salty look and tell you to stop creeping on their kids.
2. Log on to facebook and see a video of your friend’s kids wearing hideous fuchsia and orange bathing suits while they practice cannonballs into the pool.
3. Sense the irony of how we consider the sharing of information in the physical world versus how we consider the sharing of information in the virtual world.

 The web is for narcissists.  The web is for voyeurs.  Enjoy it just the same.

All this being said, feel free ask me anything, describe me in three words, read facts about me you may not yet know, and stay updated periodically by my thoughts.  Cheers in the rest of 2011.