Narcissist Nation

Via TheExcrutiationator, a great comment by Matt in VA regrettably hitched to a Rod Dreher post, making the point that we live in a nation increasingly populated by sociopathic narcissists who aren’t all that different than the murderous school shooters they exploit as a springboard to the start of their left-wing political activism careers with CNN.

I am surprised that you don’t draw out the parallel between school shootings and another common theme on this blog — early-onset transgenderism.

Both are to some degree social contagions and media/extremely-online-culture phenomena.

The most recent school shooting in Florida is depressing but the school shooting itself is not the only thing that is revealing. What is most interesting from a cultural-criticism standpoint is the way the shooting generated a simultaneous parallel media spectacle in the form of the survivors who were already making videos for Youtube while bullets were being fired and who had media handlers and hashtags ready to go before the bodies had a chance to get cold.

I have seen the faces of the *gun control NOW* kids about 1,000 times since the shooting happened less than a week ago. I don’t think I’ve seen any photos of the kids who got murdered at all.

Generation Z will have two big cohorts:

alienated dysfunctional (to a greater or lesser degree) kids who engage in activities ranging from incredibly dedicated online trolling to can’t-get-a-girlfriend PUA forum posting to going crazy and school shooter speedrunning like it’s a videogame

and

smarmy cold-blooded strivers born on third base whose reaction to traumatic and horrifying experiences is to seek–instantaneously, instinctively, even while bodies are hitting the floor around them– to convert them to clicks, engagement, and fodder to pad college resumes with killer ways to sell themselves as passionate self-starters and change agents, hugely effective at doing exactly what Silicon Valley wants most — generating likes, comments, and shares.

100 years ago, many young people (not too much older than these high school kids) responded to the carnage they witnessed and experienced on the Western Front — how? By carrying around a well-worn volume of Housman and writing poetry (*the* characteristic response of that particular generation to the war.)

Now, kids’ primary response to something like this is to trample over the freshly fallen bodies of their classmates in order to throw themselves in front of as many TV and smartphone cameras as possible. The narcissistic sociopathy (cloaked of course, in repeated hysterical assertions of moral self-righteousness based not on acts but on political positions) is related, in a way, to the murderous nihilism of the school shooters themselves. This is how the winners and the losers of today’s society conduct themselves.

The question left to be asked is, WHY is there runaway narcissism in America?

Why do we have a generation of bratlings bouncing like hypertards from one hashtag to the next for a quick fix of social media applause? Why are there limelight hogs like David Hogg who will effortlessly segue from a traumatic school shooting to reciting focus-group tested shitlib lines in front of CNN cameras? Is no one else utterly repulsed by the sight of attention whores slipping in their dying classmates’ blood to grab headlines and harangue Congressmen with political talking points put together by craven chaimstream media propagandists?

Is this cultural trend not SICK AS FUCK to anyone with a scintilla of common decency left in him?

My answer to the narcissism question: it’s the feminization, stupid. Narcissism is an inherently female trait (and homosexual male trait). Both sexes have their narcissists, but the condition is more prevalent and manifests more acutely in women, who are natural attention whores constitutionally aware that their bodies and faces are their primary means of capturing male interest. Furthermore, in a sexual market becoming more r-selected (cads over dads), narcissistic men have a leg up on the male competition.

As our culture and institutions feminize, and media agitprop pathologizes normal healthy masculinity, we get more womanly narcissists. YouGoGrrlism and gay poz are yielding a bounty of narcissists for whom other people are either obstacles or accomplices to the public recognition of their glowing self-conception.

The explosion of Americans with the Dark Triad suite of personality traits means more psycho narcissists mugging for cameras and wearing pussyhats as substitutes for good character. Narcissism is being genetically or socially selected for via open borders mass immigration, sexual choice, cultural propaganda, and social atomization. The latter condition is particularly fertile ground for narcissists to flower, because a complete lack of social controls that otherwise small communities bring to bear on individuals means there is a lot of upside to using narcissistic exploitation to get similar social benefits from strangers that one would normally get in a rooted community from family and neighbors. And given that rootless itinerants are less likely to stick around for long after their sociopathic, narcissistic exploitation has shattered the lives around them, there is less possibility for corrective punishment like social shaming to curb the narcissist’s excesses.

The David Hoggs of the world aren’t far removed from the de Jesus Cruzes of the world. That’s something which should worry us all, because narcissism has a bad habit of burning itself out in a pyre of self-centered immolation that scorches everything in its radius of contact.