Was the "Me Generation" of the 1970s responsible for today's rise in narcissism?

[heart84]

Originally Posted by shirleyeve

A lot of today's generation, particularly those active in politics, or entertainment, have been labelled "narcissistic". Twitter is considered a "breeding ground for trolls", and we all know the mantra on the internet "don't feed the trolls". This ties into something narcissists crave: attention and validation. Do we feed a narcissist attention? No. It adds fuel to their fire. Look at Trump, the more attention he gets, the larger he looms.

So where does this rampant rise in 21st century narcissism come from?

I remember a Newsweek or New York Times cover story from the 1970s. On the cover, it referred to the "ME Decade", aimed squarely at Baby Boomers. Most of the millennials of today have been raised by Baby Boomers, many of which are divorced or separated.

Could this lack of tradition, or tenacity, or robustness in relationships/personal life mirror the current obsession with projecting success, even while your personal life is in tatters? Many of the narcissistic people in positions of power covet their success/power more than they covet intimate, long lasting and meaningful relationships.

In short: are we in a narcissism epidemic? What will reverse it? Does the rise in conservatism have a relationship with the narcissism?

I think in short it has a lot to do with people just having it too easy these days. When harder times come in the future some of these behavioral excesses will be cleared out. Social media is a huge contributor to narcissism. Me, me, me.....

[kokonutty]

Originally Posted by PriscillaVanilla

She never said that.

With tens of millions of Boomers her use of verbiage like "large contingent," "popularized,"
"all the Boomers" would have the reader believe she was not speaking of small groups but that there was a significant number, like millions. You may read it another way; that is your choice. I stand by what I wrote.

[Deserterer]

Originally Posted by heart84

I think in short it has a lot to do with people just having it too easy these days. When harder times come in the future some of these behavioral excesses will be cleared out. Social media is a huge contributor to narcissism. Me, me, me.....

Social media isn't really social you know. Virtual behavior is not behavior. What we seem to have here is an apparent rise in virtual narcissim according to people who spend too much time online.



I just don't see it IRL. I see a lot more people trying to diagnose other people and put them in little boxes based on what they read online.

[PriscillaVanilla]

Originally Posted by nobodysbusiness

I lived it.

Good answer.

[TamaraSavannah]

Hard to say.

People have told me I have narcissism because I only talk about myself.

The point of me only talking about myself comes from, however..................that I am not qualified to talk about another, to speak for another. So could that be applied to society as we see it?

It might but unfortunately, I doubt it, for it does seem we have a lot of people who do like to speak for others, whether they have permission or not......so it seems.

There is another side to it as well. I did not gain my "voice" till, I think, early in college. I was quiet, I allowed the opinions of others to be mine by default. Once I did gain my voice, I never wanted to go back to that state again though I suppose there were some set backs. More and more, I have learned to toot my own horn, bang my own drum.

Originally Posted by buddybuddybabe

But the more people understand it, based on the availability of psychiatric text online, the easier it is to see in others.

Don't you agree?

NO, I DON'T......because I believe that many people don't understand it.

Say, for example, when people look at some world leader, analyze him, and declare him whatever condition to degrade him. They often quote a DSM but it may be one out of date. They usually miss the primary condition of that it is a syndrome if it is of concern to the individual, and they probably haven't touched the preamble for one set or another of disorders.

To say nothing about the differences between psychiatry and psychology in the first place.

Sort of reminds me of the first exercise or two in my graduate abnormal psychology class where the prof gave us the scenarios........and he was getting answers from my classmates that the "subject" had a Type A or Type B personalty. Type A/B was not in the DSM-IV-TR (t'was quite a while back) which was what we were suppose to be using for the "subject".

I don't think more people understand it at all.

[Thoreau424]

I see drastically more "Me Generation" and "Me-ness" these days than back in the 1970s. The 70s were infinitely more balanced and healthy than now.

And look at the head honcho we have at the top. There's no way in hell he could have reached power back then. He's more of a product of the past two decades, and the whole "greed is good" warped mindset.

[jertheber]

The one thing which stands out in my memory of the eighties seems to be the times I was in someone's home and saw the kids bedrooms where the collection of toys rivaled the stock rooms of Toys "R" Us. It was truly shocking to see that these little munchkins were being treated as a kind of royalty, and their power over the parents was much greater than any generation in the past.

The media has been guilty of twisting the consumer reality by utilizing their own definition of things, the "me generation" was a media term for those who once were simply referred to, as "spoiled." By noting that peculiar infatuation with having their way, and, being the center of attention, the media made it out to look as though these kids were just self absorbed, but the underlying fact of their being brainwashed by the vast consumerist marketing construct was twisted around to make the kids/parents seem responsible for their self indulgent conditioning. Lets not forget that "the media" is, in actuality, TV, yes, that same medium which serves as the purveyor of all that marketing aimed at children.

Advertising has engulfed the entirety of the American psyche, the advanced sophistication of their campaigns, the level of psychology and scientific testing by marketers, taken together, has risen to equal that of a military Psychological Operations, leaving a trail of thoroughly trained Pavlovian consumers in their wake. So, in short, one could easily make a case for the fact that an entire generation was raised, not by parents, as much as they were raised by TV and it's more stealthy sidekick, advertising. Feeling as though one is truly deprived if not in possession of the latest and best, clothing, games, cars, vacations, homes, was, and is, the real goal of advertising, the marketers were creating the "me" in the me generation.

[TJJT]

I'll just leave this here..

Gold Standard and arranged marriages and even running people out of town if they were different in any way..

I grew up around older people I know all the secrets.. Up to the seventies it was taboo to be a female past twenty-five and not have kids or a husband.. Families would put daughters like that in asylums..

If you were "the quiet type" your family hid you or you went to an asylum or some camp..

The hippies were bad but burbs full of bad drunk-racist-salesman-dad culture in a melting pot caused it all.. If you were even introverted you'd be driven out of town financially or with violence.. Hippies just made a culture of liars: current day liberals would never actually pass legislature that took money out oh their pockets or made them live close to alt-cultures; pick who lies the least at the ballot.. Cortez or Clinton would never live next to unattractive working-poor people, so it's all BS on both "sides"..