Narcissism

Recently I mentioned to TRS that I hate Manhattan because it’s full of narcissistic people (which he found amusing, because we were discussing the quality of Manhattan in a different realm).

Here’s a great illustration of narcissism from Artemiy Lebedev. Look at this picture (click to enlarge):



In the picture is a monument to the victims of Golodomor, a famine in Ukraine (1932–1933) which some people say was orchestrated by Stalin, y"sh, as a genocide against Ukrainians. (Others say that it’s propaganda by Ukrainian nationalists, and there was a famine everywhere in the Soviet Union due to socialist economic policies. I don’t care at this point about who’s right and who’s wrong in this argument. I don’t care whether, even if it was a genocide, Ukrainian politicians are really using it as a tool to inspire anti-Russian feelings. I don’t care how any of that compares to the Holocaust. There was a famine. Millions of people died.)

Lebedev comments on the picture [slightly edited for language]:

People love nothing more in the world than themselves. That is why every person loves to have pictures of himself taken. So that nobody can accuse him of nasty narcissism, one takes a picture of himself next to something else, to take off the feeling of awkwardness. If there is nothing nearby, he will take a picture next to a branch of a tree, or a bush. If there is a famous building — yay, we are saved! A monument? Excellent, even better.

To take pictures of the famous sites without yourself is not interesting. There is enough of this junk on the postcards. And there is nothing to hold the guests’ attention with — they saw enough of the castles on the TV. This way you kill two birds with one stone [in the original: “two hares”] — show off yourself, and not just wherever.

That is why people come to a monument, stand like morons next to it, and make a special photo-taking face. Take :-) a :-) pic :-) ture :-) of :-) me :-)

Later they will show the album and say: “Here I am in Kiev”, showing off, in reality, themselves. Here I am, such a handsome guy, with the bags, with a haircut. And I don’t give a damn that next to me is standing tortured by terrible famine little poor Ukrainian girl.

Of course, the point is strengthened by the fact that the guy looks like a typical post-Soviet zhlob, with his moronic bags and his Eastern European chochmurte ponim. But I don’t know if I’d like it any more if it was a typical post-Soviet middle aged woman with her circular earrings and standard short haircut of the standard color. Or an American tourist showing off as many teeth as possible.

(By the way, I mostly care about his point on the monument. The rest I translated because I enjoy the cynicism, whether or not I have the same opinion. If you don’t care about strong language and would like to see Lebedev’s view of the human society, see this.)