Facebook: "I have so many friends, I'm SWAMPED!"

Actual Facebook post from an actual Facebook friend, actually read by me this morning.

"What is going on with FACEBOOK? I'm getting inundated with "friend" requests. If you have referred someone to my page and I've declined, I apologize BUT I only have just over 200 "slots" left. Please invite your friends to follow my FB page, "like" my Watchdogz page, and check out for my website which is coming out late next month. They can also view my book trailer (please repost the link). Thanks to the many authors who have connected with me and lent me some good advice, shown me some phenomenal reading material, and have been "friends." I hope you will continue on this journey with me."

For reasons that have to do with self-preservation only, I will withhold the name of the person who wrote this Facebook post. But I think it's a brilliant example of casual, tossed-off narcissism expressed as irritation: oh, those pesky fans of mine! Why must they overwhelm me with their petty requests to be my friend? As if they think they are close enough to my lofty status to "friend" me. I'm almost at the 3000 upper limit, for God's sake. Have they no manners? Don't they realize that the last 200 friend "slots" must be filled by people I love, cherish and see face-to-face every day (just like the other 2800), not to mention people who are good for my career? I have forgotten how to refuse friend requests, by the way, which gives me a very good excuse to complain about it here.

But then comes the topper. This whiny  post which is so disdainful and even contemptuous of her fans then switches to blatant advertising for her new web site and her books. Then her tone seems to miraculously settle down, maybe because this message has been sent out in one form or another about 50,000 times. Having prepared the ground by letting everyone know what a literary superstar she is, she then moves in for the kill.

I see this sort of thing all the time on FB: sometimes phony irritation about those pesky people who debase themselves with abject adulation, sometimes phony humility ("I don't know how this ever happened - it seems impossible - I know I probably don't deserve it - but GUESS WHAT, guys! I just won the Giller Prize. Yippee!"). One strange one I saw went sort of like, "I hate having to do this - it just tortures me every day, but I HAVE to do it, it's part of a writer's burden. My publisher insists that I promote myself, so it's not my fault. They insist I talk about the, no, I won't say it,that I announce to everyone, not that I want to, my nomination for the Gasbag Award for 2015."

There are twists of double, triple and quadruple meaning here, all of them veiling a narcissism that causes a level of nausea in me equivalent to spraying an entire can of Reddi-Whip in my mouth at once. Nobody's straight about it. The petty foot-stomping over all those presumptuous fans is the worst, but I've also seen things like, "I apologize to all my friends in advance. I'll be taking some time off Facebook for some much-need R & R. Be back in an hour." One went, "My email is down and is going to be down for the next half-hour. Please message me on FB - not all at once, please, I can't possibly get through them all! - or email my overflow email, or my overflow-overflow email, or just sit there and miss me for half an hour. Or better yet, go on my fan page or buy my book on Amazon and give me five stars. OK?"

The published authors are snooty, the "famous" published authors who actually have an income are astonishingly, headshakingly vain and narcissistic. I don't know how many times I've seen links to artlcles such as, "Why it's so heartbreaking to fail as a writer," which consists of a few paragraphs about what it's like to be hopeless loser who never gets anywhere because they don't know what the hell they are doing. Then comes the REAL article: how I beat the curse of being a hopeless loser and got a $250,000.00 advance on my next novel that isn't even written yet. So what the hell is going on here? "Yes, OK, I know how it must feel to be a total failure, happens to the best of us, and it might even have happened to ME, except, you see, I know what the hell I'm doing. And you don't."

Say what you mean, people. If you're a failure, poop it out. If you're successful, march around with a banner. Just don't be so goddamn devious, please - you are making me sick.


Post-blog blob. Just thought of something that happened quite a few years ago at a writer's workshop. A novelist, best-selling by Canadian standards - i. e. a few thousand copies - was telling us all about the perils of fame, and what a nuisance her fans can be. She told us a story to illustrate this. After doing a reading from her latest best-selling novel featuring a dysfunctional Canadian family living on a broken-down prairie wheat farm in the 1800s, with the mother giving birth to a stillborn baby in the barn, etc. etc., a fan came up to her and said, "I just wanted to tell you that your reading brought back all sorts of vivid memories for me. Your character Mac McMackintosh reminded me so much of my great-grandfather and his stories of the Great Grasshopper Plague of 1892." 

The author looked at us in horror with a sort of shrinking-back, dread-mixed-with-disgust body posture and said in a whiny voice, "I don't want to get involved with these people and their traumatic memories! I have nothing to do with their dysfunctional families! I don't want to hear about how my work triggered whatever-the-hell in them. That's none of my affair and they should know that." (Eye-roll, shrug)"Honestly." Composing herself, rearranging her poofy

hair and straightening her I-don't-really-need-these glasses: "Besides, it was crickets."

BLOG BADDA-BOOM! A follow-up to the follow-up to the quote from my anonymous friend's Facebook page. I am sure she has no idea of the staggering level of narcissism and entitlement expressed in her post. But it would be no fun without it!:

"Wow, this has been an eventful 24 hours. First of all, I have had to decline so many friend requests the past week as I have been swamped. Unfortunately, some people are not happy about this. I invite everyone to follow my FB page, "like" my Watchdogz page, and keep an eye out for my website which is coming out late next month. Facebook places a 5,000 person limit on "friends" and of course, we know this can be difficult. As of writing this message, I have 188 spots left and have been trying to carefully select people who I feel will genuinely be supportive to me as an author and will continue on this journey of my mystery/thriller adventures."

"Over the last couple of days, I have sadly lost a longtime "personal" friend who has accused me of "poaching" from his friend list to develop my own friends and demanded that I cancel them from my account. I value all of my FB friends and I have contacted each and everyone of the formerly (I have blocked him from my page) 60 mutual "friends," that we shared and advised them of the situation, inviting them to "unfriend" ME if THEY so desire. This individual is attempting to get me "banned" from Facebook and has launched a very vicious attack on my integrity. I would like to say, I value all of my friends, am responsive to their thoughts and comments and do not wish to intrude on people who think otherwise. Please feel free to "unfriend" me if you so choose (although, I hope you won't) as I am also feeling strained by people requesting to join my page that I have had to regrettably decline.

Phew! I thought, that I would enjoy my retirement and hopefully entertain some people with the stories (that my personal friends all know) I love to tell.

Blessings to all,

Narcisse A. Nonnee-Mousse

P.S. This is my book trailer: 

(removed by blogger)

You know, I have all those same problems, but I have decided to raise my maximum number of friends to 7 billion, thus taking in all those poor Third World souls who need my enlightenment. Sorry this is so long, I just had to include that last, noisome entry. The author, having been unfriended by me, now must scramble frantically for a replacement to top up her list. Such a hemorrhage! Oh well, she told me I could do it.

P. S. to the P. S.: This doesn't deserve a post on its own, but it's yet another example of "oh God, poor me, I'm in such pain because I just have SO many people reading my stuff!" It's backhanded narcissism, but what dismays me is how many likes and "oh, poor baby" comments she got on Facebook. Sharyn Wolf wrote some sort of memoir about being a shrink (!?) whose marriage broke up, and oh God, more than 250 (NOT 249, NOT 251, though it's likely up to 2500 by now) people sniped at her for writing such a shallow useless thing. ONE person said she liked it, but it was Cher, so it kind of negated all the criticisms. If you believe in love. . .

Sharyn Wolf Oh, sadly, this is true. I had more than 250 comments--a surprising fight between a bunch of people who thought I should be drawn and quartered against one kind soul who claimed that English teachers don't have to publish a novel to teach writing. I read an interview with Cher about a million years ago, where she said that with 50 great reviews, she only recollects the few horrid ones. I learned recently that we cling to those because our brain is velcro with the bad stuff and teflon to the good.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Narcissists on parade: come on and suck my blood!

Though it did not make me happy and sometimes made me feel downright guilty, I had to cut out a lot of dead wood this year that was becoming oppressive. Denial suffocates me, and of course, deniers deny the denial and turn it around and make it YOUR fault.

There is a lot on the internet now about narcissism, which used to be called, “Oh, isn’t he good-looking!” The perpetrator would slide by on his good looks like a used car saleman rolling back the odometer. Everyone would ooh and ahh and clasp their hands in approval, then wonder where all their money went, or even where their spouse went.  But all this still goes on, vastly amped up by the internet.

Yesterday on the news, I saw yet another story about an attractive, accomplished, well-off woman falling “head over heels” with someone she “met” on a dating site. She had never actually MET him, of course, but that didn’t matter. He sent her photos on Instagram, didn't he? Actually meeting someone in the flesh isn’t a priority these days, because everyone carefully constructs their own image, which seems to be enough to convince people. By some magic of fiscal seduction he wangled away a quarter of a million dollars she had salted away to look after herself and her ageing mother. He sucked it away and disappeared and went on to the next attractive, accomplished, well-off victim.

My psychiatrist (yes, I see one! Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!) once talked for an hour about narcissism, and my eyes were hanging out of their sockets like those trick eyeballs on springs. It was a perfect description of my older sister, for one thing, who always left you with the unpleasant feeling that you had somehow shortchanged her or let her down, while garnering enormous admiration for herself (she thought) by inflating herself like a grotesque balloon. I am still sorting out, or trying to, how toxic that was for me and how much damage it did. 

But back to the main story. There was a movie called Catfish - I just looked it up and reeled at the fact that it came out FIFTEEN years ago! - all about the phenomenon of the phony, narcissistic lure which has grown like a malignancy, affecting women in ways that make me scratch my head. Are people THAT desperate for companionship that they fall “head over heels” for someone who doesn’t really exist except as some sort of heartless parasite? Evidently. Personality disorders thrive in the strange world of the internet, because you can always manage and foster the impression you are giving, hold the mask up, and if that one gets you in trouble, hold ANOTHER mask up to dupe yet another lonely person.

I constantly wonder how this can be. Once Caitlin and I played a hilarious game based on a news story we had seen. A heartless, manipulative man somehow found out about an elderly woman who had not seen her son in a very long time. He phoned her up and said, "Hi, Mom! It's Johnny!" Mom was over the moon, even though she said at one point, "But you sound so different." She ended up wiring him thousands of dollars before someone intervened. Caitlin and I took turns over the phone being the elderly woman and the son, our scams getting more and more outlandish until we were literally rolling on the floor laughing. By the way, at the time, Caitlin was TEN YEARS OLD.

But there’s another side to all this, the narcissist who seems humble or even downtrodden. This is an exquisite form of parasitic behaviour with many evil twists and turns. It's the person who used to exist and has been so eroded by the unfairness of life that just being in the same room with her is completely exhausting and depressing. I call this the “how could you?” model, the one who acts so downtrodden that you dare not say anything to criticize her.  This is usually someone who has buried her ambitions like a corpse, then spends the rest of her life fuming, fuming, fuming over people she hates (but is usually poisonously polite to) who are morally corrupt and doing everything wrong.

Of course she has a gigantic hole at the core, as every narcissist does, which needs constant filling and refilling from others to keep her from feeling dead. Which means that part of the friendship contract (which is never spelled out and which never changes) is that you must constantly build her up to shore up that rotten or non-existent self-esteem. Her traumatic background seals the deal: how could you not be sympathetic to her after the kind of childhood she suffered? (I have come to be wary of any statement or thought that contains the words "how could you?"). 

She is a misunderstood, "good" person, of course, no one appreciates her, and your job is to keep pouring it in and pouring it in like booze into an alcoholic, while it all steadily pours out the bottom. Whatever narcissists have that keeps them manipulating like that, it's never genuine self-esteem, or they wouldn't need to suck so hard.  As Bob Dylan once sardonically wrote, no doubt describing the malignant trappings of fame, "Show me someone who's not a parasite/And I'll go out and say a prayer for him."

The things everyone is doing wrong are the same things SHE does, of course, and far worse, but rather than take responsibility, she turns it around and fumes and fumes. And fumes. And fumes. It never bursts into honest flames but smolders like a shit fire underground. The smoke goes up your nostrils and kills you with its reeking toxicity, but you dare not complain or you are being a traitor and inexplicably disloyal. What has SHE ever done? Nothing! But that’s just the trouble. Too many people shove away their real dreams and ambitions, letting them rot while they insist they never wanted them in the first place, and complain about everyone else's worthless success. The downtrodden have the most hyperinflated egos of anyone I know.

It’s getting harder and harder to find someone who WILL burst into honest flames and be straight with me. I don’t expect them to be any more perfect at it than I am. But please, PLEASE do not try to con me, swindle me with a cry for pity, apologize in a way that feels about as authentic as the proverbial $3 bill, and ask me to pour gallons of my own precious energy down a bottomless hole that you will never acknowledge because you are too busy soliciting even more sympathy and complaining about everyone else. No thanks, that’s over now. Am I lonely? Who cares. It’s a cleaner loneliness, because in spite of having to pay a price I never anticipated, I am no longer buried up to the chin in shit.