20 Narcissistic Social Media Commandments
Social media and the internet. When the Romans built those long, straight and effective roads they had no idea what was going to be using those roads in years to come. Similarly, those early pioneers – Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, Noah Glass, Kevin Systrom et al could not have realised what their various creations might achieve and might still achieve. I daresay none of them realised what fantastic tools they had created for my kind and me. The advance of technology and the various forms of applications and social media have not only contributed to a growth in our numbers, those entitled millennials for example, but our reach has been massively extended beyond the use of the humble telephone. Whereas once my tendrils coiled from my person when I was physically proximate to you, through the use of Lieutenants, elegant hand-crafted letters and those whispered words from landlines and telephone booths, now my tendrils are multiplied a billion times over. They surge across the internet, striking from well-composed e-mails, appearing from the medley of text messages which race to and fro. I surf forums selecting those who are the most appropriate targets and victims and use the vast array of electronic media at my disposal to seduce and ensnare. Messages, photos, videos fly back and forth across the many outlets, across my many devices. In my bolthole the glow from multiple screens would allow you, if I ever admitted you across the threshold, to see my studious gaze and fuel-filled grin as my fingers dart and glide. Opening one application, closing another, composing a message, answering a query, laughing at a comment, reaching out, reeling in, seducing, devaluing, hoovering. Like some grand organist at a technological organ, the screens change and glow, from phone to phone, from PC to laptop, to tablet. The notifications pings and appear, each one the potential for fuel. Yes, the seemingly unstoppable advance of the availability of wireless communication and the many, many methods of connection that are available have been a playground for our kind. We can observe, learn, ply our trade as we cross jurisdictions, mountain ranges and oceans like never before. Once upon a time a bar or a club was a prime hunting ground for some of our kind. Now it invariably begins online and we can broadcast our love-bombs across a massive area, tweaking and adjusting until we refine matters so we can close in on those in a proximate area. The few hundred in a local bar become several million in a city who can then be met face to face and the most potent fuelling begins.
The use of social media and the internet is all pervading throughout your entanglement with our kind We seduce using it, we bombard and charm using it. We harness its formidable power to devalue, to smear, to disseminate the lies about you and then broadcast news of our newest conquest in order to further your misery. Pictures plastered across our timeline. Comments smeared across your own. Others piling into the frenzy of electronic barbs and hooks. The enticing hoover of a late night text message. The blocking, the deleting, the eradicating. The capacity to scour your online profile for information to commence your seduction. The ability to monitor where you are and who you are with as we ready a hoover. The game playing from knowing you can see I have read a message but I won’t respond, leaving you churning, anxious and on the edge of indecision as to whether you ought to try again or remain distant. The carousel of available targets, the endless permutations and possibilities for gathering fuel. Such potential and such excitement. The triangulation across the airwaves, the shuttling of similar messages back and forth to various recipients, a beauty parade where the most effective responders then are chosen for the next stage.
If all of this was taken away I can revert to old school methods. I have that skill set. The junior of our number would be in serious distress, thrashing around and unable to perform effectively as us great sharks cruise easily utilising the older methods to suck up all that fuel to leave the younger of our brethren starving and failing. Not that such an occurrence is likely to happen. No, instead it will only become more and more of a narcissist’s heaven as faster and more intuitive devices are created. How long before the “Find an Empath” application makes its presence known? Watch with glee as the radar sweeps around and notifies me that there are 42 empaths in a one-mile radius. Such sweet delight!
Of course with every new system, every new method of interaction there come rules, obligations, conventions, protocols and procedures. Many are informal, internationally recognised as the dos and don’ts of social media usage. Our kind, naturally, is not isolated from such a development and there is indeed an etiquette (which is just a euphemistic way of saying this is what you really should do) with regard to social media usage involving our kind and your kind. Accordingly, let me introduce you to twenty commandments of social media etiquette as decreed by the Council of Narcissists.
- You are never to tag us in any photographs without our prior permission which can be revoked at any time and without reason.
- Our relationship status is only updated when we deem it appropriate. Any insistence by you that we reflect your existence will meet with repercussions. Your relationship status? Nobody is interested.
- All photographs post discard will show us ecstatically happy and with ourselves draped around your replacement. You should make sure you look and do so regularly.
- All adverse comments about you are true and must never be removed, amended or diluted by you.
- We have a stock of unlimited likes which we can throw around over other people’s comments and pictures as often as we want and you have to deal with it.
- If messenger says I was active five minutes ago, it is lying.
- I can block, ban, unblock, revoke bans as and when required. You must facilitate access to all your social media at all times without condition or exclusion.
- My tweets are slices of intellectual brilliance. Nobody reads yours (unless they praise me).
- All electronic communications used by me never existed. You imagined them.
- My 1500 friends of the opposite sex are exactly that. Why else are they described as friends?
- All postings by you are subject to scrutiny and questioning as in, “Whose hand is that in the background?” and
“I see two glasses on the table. Who else was there?”
- Just because it shows I have read your message is not determinative proof that I have done so.
- It shows my message to you has been read. You have ten seconds to reply.
- You are duty bound post discard or escape to accept follower and friend requests from utter strangers with unusual profile pictures.
- Notifications do not appear on my lock screen to save battery power. Honest.
- All my postings must be liked and commented, re-tweeted etc. by you within one hour of their creation. All comments must reflect my brilliance and incisive insights on the topic du jour.
- The fact my device automatically logs in at a location is not evidence I have been before. It merely shows how welcome I am.
- You are not permitted to demonstrate favour to other posts, tweets, pictures etc. over mine.
- I filter everything that might appear on my timeline. Popularity requires such a step. No, I have not got anything to hide.
- If my response is a non-sequitur when we are messaging this does not mean I am messaging someone else at the same time. It means you are not keeping up with me.
22 thoughts on “20 Narcissistic Social Media Commandments”
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My narc will arbitrarily state that he does not like to have his picture taken. Meanwhile, his social media is full of pics and videos of him taken by other people and nothing in these photos suggests that he is uncomfortable or doesn’t want to be in front of a camera – quite the opposite. It appears that I am the only person in his life who is not allowed to photograph him. I find this highly annoying.
Any thoughts, HG?
Control over what you can do and the creation of confusion as you see the hypocrisy. It all leads to fuel Heather.
Mine was the same way. Claimed he hated his pic being taken and often put himself down in terms of how he looked. Other people though? Nope not a big deal! I was asked not to take pics of him or BE in pics with him at all because too many people would question who I was. I was also told to stop commenting on and liking his stuff because he was getting “tired of lying to everyone about who I was”. I did not realize it was possible for that kind to grow tired of lying. I guess it all goes back to fuel in the end doesn’t it?
Indeed it does.
Fascinated by no. 6. Could you give me a quick (technical) settings tutorial on this one, please?
Hello Ollie, this is a manifestation of our ability to deny evidence. Messenger will indicate when we were last ‘online’. Thus let us say a victim has sent a message which we ignore and then another which we ignore. They see we have been on messenger. The victim challenges us, “why did you not answer my messages?” we say “I haven’t checked in on messenger”, the victim responds “yes you have, it said you were last on it five minutes ago” we respond by stating
“No I haven’t you are lying.” or
“There must be a mistake, I have not been on it, if I had, I would have answered you.”
“Stop trying to control me.”
“Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realise I had to answer all your messages within seconds, you are such a control freak.”
Thus we deny the evidence which proves we are lying.
Aha! Makes sense now! I was overthinking this one. Again, your kind is so simple in their lying ways. Thank you for taking the time to answer!
You are welcome Ollie.
Tiring and typical- oh yawn yawn yawn.
Ha, but HG…social media can also be used against you. My ex husband told his side chick that he didn’t have Facebook. She also had no idea that he was married, so imagine her surprised when she finds out and messages me on FB to tell me about the affair. That was exactly the point when his life started to unravel and shortly after he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital!
Wow, what a blessing! ODS How was it that he was admitted to a MHU? They don’t crumble as a rule? Can you share how that came about, please?
A blessing indeed! Although at the time, it was heart wrenching. But it was all an act to take away from the devastation that he caused. You see, instead of everyone concentrating on the fact that he had had an affair and totally ripped the carpet up from under my feet, he played the suicide card and managed to get people to pity and feel sorry for him instead. So typical of a narc. His “illness” also led to him being discharged from the military and now he lives in the USA with her, which was probably his plan was all along. He just didn’t bank on me finding out in the way that I did. Funnily enough, the MHU never put him on antidepressants etc. I have no idea if he received a payout for his “illness”, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did so he may have received some kind of financial gain from it also. A narc will always try to deflect from the damage they have done. His attempt was extreme, but he was desperate at the time and once he realised that he could potentially lose both of his sources (his wife AND his girlfriend), he did anything he could to claw either of us back. I had far more sense and after a few weeks of going back and forth, I left him. His girlfriend pitied him enough to take him back. I give it 5 years before he does the same to her. Based on his history, he appears to get the “5 year itch”!
ods sorry that I entered the comments, without showing empathy for your pain throughout it. I had thought of this after submitting it. My excitement was because I had a come across a post that actually said a narc had been admitted to a MHU and that is rare, I was ecstatic for you and let this cloud my judgement. Dare say he would have received a payout for sure and blamed his vocation for his narcissism. Five years- they seem to go through the seven month itch, seven day itch, seven hour itch in my honest opinion, it is ongoing. Number 1 tried his best to destroy me, in fact I received a letter just today and would ask the goverment this question: Where is he, if he is not deceased and since you have checked this out, how can he have got away with what he got away with until this day in time and avoid paying child support as the government are the smart ones apparently! Number 2 is performing on cue, disastrous personality and created another in my son. Number 3 (not my N, but hurting someone close) has me on his tailfeathers, closely and number 4? narc heavy alcoholic $300 per week on booze, best watch himself, again people I love dearly. I blame narc 2 for showing the boys the ropes and I warned number 2 that this very thing would occur. To be honest, I have no empathy left for these affecting my life and that of those I love. Something has to give, something soon, real soon. I cannot absorb just how one N can come into a family free of N’s and spread like a virus. A curse, it is too weird, too uncanny and too exhausting. Just when you think the cobwebs have been removed and the spiders are gone, along comes another. The more they leave the less time they give to the next, you can be sure of that- I have done almost all I can to loosen N2’s grip but it is war.
Hey PRH, I took no offence to your comment and was more than happy to divulge 🙂 Hope it shed some light on the situation and made it easier to understand. The thing is with these spiders, once we’ve caught one we know what to look for next time. Always look out for red flags. It can be difficult though when you have children with the narc because they will always be there in the background somewhere. I count my lucky stars that we hadn’t started trying for the baby we had talked about.
#17! He literally told me that Google locations had it wrong. Omg!!!
old school methods work better on a stupid romantic like us..like me…
I’m currently out of divorce with EN and he loved to do all of the above…I’m now finally after reading your books keeping off his sites and posts. Not looking anymore. Even before our divorce was final which was in June he was in a relationship ( all happy ) in December before divorce. Lol. Everything your wrote in book Evil…all 77 pages!!! It’s like lifesaving after thousands of dollars of counseling. The 3 -4 years long distance was most painful experience I’ve had. However, I know more about myself and your kind. Thank you for sharing and I hope someday ( as you stated) that you can be free from this demon. I know you have to want too…
Take care.
Thank you Kim, I am pleased that you have found my work of such use and insight to you. Keep reading.
Blocked him here as well. I did enjoy that you said
“All postings by you are subject to scrutiny and questioning as in, “Whose hand is that in the background?” and
“I see two glasses on the table. Who else was there?”
Wow! every picture I ever took was investigated and picked apart.
I do not know why but this list is too funny. Gave me a good laugh. Thanks HG. I am not a big on social media. I use it only to promote by blogs. After I launched NC with my narc I have not checked anything on him, why would I even care? 🙂
That’s the way to do it.
It made me laugh too. Probably because it’s all so true.