Who’s to blame for college students’ narcissism?
Generation Y is all grown up, in college and more self-absorbed than ever, according to a new study presented today. Who’s to blame? Everyone, apparently. Parents who smother their children with undue praise and give less authoritarian punishment, elementary schools bent of teaching how special and unique we all are, YouTube confessionals and MySpace profiles that thrive off of exhibition and exposure, blogs (yes, blogs) and the Internet as a whole in giving everyone media access like never before, reality television, Anna Nicole Smith/Britney Spears/any other CrazyCelebWatch 2007, etc. etc.
While narcissism is nothing new, the trend behind is troubling to the study’s lead author, Jean Twenge. With 30 percent of college students surveyed displaying high levels of elevated narcissism, Twenge believes we could be heading to a world where people are too into themselves to be emotionally available and think nothing of treating each other like dirt, even in public places.
As if on cue, Inside Higher Ed looks into the Pit Break Up drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The set-up (and it was set up): boy dates girl, girl cheats on boy, boy invites girl to romantic spot on Valentine’s day on campus along with over 1,000 other students via Facebook, a Capella group sings kiss-off song, boy dumps girl with the crowd, cameras out, cheers on. The video is pretty long, and honestly it only gets interesting/scary when the crowd starts chanting “Slut! Slut! Slut!” at her as she tells him off for being a coward. Students ate this drivel up, writing letters to the Daily Tar Heel demanding coverage and joining Facebook groups proving they were there, man.
747,000 hits on YouTube later, the du(m)per comes clean with an explanation for the hoax: the Internet is extremely powerful and amazing and the media doesn’t really get us college kids cause we’re so complex and oh, by the way I’m starting this busine… hey, where’d you go? Come back! (The Facebook group is already sad they’ve been had, LonelyGirl15-style.)
Here’s the solution: follow Warhol’s advice and limit the total amount of video clips to 15 minutes total. With guys like this, that’s plenty more than they deserve, but maybe they’ll value it a bit more. If everyone’s listening, they should say try saying something a little more interesting than “I’m awesome.”
(The whole reason for the post was to justify using that picture of the cat wearing sunglasses. Indulge me, please.)
Categories: bizarre, health, internet
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