Why narcissism boosts your online following

Whilst for many, the opportunity - indeed, the encouragement - to utilise the web as a means of publishing your diary or nearest equivalent (particularly if you intern within a government agency) is a dream come true for many.

For all too long people were unaware that your room's a mess, you just got all your exam results back - and with exceedingly great results to boot - and that you just cannot, CANNOT wait for the premiere of Junior Masterchef.

Even by way of 140 characters, abbreviations are adapting, arguably at the expense of the English language, twitter just won't die out of the fad period.

With the (favourable) exception of my mumsy, who thankfully protects her professional discretion as a psychiatrist, bloody everyone is on facebook.

Each day carefully tending the Farmville harvest whilst posting another lot of photos you scanned through from 10 years ago or in the case of my auntie in Israel, regaling second place in a bridge competition.

But would you believe that for many people, twitter is a bloody nightmare, and yet: a Necessary Evil.

For wannabe journos anyhow. If Tom can get a job simply by launching an innovative blogger page, then you can imagine how many similar pipedreams are born around this very notion.

I do feel self-conscious over the perverse number of social networks that I belong to; albeit, half-arsedly, but in this day a new existential crisis has arisen: if it's not on facebook, it doesn't exist...

This is obviously the feeling of another good mate - and comrade - who is on twitter purely to better her chances of securing employment within the ABC...


Her current following stands at around 10 - and I say this not at all scathingly: hell I don't exactly have any potential as a cult leader if twitter is any kind of indicator - but may soon surge into the hundreds.

Well, thanks to a couple of throwaway lines from myself, she is learning just how easily one can blow their own trumpet in the nonchalant fashion of twitter and it's been a breakthrough..

For example, whilst using the 2ser twitter login to plug some wares or another, I asked her how long it took her to get 2ser onboard with her own account.

Wide-eyed with awe, she was amazed by the genius notion, and has since gotten to the stage of suggesting (read, coercing) others to RT her tweets.

I may just have created a monster...