I don’t know if it is the official definition, but after reading the links I guess it is about thinking “me, me, me” all the time.
And the trick is that it does not have to be “look how great I am”—because some people believe that it is okay to spend 24 hours a day thinking and talking about themselves (and how other things are related to them) as long as they avoid talking about their own greatness. The authors of the linked texts believe that “greatness” is a red herring. For example, the narcissist can also talk a lot about how they feel bad—but when a narcissist does it, the focus is always on their emotion of feeling bad, not on what makes them feel bad.
It is difficult to define exactly. For example, two people can say “I feel so sad about children in Africa starving!”, while one of them means “please look at those children, and perhaps try to find out something that would reduce their suffering” the other means “look at me and admire me for how altrustic and noble I am”. If you are not careful and don’t know where to look, you might miss the difference, because technically both of them are talking about starving children in Africa. -- Actually, I suspect that people who didn’t have previous bad experience will usually miss the difference, because they will automatically assume that the only reason why anyone would mention starving children is because they care about the starving children. While the narcissist is only thinking about how expressing care about the starving children could make the narcissist more awesome.
Am I right when my narc detectors are buzzing when I see people brag about a good deed as trival as helping a dog clean himself
Depends on context. If someone did it for the first time, they could be happy for having the experience, and want to share the happiness. -- I am proud of myself for being able to change my baby’s diapers quickly. Before I had the opportunity to practice, I didn’t know whether it will be easy or difficult, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it is trivial. That’s good for me and good for the baby. And I am not writing this to show how great parent I am, because I expect that most parents have this skill, and it’s nothing special. I just mentioned it because it seemed relevant to the topic. In a parallel Everett branch where you didn’t post the example of cleaning the dog, I probably never mentioned it online.
But yes, it is a weak evidence; and if someone’s Facebook wall is full of such content, if it seems like an advertisement for the goodness of their personality, that is too much focus on themselves. (I still give them credit for choosing this way of highlighting their awesomeness instead of other possible ways of highlighting their awesomeness, such as posting selfies. I just wouldn’t expect them to do more good than is necessary to keep the Facebook “likes” flowing.)
Can someone recommend articles to sort it out (or has interesting in-depth opinions) ?
Sorry, no articles. Only the rule of thumb—is everything the person does and talks about somehow connected to themselves, even when the focus would be more appropriate on other people or even other things? It is about the emphasis, the difference between “look how interesting are prime numbers” and “look how interesting am I for working with prime numbers”, or between “let’s help these oppressed people” and “look at me how great I am for helping these oppressed people”. (Or between this and this.)
EDIT: In the reddit forum you linked, they mentioned People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, and I recommend the book; I am just sure whether it matches the psychiatric definition of narcissism, or something else. (I do not have enough data about these kinds of people, so I don’t know how exactly this part of the thingspace is clustered.)
I don’t know if it is the official definition, but after reading the links I guess it is about thinking “me, me, me” all the time.
And the trick is that it does not have to be “look how great I am”—because some people believe that it is okay to spend 24 hours a day thinking and talking about themselves (and how other things are related to them) as long as they avoid talking about their own greatness. The authors of the linked texts believe that “greatness” is a red herring. For example, the narcissist can also talk a lot about how they feel bad—but when a narcissist does it, the focus is always on their emotion of feeling bad, not on what makes them feel bad.
It is difficult to define exactly. For example, two people can say “I feel so sad about children in Africa starving!”, while one of them means “please look at those children, and perhaps try to find out something that would reduce their suffering” the other means “look at me and admire me for how altrustic and noble I am”. If you are not careful and don’t know where to look, you might miss the difference, because technically both of them are talking about starving children in Africa. -- Actually, I suspect that people who didn’t have previous bad experience will usually miss the difference, because they will automatically assume that the only reason why anyone would mention starving children is because they care about the starving children. While the narcissist is only thinking about how expressing care about the starving children could make the narcissist more awesome.
Depends on context. If someone did it for the first time, they could be happy for having the experience, and want to share the happiness. -- I am proud of myself for being able to change my baby’s diapers quickly. Before I had the opportunity to practice, I didn’t know whether it will be easy or difficult, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it is trivial. That’s good for me and good for the baby. And I am not writing this to show how great parent I am, because I expect that most parents have this skill, and it’s nothing special. I just mentioned it because it seemed relevant to the topic. In a parallel Everett branch where you didn’t post the example of cleaning the dog, I probably never mentioned it online.
But yes, it is a weak evidence; and if someone’s Facebook wall is full of such content, if it seems like an advertisement for the goodness of their personality, that is too much focus on themselves. (I still give them credit for choosing this way of highlighting their awesomeness instead of other possible ways of highlighting their awesomeness, such as posting selfies. I just wouldn’t expect them to do more good than is necessary to keep the Facebook “likes” flowing.)
Sorry, no articles. Only the rule of thumb—is everything the person does and talks about somehow connected to themselves, even when the focus would be more appropriate on other people or even other things? It is about the emphasis, the difference between “look how interesting are prime numbers” and “look how interesting am I for working with prime numbers”, or between “let’s help these oppressed people” and “look at me how great I am for helping these oppressed people”. (Or between this and this.)
EDIT: In the reddit forum you linked, they mentioned People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, and I recommend the book; I am just sure whether it matches the psychiatric definition of narcissism, or something else. (I do not have enough data about these kinds of people, so I don’t know how exactly this part of the thingspace is clustered.)