In Defense of Self-Indulgence

Friday again? Already? Seriously?

As I write, I am consciously adrift amidst a pervasive social fad - it's like Lance Armstrong yellow bracelets and business people talking about "synergy." Every time you turn around, there it is. I've read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and I know all about how some ideas/phenomena are "sticky" and take off once the right people endorse them. Ask Gladwell, fads, like germy epidemics, spread.

The fad in question is the "25 Things You Don't Know About Me" lists that have saturated Facebook in-boxes and consumed, according to Time, at least 800,000 hours of America's time (to write the lists) and easily more reading them. This article bashes the lists, labeling them a self-indulgent, useless exercise in over-sharing. Based on simple arithmetic, the article claims that over 125 million facts have been shared in the process and to a pointless end. Unarguably, this fad has long surpassed the tipping point and landed clear on the other side. The "25 Things" is the bubonic plague of social fads.

Let's dig deeper and think about why.

What's neat about self-disclosure is that when one person reveals an intimate detail about themselves, a respondent is triggered to respond with similarly telling fact. Remember the last time a relative stranger or a casual colleague divulged a personal tidbit? He tells you that he had lost a parent to a particularly painful battle with cancer; she had struggled with depression or substance abuse; or his relationship had hit a particularly rocky patch. What do you do?

My guess is that you do one of two things. A) You usually respond with empathy, state "I've been there," and cite a relevant personal experience. Or, B) Even if you can't relate to exactly what the person said, you mention, "I've had my struggles too" and reveal a telling anecdote. These lists spark that innate human reciprocity of sharing information.

Sitting down to write the list might not be the ego-stroking exercise in self-love Time accuses it of being - it could be guilt. The guilt that comes from knowing that your friends have taken the time and care and thought to put themselves out there and you've consumed it without lobbing back a volley.

Considering that when you post your list, you are suppose to "tag" 25 other virtual friends and invite them to share their own list openly acknowledges that peer pressure plays a role in perpetuating the trend. But given that people love to talk about themselves, how much prodding does it really take? We'll never know for sure, but would the lists have taken off with the tagging?

Even if it is self-indulgent practice, a fact I don't wholly dispute, the voyeur in me has taken great pleasure in the lists. As soon as someone posts one, I feel magnetically compelled to read it. I might even re-read it later in the day. One of the more interesting things about social networks, online activities, and blogs is that they play an important role in how we create and express our identities. We make choices to reveal certain personal (private) facts on the assumption that readers assemble interpretations thusly.

When teaching an introductory course on Interpersonal Communication a few years back, I spent some time discussing identity and where it comes from. One's public identity is a construction. Who you are, in part, extends from who you say you are. On one level, these lists codify the process of individuals taking an active role and controlling how they are viewed. For me, it's curious to see what kinds of facts people choose to include or exclude (lots of memories about the glory days?), what they deem important enough to say (is it deep stuff or favorite ice flavors and colors), and what they are oddly compelled to share (any TMI moments?).

But from these lists I am actually learning things. I've discovered many unexpected parallels that have further linked me to my friends. These are quirky little things that we have in common and that might have long remained discovered. The lists beg for comments, serve as invitations to rehash old memories, and vehicles to snigger about inside jokes. They act as conversation starters. While they begin as one-sided personal statements, they quickly morph into dialogues.

There's an unspoken irony about this kind of meta-blogging about self-disclosure and the impulse to share. I feel guilty reading the blogs of social acquaintances when they don't know I read the blog. I mean, you write a blog, you put it out there, you expect readers. There's less anxiety for me if I am reading the blog of a stranger. I've never successfully crossed the line and express my dedication, near obsession, or interest in their lives - for fear of coming across as a stalker or having a perverse curiosity for people/things I shouldn't. A perk about the list is that it's an acknowledged forum for revealing the secrets of selfhood.

So, are the lists bringing people together or fixing the nation's problems? Probably not, or not in any significant way. But I think that the popularity of the lists can be attributed to our desires to be known in ways we devise and construct these mediated self-identities. It's a collective process. The writer needs to put it out there for the reader to stitch together. Us bloggers have been engaged in this work for years, in some cases. The rest of the world is just catching up, 25 facts at a time.

Addendum: Apparently writing about the 25 Things list IS the new 25 things list, according to Gawker.