London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

Instagram culture of narcissism is destroying our society. Something has to be done about it

Instagram culture of narcissism is destroying our society. Something has to be done about it

Living all of our lives online is turning us into vapid, self-obsessed wannabe ‘influencers’, snapping, pouting and liking our way into cultural oblivion while real life passes us by.
Narcissism and vanity are on the rise. While in the past these were considered vices, we must concede that today, in our downward-hurtling dystopia, these are now positively virtues. There is no longer any moral opposition to ANYTHING that might stand in the way of a ‘more impressive selfie’. Fake teeth, fake smiles, duckface, caked orange layers of fake tan, and endless personal portrait photos captured during every imaginable life situation comprise what we must refer to as our new ‘Instagram culture’.

But these captures, this endless stream of vignettes, are not real life. Instead, they are the vain mirror of the wished life, the showy artifacts of those endlessly ‘seeking to impress’, whether they are actually doing anything eventful or not. Social media (particularly Instagram) seems to have been performing an enormously influential social experiment – affecting fashion, personal relations, dating, employment, politics, and how we think of ourselves. The way we view and live life is altered by the prism of reflection: everyone is watching everyone else.

However, despite the rise of this publicly sanctioned narcissism, in reality vanity remains a vice – a negative, even dangerous indulgence, both socially and individually. There is no world, online or otherwise, where vanity is not sensibly considered a destructive trait, for it engenders inflated opinion, bragging, jealousy, dishonesty, false representation, and ultimately the unthinking egomania of the tyrannical. While we are all vain to a certain degree, restraint (or as Aristotle might have put it, balance) is required in all things. For prosperity, health, and the good life.

But today every banal facet of a personal life must now be captured, categorized and glamorized. The obsession leads to fantastic feats of modification, such as the trend in getting veneers – where your real teeth are filed down to weird jagged tombstones so you can have ‘that Hollywood smile.’ This is often performed by a man in Turkey at an irresistible price, and why not get gastric-sleeve surgery to boot, since you are going abroad?

This vanity feeds into the phenomenon of ‘Instagram fashion’, based on the premise that every single person is potentially a celebrity (an influencer) therefore every single person must also have designer brands. Where previously designer brands were art houses or fashion think-tanks providing haute couture, now the influencer with the most followers controls what becomes fashionable. The discriminatory standards of cutting-edge aesthetics are traded for a mass-consumerism of real and knock-off labels. Thereby the fashions themselves are largely crass, bawdy, and mostly vehicles to display ever-larger brand logos as wealth symbols. As with all things related to vanity, superficiality rules.

Life is no longer so much lived as recorded. It is not even recorded in its warts-and-all honesty, like a document for posterity, but in social simulation of itself. The individual is a hero playing a part in their own ‘life movie’. But even this is not strictly true, as we live in a post-reality-TV world, where we seldom think in a framework of storytelling, or view our lives related to classic narrative, so much as an impression or vignette of everyone’s personal life and its social relations.

This strange alteration in world view is only increasing in scope with the younger generations. With the apparent loss of parents’ ability to allow kids to ‘be bored’, many children are no longer growing up with a storytelling or narrative framework. Instead of watching films, they are entertained with tablets providing a limitless supply of YouTube package-opening videos in a kind of monotone brainwash of meaningless sensation.

There are kids as young as 10 going into school with fake eyelashes, fake tan, false nails, who can’t pose for a photo without doing ‘duck lips’. It is so endemic that some schools need to adopt policies in direct prevention. For young adults, there seems to be a mania of make-up tutorial videos – make-up itself having become a science requiring an intense variety of paraphernalia: highlighter, primer, contour sticks, and all manner of related items. Also, it’s no longer just for women. The feminization of the Western male is no secret, it is openly lauded as a triumph. The reasons for its victory over many thousands of years of guiding patriarchy have many possible sources: feminist policies, lack of male role models, overuse of plastics, and the lowering of testosterone from overuse of soy in commercial food.

But what is perhaps most disturbing about the narcissism trend is just how much these influencers (and worse, the hordes of influencer-wannabes) begin to resemble the sterile “beautiful ones” from John B. Calhoun’s mouse utopia experiment.

Calhoun enclosed four pairs of mice in a large pen complete with all imaginable mouse amenities: water dispensers, limitless food bins, nesting boxes, and a total absence of predators. He was quoted as saying of this utopia: “I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man.” While the mice initially prospered and were fertile, after 600 days, with still enough space to double their numbers, they began to decline, until the entire colony went extinct.

It appeared that without predators, or want, or even the need to acquire their own resources, they simply lost the will to carry on. The young mice that were born never learned the skills for survival, and along with that, seemingly forgot how to live. Among the aberrations and breakdowns in social norms that occurred in that process was the phenomenon of “the beautiful ones” who spent all their time grooming and sleeping. They were the ultimate personification of life without hardship or struggle.

While being more beautiful than ever, they lost all interest in reproductive sex and died out. Not so utopian after all.

What is the lesson for us, in this grim and familiar analogy? It is this: when abundant luxury removes challenge and responsibility... self-extinction is not far away.

So purse those lips, and get your phone out... people are watching.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
×