If you find Alisa endearing, follow her on @alisabow. If you find her incredibly endearing, read her blog Project Happily Ever After, which takes an honest look at the ups and downs of marriage, told through the eyes of a recovering divorce daydreamer.
If you’ve ever raised the hackles of the Internet trolls before, then you’ve had the “Narcissist” word hatefully tossed your way. According to the trolls, the infraction of talking about yourself too much is worse than any other.
So you must understand just how courageous this is of me to admit this deep dark narcissistic secret. It’s this: I like narcissists, especially the ones I follow on Twitter.
Not all of them mind you. I, of course, could do without the folks who feed me those boring facts of their lives – going to the bathroom, drinking a cup of coffee, eating toast, writing my blog, posting my blog, thinking about my blog, wishing other people knew about my blog …
Come to think of it, that last tweet would make me laugh, and I like to laugh. So let’s put that in the “narcissistic tweets I like to read” category.
The point is that you don’t have to be helpful every single time you tweet. You don’t have to constantly tweet tips, a cool quotes, or links to cool sites that are not your own. You really can and should talk about yourself. There is room on Twitter for self-reflection, and there are people, like me, who will embrace you for it.
Here’s the important caveat: to gain followers on Twitter, you need to post something narcissistic that people actually care about. Don’t tell me you just went to see a movie. Tell me what you thought of it. Don’t tell me you just had toast. Tell me that you accidentally forgot you were making toast, burned it, and then learned that you had no Earthy idea of the location of your fire extinguisher. A tweet like that, my friend, would make me feel good about myself. I know where my fire extinguisher is, and I like to feel good about myself.
You will become endearingly narcissistic if your tweet:
- Makes people feel normal. I like to know about the hard day you are having, how overwhelmed you feel when parenting, and about the hot fudge brownie sundae you just had to eat even though it’s not one of the permissible foods on the diet you are following. I do because I’m not perfect, and I like to know that you aren’t, either.
- Makes someone laugh. Laughter feels good.
- Makes someone feel connected to you. If I feel chummy with you, I just might click through a read that blog post of yours, leave a comment, and hit the “I like it button.”
- Helps someone in some minor, but endearing way.
Here’s a good rule of thumb. If you would not say it out loud-because no one in your real life would care-don’t say it on Twitter. If it’s one of those self-absorbed things that you could just spout off in the middle of an office meeting and see an immediate smile on everyone’s face? Definitely tweet it.
Below are some endearingly narcissistic tweets from some of the people I follow. Note: I did not post my own tweets here. Although some of them may very well be endearingly narcissistic, posting them here would just be just one thing: annoying.
@penelopetrunk Changing clothes for a workout after a washout date. The locker room is empty. I hate when a good underwear day goes unnoticed all-around.
@writingroads Pet Peeve: people that have cell phones, but never turn them on – much less glue them to their bodies like me.
@momfluential My dd is engrossed in a project that she is calling: Passover! The Powerpoint Presentation! I am LMAO.
@JBRabin To the lady in front of me, your false eyelashes may be a tad too much for the post office. But they do go *great* with your sweatsuit.
@nandoism It’s so windy in NYC today-good thing I come from Texas where we learn about tornado-resistant mousse from an early age!
@teamvagina Not sure if I did these things, but the line between thought and reality got blurry last night. Plus I woke up on the couch. Bad sign.
@Helencurry Burglar alarm going off in neighbour’s flat. Since yesterday morning. You do kinda get used to it…
@MadisonMitchell I heard if Jesus sees his shadow when he rises from the dead, we’ll have another 2000 years of guilt.
@girlontrack Scratching my first mosquito bites of 2009; having sweet blood is not all it is cracked up to be. (Spike’s been a no-show, so far.)
@fraizerbaz Ack! Sometimes I wish I had a remote control for the other person in this house.
@j_organize
LOVE these very endearing narcissistic tweets! Thanks for starting me off on a great weekend.
As with Hollywood stars in interviews, if you seem down to earth, people are going to relate to you, and if people relate to you, by nature, they’re going to like you more.
Think of the recent Billy Bob Thornton interview. Anyone want to go watch Bad Santa now?? (Oh wait, I still do)
@nandoism
Alisa,
To Twitter or Not to Twitter, that’s been my dilema for a while. Seeing that my following has hit a plateau makes me wonder if I’m on the right path by tweeting what I tweet but then I think…maybe the fun, cool people just aren’t “on” at the right time and they miss my stuff–narcissistic enough for ya?
Once again you’ve defined the rules and I must follow!
Totally dig this piece and I can’t wait to meet you in a few weeks…we’re gonna “ROCK” NYC!
Nando
@TracyOConnor
Those are great! Some of my favorite people on Twitter are those who aren’t afraid to talk a little bit about themselves and blurt out what they are thinking.
To be honest, people whose Tweets are just “tweet tips, a cool quotes, or links to cool sites that are not your own.” are very hard for me to feel a connection with.
@wchingya
Believe it or not, I just posted a non-tip tweet after reading halfway through your post, Alisa. Fact is, I always think about people would appreciate more about good tips rather hear me talk about myself. I forgot the human touch that comes along with Twitter, which I appreciate.. yeah, I think I could try a little ‘Narcissist’ from time to time. ha.. by the way, that’s a new vocab I learnt today. Best wishes.
@PhebeK
I really enjoyed this!
I’ve met some great ‘endearing narcissists’ on Twitter, in fact, those are usually the ones I followed. Question: what does it mean that your phrase ‘endearing narcissist’ drew me to click and read your blog post? Hmmmmm.
Thanks for the insights.
@kzemek
If you want to feel real smart, check out my series of foolish things me and my husband have done at http://zemeks.blogspot.com/2009/04/10-foolish-things-time-to-vote.html
@jonmreid
OK, I’ve concentrated so hard on being a “productive” twitterzen, tweeting links of “useful” information, retweeting others, and generatlly *not* responding to the standard Twitter question “What are you doing?” — that this was really refreshing. Like Ching Ya, I got halfway through reading and was inspired to immediately tweet a random snapshot of my life. Thank you.
@mahadewa
Great tips ! To be a entertaining narcissist
I think I am going to have that as my mission of the month
@jan_geronimo
This is a revelation. A majority of my tweets are about links, retweets, direct messages to friends, and occasional personal stuff calibrated to put my best foot forward. Well, well, time to slip in some rare and endearing – I hope – glimpses into my narcissistic side then. Here’s hoping I don’t scare off a lot of people though. lol
@alisabow
Glad you all found it refreshing. Being useful hasn’t gone out of style. Links etc are always good things. But it’s also good to be real. At lease IMHO.
@onlinedatingpro
A lot of my tweeting is finding people who are having questions or concerns about online dating and pointing them to resources to help them. Sure, some of them are articles that I wrote, but I share other people’s stuff too! It’s always nice to get a reply back thanking me for allaying their fear or helping them make a decision.
@JustinSMV
Nice topic you have here and I whole heartily agree, there is room for Vanity Tweets and being a LEO I am sometimes known to do that but there is a way to it tactfully. Grats on the guest post.
@tixrus
I love the way you nailed how to “be human” on twitter without those horrible “eating cornflakes” tweets. I hope you find me human as well because I most definitely am. I try to mix it up. If it’s OK, I will link this blog post into a presentation I am making next week on exactly this topic.
@akarra
Thank you for this post! I must say the examples of narcissistic tweets you picked were all witty and interesting; I visited some of the tweeters you mentioned.
I do think that a large part of web promotion is contingent on the personality one projects. In terms of blogs, there are plenty of blogs which say pretty much the same thing. I usually end up going to the ones where I want to engage the writer him/herself, and am curious what s/he has to say.
I don’t have a very interesting life, and I don’t know how successful a twitterer I am. I spend a lot of time asking my twitter followers questions and trying to get them to talk about what’s important to them. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s interesting to me: people have stories to tell, and they’re good.
@hectorhenry17
Have to practice a lot.
@sethgoldstein
Alisa,
Great post. Your suggestions are perfect for those who don’t quite get Twitter. Like you said it’s not about “What Your Doing” it’s about the conversation. Often it’s helping people and posting interesting facts and quotes but other times (and this is what makes Twitter great) is giving people a little window into your world.
Great post. I love your blog (I’ll admit it too).
-Seth Goldstein
@sethgoldstein
My Blog
Addicted To Social Media
@jonmreid
This was such a refreshing reminder to get back to the basics of innocent blogging! I linked this in my post What to tweet (and what not to) under the heading “…But do answer the standard question” (after telling people not to).