Something is off, isn't it? Have you noticed it too? More people seem to be slipping into narcissistic patterns than ever before, and it's not just a feeling I have.
It's something I see every single week in my inbox, in conversations with clients, in the stories people send me from their workplaces, their families, their dating lives.
The volume has changed. The flavor has changed. And honestly, the boldness has changed.
People aren't even hiding it anymore. That alone tells you something has shifted in the water.
I want to walk you through what I think is going on, because society has a lot of explaining to do, and I don't believe most people in charge of shaping it are willing to ask the right questions. So I will.
Buckle up. It's a bit grim.
A Quick Refresher On Who We're Dealing With
You know the narcissist by now, right? I won't insult you with a long introduction. But just so we're on the same page:
They believe they are the most important person in any room they walk into.
They cannot be wrong. Ever. Even when they are caught red handed, you'll get, "Well, that's not what I meant," or, "You're twisting my words."
They are always the victim. Always. Somebody, somewhere, has done them dirty.
They live and breathe for validation. A compliment from a stranger means more than ten years of loyalty from you.
Underneath the puffed up chest, they are wildly insecure. Jealous of everyone. Threatened by everything.
They love drama. They start it, they fan it, then they sit back with a cup of tea and say, "Why does this always happen around me?"
That's our cast of characters. Now let me tell you why I think there are suddenly so many more of them filling up the seats.
Why Are There So Many More Of Them?
Because being a narcissist used to require effort. Now it requires a phone.
Think about it. The old school narcissist had to actually charm a circle of people in real life. They had to show up at the dinner party, at the church, at the office, and work the room. Their audience was capped at, what, fifty people?
A hundred on a good day?
Now? Daisy from accounts has 14,000 followers on TikTok and gets called "queen" by strangers in Ohio every six minutes. Mike, who used to be that mildly annoying guy at family barbecues, now runs a podcast where he tells the world how everyone has wronged him.
The supply line for narcissistic fuel has gone industrial.
And that's the bit that gets me. The barrier to entry has basically dissolved. You don't need talent, you don't need substance, you don't even need to leave the house. You just need a ring light and a willingness to perform.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseSo of course numbers are climbing. We built the perfect environment for narcissism to grow, and then we acted surprised when the harvest came in.
Then Versus Now (And No, I'm Not A Fossil)
Before I go any further, let me be clear, I'm not one of those "back in my day" people. I'm not yearning for a world without WiFi. But I do remember a different rhythm to life, and I think it's important to name it.
People used to actually look at each other when they spoke. The dinner table was just a dinner table. Nobody was arranging the salt and pepper for a flat lay. Nobody was thinking, "Hold on, let me get this from a better angle before we eat."
You sat down. You looked up. You ate. You talked. That was it.
If something special happened, you maybe took one photo, dropped the film off at the chemist a week later, and then everybody fought over who got the best print. The vacation photos came out at Christmas in a battered album, and your cousin made fun of your dad's shorts.
That was the entire content cycle.
Now everything is live. Everything. People are narrating their own breakfasts. Their gym sessions. Their breakups. Their grief. There's no off button on the performance, because the performance is the point.
And the brain doesn't get a rest. It's always asking, "What can I post next?" "How did the last one do?" "Why did fewer people like this one?"
Even people who aren't narcissists are starting to behave like narcissists, just to keep up. That's what scares me the most.
Anybody Spring To Mind?
I'll bet you don't even need to think hard. There's someone in your life right now whose phone is essentially their lifeline. Maybe it's a sibling. Maybe a colleague.
Maybe it's that one friend whose every brunch becomes a photo shoot, and if the lighting is off, the brunch is essentially ruined.
And if you genuinely can't think of anyone close to you, just open any social media app. Scroll for three minutes. There it is. Whole accounts built on, "Look at me, look at me, look at me."
These are people who used to be confined to small audiences. Now they have global reach. And the algorithm rewards them for it.
Social Media Says "Look At Me!" And Society Says "Sure, Babe!"
Is there a worse way to live than tying your entire sense of self to the reactions of strangers? I genuinely can't think of one.
Yet here we are. Millions and millions of people checking their phones the moment they wake up, before they've even rubbed their eyes, looking to see who responded to the post they made at 11pm last night.
A client told me recently, "Alexander, I caught myself feeling devastated because a post only got 23 likes. Devastated. Over a number on a screen." She laughed about it, but you could hear it. That little crack in her voice. Because it wasn't really funny.
She knew she'd been hooked into something.
That's the trap. And narcissists don't just fall into it. They live inside it. They build a home there.
The Comparison Game (Spoiler: Nobody Wins)
Comparing yourself to other people is not a new thing. People did it before the internet. But the volume has gone bananas. The scale is something we, as humans, were never built to handle.
It used to be that you compared yourself to maybe your neighbor, your sibling, a couple of colleagues. Now you're comparing yourself to a curated highlight reel from thousands of strangers across the planet, most of whom are also lying.
Why isn't your house aesthetic? Why didn't you get the promotion? Why aren't you in Bali? Why aren't your kids in matching linen?
You and I might roll our eyes at all that. But a narcissist? They cannot let any of it go. They have to win every single comparison, every time.
If someone went to Paris for the weekend, the narcissist will book two weeks in Paris and make sure you see every photo.
If a friend buys a Tesla, the narcissist needs the Porsche.
If a colleague gets engaged, the narcissist needs the bigger ring, the bigger party, the bigger announcement.
It's exhausting just to watch. Can you imagine living inside that head?
And social media is the perfect arena for them, because they can broadcast every "win" and silently track everybody else's. It's a 24 hour scoreboard.
Obsessed With Likes, And Then Obsessed With Why The Likes Aren't There
If you'd asked me twenty years ago whether I thought the internet would fuel a worldwide narcissism boom, I'd have laughed. I thought we were getting an encyclopedia. A music library. A way to email your aunt in Australia.
And it is still those things. It really is. But it's also become something darker. A stage. A pageant. A constant performance, with prizes given out in the form of little red hearts.
Likes, follows, comments, reposts, mentions, tags. Posing, comparing, judging, trolling, mocking, ghosting, ranting. Every single one of those words fits the description of a narcissist, doesn't it? Funny how that lines up.
Without the internet, narcissists would still exist. Of course they would. But their reach would be tiny. Their damage would be local. Now? Their reach is enormous, and their damage scales accordingly.
And look, I'm not anti internet. Obviously I'm not, you're literally reading this on the internet right now. We're connecting here. This space is what makes conversations like ours possible.
See also 8 Ways To Ruin A Narcissist's Life Without Breaking A SweatBut I do think we need to be honest about what it has done to the people who already had narcissistic tendencies, and to the kids growing up watching adults behave this way.
Because here's the thing nobody likes to say out loud. Children are watching. They're watching their parents pose in restaurants instead of talking to them. They're watching adults melt down over engagement numbers. They're watching grown ups treat strangers' opinions as more important than the people sitting next to them.
And then we wonder why the next generation is even more obsessed with themselves than the last.
It's not a mystery. We showed them. We trained them. We handed them the script and the camera and said, "Off you go."
Modern society has taken people who were already prone to self-obsession and given them the perfect tools to run wild with it. It has taken people who weren't necessarily narcissistic and slowly nudged them in that direction by rewarding the loudest, the shiniest, the most shameless.
That, more than anything, is why I think the numbers keep climbing. And it's why I don't see them slowing down any time soon.
