A lot of people these days seem to be obsessed with prestige.

I came across an interesting article in The New York Times yesterday. It was about a faculty position that had been posted by UCLA seeking an adjunct professor with PhD's in biology and chemistry that would teach a semester course for $0. It was very clear in the advertisement that there would be no monetary compensation offered at all. The university faced tremendous backlash for the advertisement, and it eventually took the job offer down from its website. But being The New York Times, the story did not stop there.

The writer of the article dug deeper, and they discovered what has been suspected of much of academia for some time: that professors oftentimes accept jobs without compensation for the prestige of being able to add "professor" of X at X University to their resume. Many of these professors who did engage in this behavior regret it, and realize in hindsight that they were being exploited. The university in its defense says that it is just offering things that are competitive with the labor market. They literally get hundreds upon hundreds of applicants for one job opening, and so with this huge slush pool, they feel that the prestige of working for them is oftentimes "enough" in payment. But as another person pointedly said, "You cannot eat prestige."

So it got me thinking...and this in turn sent me down an internet rabbit hole...and what I discovered about what I call "the obsession with prestige" is actually very telling about America. You see, more and more people are hunting for prestige in America and psychologists don't really have an explanation for why this is happening. The phenomenon is an outlier when it is compared to historical data. People are seeking out prestige now more than ever, and in greater numbers when examined "per capita." It's affected everything, but let me tell you of a few examples.

In dating, there are numbers that show that people prefer partners who can bring some prestige into a relationship. In other words, it's not just 1) looks, 2) fitness, 3) income and wealth but now there is a fourth component called "prestige." A person might think, they have a house and a car, but they got that house and car by being a janitor at the local high school. Eh...not for me. In the same situation and the same house and car, someone might think...oh...this person is a lawyer for the veteran's administration. That's kind of neat. And that ends up sealing the deal. In other words, it doesn't matter that they possess "X" good. What matters now is how they got "X." This also flies in the face that par for the course of life is now a middle class job. If you've ever played golf, you know that if you can meet par, then you are doing reasonably well. This also means that if you cannot make par, that you have a ton of work to do. In the golf course of life, a lot of people are unable to make par, yet they pretend that they have the abilities of Tiger Woods in his prime.

And many people prefer prestige in jobs, even if they don't pay anything. In another article I saw, a man with self-awareness wrote about how his obsession with prestige caused him to go to business conferences incurring expenses that his family could not afford. While at this business conference, he handed out cards that said he was "CEO" of his company, and he cheated on his wife by saying to attractive women at the conference that he was looking for a "VP of Marketing." He said that women would drive 100 miles round trip to meet him for dinner in San Francisco just so that they could talk about what it might be like to be VP of Marketing for him. And his company was a complete fake. It made no money and was just a pipe dream. He had a wife and kids at home and was a school teacher. Just the very scent of "prestige" was enough to cause people to leap at these opportunities.

In the last article I found (regarding a toxic relationship with prestige), a psychologist spoke about people who aren't sure of what goals to pursue in life. These (in large part) younger folks actually place "prestige" as the actual goal. In other words, in absence of a life plan and feeling the pressure to "do something," they focus all of their energies on something prestigious. "I want to work at Google," or "I want to work at Goldman Sachs" or "I want to be a doctor." And they throw themselves into fulfilling whatever requirement it takes to get the prestige they are seeking and not really knowing anything at all what the day-to-day responsibilities of that job are.

The Oxford Dictionary defines "Prestige" as a noun that means the "widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements or quality." But hunting for prestige on top of the things that you actually need 1) food, 2) shelter, 3) air, and possibly 4) companionship seems to be a weird turn of events. For starters, hunting for prestige sets up anxiety and fear in that you may never attain it. Second, if you do get the prestige, if you don't fully understand what it is that you were seeking like (for example) a job at Google, then you might end up really hating the hours and hating the work you do, and it ends up being something you regret.

Furthermore, prestige hunting also feeds into misogyny in untold ways, insisting on virgin brides being just one example. Prestige-hunting also sets up gatekeepers in positions of power (Harvey Weinstein being a great example of this). But at its most basic level, a person who is obsessed with prestige is going to have a really hard time finding anyone who is good enough for them. The epidemic of loneliness that is sweeping the first world may (in fact) be caused by an obsession with prestige. People aren't "good enough" for other people and are thus discarded. So people end up not communicating with each other, and daughters no longer communicate with mothers, because they fear such associations may harm whatever prestige they've managed to obtain in their lives. It also feeds into celebrity mania, in that ordinary people become increasingly obsessed with celebrities because they envision that being with "this person" would fulfill me even though they know absolutely nothing of what that person is like in private.

Anyway, these are all things that I think about. This particular one all popped up in my head because I read that article in the New York Times. But I do have a question for you: If you believe this hypothesis that people care more for prestige now than they ever have, what do you suppose is driving it? And if you will indulge me a second question it is this: do you have any examples in your life where someone seemed to be obsessed with prestige, and they came to harm because of it?

Dr. Ramani Durvasula got me thinking about the toxicity of pursuing Fame in America and how it ruins lives.

 

I've been reading a book called Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. It is written by Ramani S. Durvasula, PH.D. It's one of those books that I'm progressing through rather slowly, at a pace of about 20 pages at a time. This is mostly due to the fact that I want to think about what I just read. It's also because a lot of what Durvasula talks about in the book are things I've witnessed first hand. Additionally, it's kind of fun to be the armchair psychologist and think..."Oh yea...this describes my family" or "Oh yea...this describes that narcissistic friend of mine to a tee. What an asshole they are."

And speaking of "asshole," there's a great definition of this term that I'm going to tell you about. I'd never thought of defining the word in this way. Apparently, an asshole is a "person who allows themselves to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes them against the complaints of other people." It's a mouthful, but it kinda makes sense.

There is way too much to talk about in Durvasula's book that warrants attention (or that could fit into one blog post). But one thing did stick out in my reading last night, and that is what I'm going to blog about today. It's about fame. I'd never really given much thought to what fame actually was, but Durvasala defines it in a way that seems more meaningful than a catchphrase or a kind of force of nature/personality. Interested? Please read on.

Dr. Durvasula writes that "we humans want and, in fact, need social belonging and connection...the drive for fame then is largely our need for social belonging. Perhaps fame implies permanent social belonging, because the person will be recognized everywhere they go." Then she goes onto cite a personal example of someone who desperately wanted to be famous. When she asked this person why, they responded with, "So I am never lonely again."

When I thought about this example, I put down the book and was suddenly struck with how lonely some people must actually be. One particular example that pops into my head is Gabby Petito, the late (murdered) Instagram woman who went on a trip to see national parks in the United States with her fiancée, and their van life (though very instagrammable) was obviously a nightmare, and she was murdered by someone she trusted and her body left to rot under the sun. I wonder if she was driven to that kind of life because she was lonely. She was trying to pursue fame, and it just led to a toxic mess of abuse and violent crime.

And it got me thinking about how toxic our culture is. Americans are really good at walling off people, ignoring people, canceling people, and being mean to people. It's kind of like a super power that Americans all have. The idea of having fame seems to be a salve for that. If you are famous, then you can open closed doors. You can be invited to parties on the other side of the wall. You can feel welcome in places that are largely unwelcoming to everyone else. You can even rise above and profit from negative criticism that would destroy someone that wasn't protected by fame. So fame and fame-seeking seems to go hand-in-hand with the hatred that pollutes our country.

The more people hate, and the more people build walls to keep people out, the more important it will be for a person to have access to something that will allow them to move fluidly through all of those boundaries. Fame appears to be that "something," and it may be the most desirable commodity of all among America's youth these days. That (I think) is a bad thing for our country. For example, I can't imagine what it would be like to try and have a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with a famous person. How would they ever have time to emotionally support you when there are so many people clamoring for their attention? I think it would be a fertile breeding ground for massive insecurities unless the famous person took steps to create really firm boundaries with the public and put you at the center of what was important to them. Unfortunately, we see this kind of thing play out over and over again in the media. Those who are excellent with the boundaries have relationships that survive. Those who aren't good at boundary setting end up decimated by the public that worships them. There are so many bad things about America now though that it's honestly hard to keep track of them all. So it's just adding one more sociopolitical catastrophe onto the steaming garbage heap.

Anyway, I appreciate the thought exercise that Dr. Durvasula gave me regarding fame. And since we're on the topic, do any of you who are reading my words now hunger for fame (or do you have kids who are fame obsessed)? If so, care to share why? I'm a very non-famous person who legitimately wants to know.

La La Land was a good movie but it's narcissism really bugged me a lot.

I feel like I'm behind with my blog because I have so many movies I want to discuss. Today I wanted to talk about La La Land, even though it isn't necessarily something that people are talking about anymore. So obligatory SPOILER WARNING.

I saw La La Land in January, and I honestly wasn't surprised that it didn't win Best Picture at the Academy Awards (although I was surprised at the mixup on stage when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced the wrong winner). I admit to being one of those people that thought the mixup was due to Warren's age. I'm glad it wasn't. However, I've been watching the Oscars for decades now and don't ever recall a flub of that magnitude. Best Picture award aside, La La Land was stylistically an important movie and a musical (I like musicals). But here's the thing: I thought it was merely okay.

I have my reasons. First, I wasn't expecting the overall film to be about narcissism. I thought it would have been more whimsical and fun. Instead it was about this story of two people with ambitions, paying lip-service to those ambitions, forsaking love, luckily achieving those ambitions, and then experiencing a weird kind of regret that they both chose wrong but in the end...were somehow okay with it because it allowed them to achieve lofty goals by giving each other what they needed.

Okay...cool. Why not? Right? Give up on one fantastic life to embrace another fantastic life. It doesn't sound all that bad.

Personally, I don't like these kinds of stories, because I feel that too many people have unrealistic expectations toward life already (job, income, sexual partners). I would even say a majority of Americans fall into this group. That being said, this same majority is going to defend against my assault of "you have unrealistic expectations" with something like, "I loved it. It reminds me of how the real world is."

Really? The real world doesn't look anything like this except for a select few (maybe less than 1% of the population).

So here's my rebuttal to that idea. If you loved La La Land because you are part of this majority, and thereby have a very different ideology to mine in that, if something isn't right you just make it happen...then I applaud you for making that work. However, my ideology has been shaped with my own ambitions, failures, achievements, and education. My ideology is that people indeed have distinct limitations, and there are simply some things that certain people cannot do no matter how hard they wish it to be true.

It is the anti, "You can accomplish anything!" speech. It is the anti, "Sometimes you have to sacrifice to get your dream!" In my world, "sacrifice" can get you a shot at a dream, but it is not a guaranteed thing. There are lots of people who sacrifice, and the shot they think they would get never shows up. And no, in every single one of these situations, the sacrifice was not worth it, because their lives are worse off. That is reality. Where are those stories? Where are the stories of the people who were delusional, sacrificed a good thing thinking that a great thing was within reach (when it never was), reality handed them the badly needed "reality check," they realized their mistake (and tried to backtrack), and found out that the road to that previously good thing they used to enjoy had evaporated? Where are those stories? You know...the ones that end in failure--the end--that's all folks! Because I know a lot of people from my home town who fall into this category. They were young and handsome men, circled by a plethora of choices, but they never settled because they always deserved more. I'm sure their thoughts went something like this: I'll settle down when I get a prettier girlfriend. I'm going to quit this job because I deserve better. I'm going to leave this relationship because all my friends say I deserve better. They embraced unrealistic expectations. Now, they find themselves at the age of 40 living in poverty with no options at all. It is the epitome of a mid-life crisis. Now they are angry white men that squandered their privilege of choice, whose joints are causing pain in the morning, and who want to burn down the world because they have become the losers.

To steal a quote from another great movie, Inception, these people become, "an old [person] filled with regret." In the original quote the word "man" is used, but it is relevant nonetheless.

La La Land is a movie that is a fantasy, and for that it should be appreciated. Some women going to it are probably envisioning themselves as the beautiful Emma Stone with all of the options in life at their fingertips (including being able to shag Ryan Gosling). Please don't be mad if I insert an eye-roll here. It's good to have a fantasy. These people (in the indulgence of their fantasy) may see themselves as once having those kinds of options, choosing one, and then experiencing the regret of leaving behind the incredibly beautiful boy because they chose yet another drop dead gorgeous man to be the father of their child and a life filled with riches and loveliness. Sigh. If only.

But the truth is that a lot of these people would never have a chance with Ryan Gosling, and never had any such choices in life. The gulf between many women and Emma Stone's character is the same gulf as a homeless person and Donald Trump. It's just not possible to bridge that gap. Ever.

In finishing this rant, I think that La La Land is particularly an American movie. It reminds me of a quote from "Shameless" when the Russian woman (Svetlana) in a relationship with Vi and Kev responds to Fiona. Fiona walks in on her and Svetlana says, "You Americans...you are all the same. You think you are up here, but in reality quite a few of you are down here [puts hand just above floor]. You make bad decisions because you think something better is always going to come along. You never check where you actually are in life. I recognize I am whore. But I put money away to buy my own Quiznos. When I have business, I will be above you, because you are still waiting for something that will never come."

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, has something more to add to this topic. There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them--at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. And in revealing that hidden logic, Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential. And the fact is, some people are just outliers, and their success is not something that can be reproduced.

The majority of us will live average lives. William David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." This is as real a quote as it has ever been.

Friday, I want to talk about how I think schadenfreude is the most dangerous emotion in the world.

The forecast for 2015 is writing and insecurity and reformed narcissism just in time to discuss the benefits of accepting failure

Today is Insecure Writer's Support Group day, which rolls around once a month. According to Alex J. Cavanaugh and his Monday post, I'm supposed to write a short introduction to myself and put it before my entry. So here it is:

Michael Offutt writes speculative fiction books that have science fiction, LGBT, and paranormal elements. His first book, Slipstream has received some critical acclaim and was published by Double Dragon in 2012. The sequel, Oculus, came out in November 2012. He has one brother, no pets, and a few roots that keep his tree of life sufficiently watered. By day, he works for the State of Utah as a Technical Specialist. By night, he watches lots of t.v., writes, draws, and sometimes dreams of chocolate. 

Michael Offutt graduated from the University of Idaho in 1994 with a Bachelor's degree in English.

I suppose what makes this particular installment of the Insecure Writer's Support Group special for me is the fact that it lands on January 7th, which is just in time to examine New Year's resolutions and to take a moment to talk about the dangers of "forecasting" and planning your life based on the whimsy of fortune-tellers.

I consider myself to be a person with his feet firmly planted on the ground. But I wasn't always this way, because I listened to people who probably believed (to some extent) that they could see the future. And it led me to many bad decisions, a lot of wasted time, and a little bit of heartache. The problem with depending on "forecasts" is that they often emerge from a place filled with desire, and it has little if nothing to do with the actual truth. For example, speculators who "short" the stock market forecast that the economy is going to do terrible, that everything is going to hell in a hand-basket, and that if you're smart you should just run for the hills and keep your money buried in a pot in the garden. In contrast, "bulls" will tell you that the economy is constantly improving, that companies are hiring more people than ever, and that if you're smart, you'll put all your money into stocks to join the party where there's nothing but Levian chocolate diamonds, caviar, and good will.

Relationship "experts" do this too with lonely single people who are looking for help in attracting a partner. They'll forecast that "You'll find love" if you just do this and this and this. But I think that a lot of people (myself included) will end up accomplishing the list of things that they're supposed to do and end up empty-handed. "Well obviously you missed doing this at this precise time," an advisor might say. Or they might fall back on the idiom "there are no guarantees in life," which you really can't argue with so you might as well not even try. For the record, that phrase really serves only one point: to end an argument, which makes sense because the person uttering that phrase probably has little investment in you anyway.

Is there a universal truth? How about "just because you believe in something it doesn't have to be true." To clarify, there's what you believe and then there are facts, and in this universe the best that any of us can do is to take a measurement and record what we observe ourselves in order to better understand what's going on around us.

The field of publishing is rife with forecasts. "This year publishers will be looking for dark fantasy." "Young adult dystopians are so out; historical romances are in." "Portal fiction is so 2010. Now it's magic systems; the more original, the better." "No one wants a guy as a protagonist.""Don't write in third person." "Don't write in first-person." And the advice goes on and on and on, all of it based on "forecasts" of what a person believes makes money.

I'm sure that any of you out there who have been writing for a while have seen the "forecasts" and have tried to adjust your writing so that you aren't caught without an umbrella on a rainy day. But the danger of doing this for me was that writing became less enjoyable. I realized I was trying to "publish" instead of trying to create something that I loved. Writing is a business, and it probably took me over two years to fully embrace this concept--that all that matters is that a story have the widest possible appeal in order to sell the most books and thereby make the most money. If you know someone with a big book contract, it's because a company is convinced that what that person has to offer is going to make them money. They don't even have to have read the story, and many of them probably don't even care to.

I think what I'm trying to say is this: forecasts make me insecure because I wonder if I'll ever be able to fit in. When I write, it's to create something for me with no regard to whether or not anyone else will like it. And to anyone that feels the same way I do, I would encourage you to learn to ignore forecasts when it comes to certain things (like writing) unless all you want to do is make money. If you don't do this, you may end up seriously compromising what you truly want to say. However, if making money is your primary goal, then you probably don't have my insecurity issues. Knowing what I do about the publishing business though, I'd still say that 1) you should probably consider something else because very few writers actually make decent money with their books, and 2) best of luck to you because one of the most narcissistic professions out there is being an author.

So yeah, I'm saying if you're trying to write, chances are you're a narcissist. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do know that one of the things that a narcissist feeds upon is energy from others. If you're doing all this writing, and no one is reading it or proclaiming your brilliance, then you're probably not getting very much emotional energy in return, which ends up slowly bleeding you dry and making you a miserable person.

No one can tell you what the future holds. For me, overcoming my insecurity about the future brought me inner peace in the present. I consider myself a "reformed narcissist," a person that has learned to set achievable goals, to accurately measure many things including my own value, and to recognize that there is no formula that can make you "fit in" with the popular kids. As a result, I'd say growing comfortable with certain levels of failure can in fact be the healthiest thing some of us can do.

Fame brings out a person's true colors

George R.R. Martin is one of the most successful writers alive. And he's now filthy stinking rich because of that success. I think his behavior with regard to his fans is pretty atypical. Here are some words of "encouragement" for you from him:

No, I will not come to your convention, thanks for asking.
No, I will not read your manuscript/ galley proof/ book, but good luck with that.
No, I will not write a story for your anthology, I am a year behind writing stories for my own anthologies.
No, I will not write a preface/ introduction/ foreword for your book.
No, I will not do an interview.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

LOLOLOL

In my opinion, fame brings out a person's true colors.

So, how will you act if the day comes when you have money, an agent, a book deal, and fame? If you're in YA you could be super polite (super fake), never follow anyone on twitter (except other celebrities), never visit anyone's blogs, say things like "goodness me...I'm so busy..." and when someone wants to legitimately talk with you, you'll refer them to "Your Publicist."

Know any authors that fit this bill?

Here is the real mind-bender. Maybe arrogance is the whole point of fame.

Maybe the people that behaved this way were ALWAYS arrogant and couldn't stand being mediocre. It beat them up. They knew they had to HAVE FAME to have an excuse to be arrogant. Without the fame, being arrogant just made them look like jerks. But with it, people get a free pass.

Me Me Me Me ~ Twitter Part One

Does Twitter breed narcissism? Do your eyes light up when you see a new blog comment, receive a new email, a new tweet, or a Facebook message? Some writers refer to this as validation. I say that's a euphemism for narcissistic personality disorder or NPD.

Think about why you follow people on Twitter. You want to know all about them, their lives, their thoughts...you want to know if they're going to lunch in a bookstore or if they'll post a photo of something you have never seen and get that intimate experience that only 900,000 other people can share at the same time. But it was meant for you lovelies...it was meant for you.

After categorizing 3,000 messages from 350 Twitter users in a recent study, professors at Rutgers University published a study that indicated the majority of updates on twitter are self-centered.  From the press release:

80 percent of regular users are "meformers," people who use the platform to post updates on their everyday activities, social lives, feelings, thoughts, and emotions. The remaining 20 percent--"informers"--share information, have larger social networks, and are more interactive with their followers.

Here's an article that goes more in-depth on the prevalence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the social media scene.

If you go to a big city tweetup or social media conference, you're almost guaranteed to meet a clique of NPD people and their minions engaged in an ego-stroking circle jerk.... The successful NPD person creates an intricate matrix of positive feedback in the form of fans, friends, followers, and partners who fulfill their endless needs. When the sources of these ego rewards (comments, accolades, retweets, speaking gigs) become unavailable or fail, the narcissist will experience intense feelings of emptiness.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating against using Twitter. On the contrary, I'm on Twitter and because of it, I knew breaking news the moment it happened. 1) Adam Lambert got kicked out of Lady Gaga's birthday party for trying to shove her face into her cake--I mean...damn!! 2) Bill Shatner is in New Zealand but failed to provide me a tweet of when he went to the bathroom 3) A famous YA author loves Tumblr 4) and another famous author compares herself to the powder puff girls and...wait for it...proclaims her frustrations on twitter that her bank put a limit on her debit card on how much she could spend in a day despite the fact that she has the money to cover it. 

I'm so inspired...Do you think that I could put the above design on a t-shirt? Everyone I know would have to have one. Of course, I'd expect you to buy it from me and wear it for me and tell me how much you love it and tweet me and message me and comment me...

Oh dear...