Lurker | Narcissist

People who sign up for Facebook are either lurkers or narcissists. Lurkers are those who hide in concealment, never posting anything. Narcissists are those who enjoy seeing their pictures or comments over and over again, like Marcia Brady vapidly coming her in a mirror.

Facebook 1.0 = Marcia Brady's mirror

Hello, I'm a narcissist. I'll be honest, I enjoy seeing my pictures, comments and likes on Facebook.

While that's admittedly vain, my wife Katherine is the opposite. She wants nothing to do with Facebook. Yet she still trolls on it from time to time. We call this type of Facebook user a silent lurker. Katherine claims to hate Facebook.Still, many times she knows more about our family and friends whereabouts than I do. What's more is that she when she lurks, she does it under an assumed identity: mine. So to Mark Zuckerberg and the folks at Facebook, my marketing profile fits into both camps: narcissist and lurker. It makes sense that Facebook pitches me $10,000 bicycles and Louis Vuitton handbags.

At any rate, Katherine and I celebrated an anniversary this past week. My Dad posted a photo on Facebook and it went small-time viral among my family and friends. 50 comments!

50 likes was some sort of new personal record. It made me wonder why so many people liked it.

I mean, the previous Facebook photo that Fred posted of me (only) riding my bike garnered just seven likes.

And the one before that? My blown out ice skates drew an anemic four likes. Boo.

But prior to that one was another one of Katherine and I ice skating, and that one drew 38 likes!

Now I was beginning to see the bigger picture. The larger numbers have nothing to do with me at all and everything to do with Katherine being in the picture. Duh! So in conclusion, you all can expect to see our favorite lurker being drawn out from the shadows more to prop up her vain husband's frail ego with more FB likes.

I think humans are generally wired so that we want to be liked. I know I am. I also have an issue with conflict. Therefore, I'd rather get you to like me than to hate me so I don't have to deal with all of that yucky conflict stuff down the road.

While I care about how you feel about me, fellow narcissist Lance Armstrong doesn't. He's actually a very simple person. He's a competitor who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that his doping apology is insincere.

My only beef with Oprah is that she fell for the classic blunder in dealing with cheats and liars: she never asked if he was crossing his fingers behind his back.

And they say that Oprah asks the probing questions. Sheesh. What a joke.