Hello, everyone. This is the first in a series, we hope, and we would like to call it The Fly on the Wall. I am not quite sure who is the fly and who is the wall, but let’s find out together.

My name is Sam Vaknin, and some of you may know that I’m the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.

Okay, okay, got it, sorry.

And sitting opposite me is my wife, long-suffering, as she is known, Lydia Rangelovska, and Lydia and I are just going to talk, simply talk as we do very frequently at home, and see how it comes, how it goes.

We’re going to discuss, obviously, topics that are of interest to you, anything from narcissism in mental health settings, to narcissism in society, manifestations of narcissism, how it affects everything from media, to youth, to lessons, to marriages, to we’re going to ramble, we’re going to rant, and hopefully we’ll find our ramblings and rants as interesting as we do.

And if you don’t, this is YouTube, switch off, move to another channel.

Hello, Lydia. Okay, what would you like to discuss?

Yesterday, I met a few friends. One of them is like 26, 27, the other one was 39, and the third one was between. So I was able to see what is the gap from the youngest to the oldest me, that was me, almost half century life. I’m proud of it, frankly.

But the youngest one was absent, meaning like she had to divide, to be present and absent. The absence was when the phone was ringing, when there was a message from some social media or something, and she felt obliged to answer.

In my generation, it was impolite. You know, when you talk to someone or you’re in a group or something to respond, you know, we wanted the spontaneity, the conversation to be spontaneous, there was some meaning while we were communicating at the time. But with younger generations, you know, they are constantly interrupted, and they were refocused, and wanted to gain start and all to continue, but they forgot where they were.

So I made a remark like, how come this is happening? Can’t you at least focus, you know, at least to remember the last sentence of the conversation before? What was, so you forgot what was really important for you to hear. You asked the question, and she did before, and we should have, you know, just among us discussing the topic, you know, and solve some issue or suggest different views for her to be able to choose, let’s say, to choose an option, how in which direction she would go and solve her own problem, or what we discussed, and matter to her so much.

And I was pulled back. I said, you are not oriented, not in space, not in the body, not in the mind, you know.

And I find that these generations, up to 30, they are in a mess. They need more organization.

So after that, I mean, we spoke and so on. It’s due to some sick pathological attachment styles. I must say, we know what attachment styles are, but it comes from home. So I found out that she actually had not very good example at home. There was some latent abuse, and she was personally abused even physically by a parent. Look, I felt it on my own skin. So I had very pathological attachment with you. You are narcissist, right? You are diagnosed with narcissism.

But many people will say, what on earth are you doing with this person? But they don’t understand my history, how I grew up. You know, maybe I found some solution or less painful for me personally, and found some value in you.

But she is too young. She doesn’t still know what is right, what is wrong. So she attaches to everyone, and she can’t make a difference, and she falls in problems all the time. And she doesn’t know how to organize her life.

Is it?

I try to have a bit of a wider view. The smartphone is like a portal, portal to another universe.

It is through the smartphone or similar devices that you enter another world, cyberspace.

The problem of, I don’t know if it’s a problem, by the way, the thing that characterizes young people is that they are no longer able to make distinction between that reality and this reality, that universe and this universe.

So if someone calls on the phone, he is as real as someone you’re sitting with. As real. It’s exactly like that person would materialize mysteriously and talk. So of course she would pay attention.

So I think the distinction, the border between virtual reality and real reality is blurring, disappearing. And it all becomes one universe, one reality to the young people, not with older people, but with young people.

So that for them, a friend on Facebook is as real as a friend outside Facebook. Someone who calls on the phone is as real as someone who is talking to them, sitting with them, etc.

And this is part of even larger phenomenon, I think.

That is the phenomenon of merging of man and machine. Man and machine are going to merge. They are already merging. We already have people with artificial legs, artificial hearts, artificial knees. And we are already attached to our devices, sometimes more than we are attached to our children. So we are alreadydevices are part of us completely.

So I think in 50 years, man and machine would be totally merged, like cyborgs and artificial intelligence would be integral part of the body.

So I think this, what we are seeing is the beginning of this trend of living as much inside the machine as outside the machine.

She doesn’t see any difference between whoever called.

But to be able to make a distinction, why?

For what?

Look, she was on social networks. She has friends there, friends.

In our society, you have friends with whom you discuss your problems, why would you make a distinction?

No, the thing was that they discussed some problem and she asked for validation of her emotions, how to some sort of help.

But she ended up talking to some elder women that have different values and she turned and she preferred a few hours in reality.

You understand?

So there was disturbance. She was disturbed. She was like hooked. She had to respond.

I think young people are getting much more relevant information to them from the smartphone than from outside the smartphone.

Here’s the failure of society. Families disintegrated, communities disappeared.

Today, the young person is getting much more relevant and important and critical information via the smartphone than from example, from mother or neighbor.

But let’s be frank, who really have time to be on social media, then the children who avoid studying or writing the homework for tomorrow, they are much younger. Or some, I call them desperate women who found themselves alone divorced without husbands on social welfare.

Because this is what I see. But they are bored. In effect, most of them are bored. They don’t have what to do.

And this girl that really has a problem is asking for some validation from who exactly? What is the relevancy?

I mean, what they can say? A child from, I mean, a teenager?

I think we should ask teenagers. What is the information they deem relevant and important?

And you will discover, I think, that the only information they consider relevant and important is their position relative to others, their relative ranking.

And the designers of social media knew that. So that’s why they put likes to addict the teenager, to addict the teenager to this.

So she, for example, if she has a choice between you and your wisdom of the years and so on, and to check how many likes she received or how is she compared to Bojana, her girlfriend, she would prefer this much more relevant information to her because she learned, all the young generations learned that the real world has nothing to offer to them. And really, it has less and less to offer. It’s a major problem, the disappointment of the new generation.

I asked her, I asked her, how come after years, years, after years there, she explained that the, she didn’t see the problem as, I mean, her problem that she described as how I see it from outside. I said, of course you can’t because you’re in it. And she wanted to prove her theory, her narrative, to be okay, right, that she has to live with it.

So she went on social media trying to be or to express herself and to explain herself with others that actually she knew in reality as well, which is she noticed that they behave completely different.

In a group commenting on her post, for example, commenting different than the advice, for example, she got them personally in reality.

She meant the same people.

Yes.

The same people who were in the…

Yes. The response in a group from the very same person was diametrically opposite than what that person told her in reality. So she even get more confused. And that confusion, she adopted that kind of life all the time to be confused. And that was also very interesting, why she chose, she wanted to leave herself in this uncertainty.

When we all know that it’s our basic fear that we cannot predict the future, and we try to solve the problems to feel safe and more grounded, more in reality, when there is this very basic need, and we can’t live, and we are trying to avoid the fear of uncertainty.

So it’s like a challenge for the young. This is something I can’t understand. Is it a challenge? What is there behind all this?

I think cyberspace and more specifically social media are designed to entrap the young by offering…

By confusing them?

By offering a self-enclosed informational environment so you don’t need ever to exit, for example, Facebook. You’ve got news, you’ve got friends, you’ve got Instagram. But even more importantly, by offering artificial measures of certainty.

So they introduce certainty and safety artificially via quantitative measures, how many likes, how many shares, how many friends you have, and so on. When you go to Facebook, you have numbers. I have 5,000 friends I received 186 likes, etc. And numbers are always certainty, always. When you exit Facebook and you go to Instagram and you go to real life, things become much more fuzzy, much more unclear, much more ambiguous. Youngsters cannot cope anymore with ambiguity, with equivalent.

These generations of young people were able to cope with ambiguity, and clarity, uncertainty, equivocation. Youngsters today cannot do that because they have no other sources of certainty.

As a youngster 50 years ago, your mother was a source of certainty, your father, the village, your neighbors, your teachers. There were many sources of the state. There were many sources of certainty.

Today, if you’re a youngster today, you’re 16, who? Your divorced parents, your non-existent community, your cheating politicians, who?

So which is escaping?

So only two sources of certainty, celebrities and social media. And they are linked, usually. They’re together. These are the only two sources left.

So young people are addicted to sources of certainty, celebrities and social media.

But the effect, as this girl claims, is opposite. It’s more uncertainty.

Because she met these people in reality, vast majority of teenagers don’t do that. Actually, according to studies, 80 percent of teenagers make it a point never to meet the people they are on the same social network. 80 percent. That’s research we did for them.

Okay, she met few.

That’s greater than certainty. The contrast.

I don’t think this is what I’m trying to help her getting out to distinct social media from a reality.

Because even when she’s in reality, she behaves as though she is in the social media. Her reactions are such. And it’s confusing.

And you can see the immediate, the instant answers. They expect from the other instant answers now, if not now, they never…

It creates, it gives a little bit of profile over… I mean, they are more aggressive, more paranoid. I mean, so now I’m not talking only about her, but all those who I met and treated in between, from 13 to… Actually, from 12 to 35. So it’s obvious that they have some dependency on social media. They know and they are aware that they don’t get the positive or their emotions are not validated because they don’t really know what are the values of those people who are on social media. And they can change their minds depending on what is discussed there. I mean, on the post or whatever the reason is, the comments. And they’re pretty contradictory. The same person can… I noticed that. I also had private letters. I was on Facebook. I opened it much later, like four years ago. But I really don’t know when was the last time I visited my Facebook page.

What I was repelled by is that people there responded on what they heard last. And they were not even thinking that they were actually contradicting themselves.

And this is the confusion. And that person is still there.

Why? I’m asking why she wants to be confused all the time. That is the point that I don’t understand.

What do you suggest that she leaves the social media or she leaves reality?

When I was actually putting the reason why I went out, I said, this person is not… Something is… There were too many glitches in the correspondence.

So it actually few, nevermind. But it was too different of how she represented herself, how she commented on…

Why would you suggest to the youngster to leave social media?

It’s not only youngster.

To whoever, to leave social media.

There are people that they are becoming dependent on the confusion by actually confusion. They get information from social media, from who knows who. We don’t even know. Maybe they are 62, but actually they are in reality, they are 18 years old. And they play clever.

Everyone plays clever, but they don’t really know. I don’t know. It’s the informations that are passing. It’s really confusing for the other. We are different. We are coming from different places. We have different backgrounds, families, different attachment styles, different traditions, whatever. We are different. Differently, they want to unify it.

And most of the young people that I met here, they want to leave. What? They think that the life there is better.

Some of them really went and worked abroad for summertime, summer camp, studies. And they all comment that they feel like two personalities.

If you know, I showed you the quantum test of a person who lives abroad and here, and her behavior is completely different. Really like she had two personalities. No wonder she said, can you help me integrate the two?

The effect is enormous. The environment.

So you are comparing it to social media? I didn’t know.

Social media is environment. It’s global environment. This country is this country. The other countries, but when you go and visit, you read about it.

First you have some reserve. You go, you meet people. You see how it is. Can you adapt or not?

There is nothing like that in social media. You instantly belong.

I think social media has very important characteristics that separates it from, for example, immigration or finding yourself in your environment.

Social media is a private case of online multiplayer games. Online multiplayer games started long before social media. These are games where you play online with thousands of other people, millions, sometimes millions of other people. There is a territory that looks physical territory. So when you log into the game, you find yourself in a country. The country has rules and flag and coins and it’s absolute real country. You can use the money that you make in that country to buy goods in that country. Some of these goods have real life equivalents. So if you buy something in that country online, you get it by mail. Some real thing. So it is interfaced with reality. But it’s a whole continent or environment or country where you live. And many, many, many people became so addicted to it that they actually spent much more time in that imaginary country than in reality. In those imaginary, in these online multiplayer games, you can’t be yourself. You have to choose something called avatar. The avatar, you buy it in a store usually. The avatar is an image figure that is you. So you can be a man and choose avatar of a woman and so on.

Why am I mentioning all this?

Because in my view, Facebook for an Instagram, for example, they are multiplayer games, online multiplayer games.

Like who will pretend more?

You are not yourself on Facebook and you present a synthetic version of yourself. Sterilized version of yourself. You obviously don’t share your real emotions. Some people do. Very few.

Confess, admit to having a love affair. It’s very sterilized version.

What you are saying is that everyone is fake there.

But I know also that some people are very honest there.

Everyone is an avatar. They’re not honest. They choose to expose private information that enhances their avatar. So for example, if the avatar is I’m a victim, they will reveal information that will support the victimhood. But they will not, for example, reveal information where they are abusive.

I know a psychopath. You will cry on the stories that she publishes.

Yes. But she’s in reality, she is a psychopath.

So that’s it.

That’s what I’m saying. Everyone chooses an avatar. When they open Facebook account, they choose an avatar. Unconsciously, they choose avatar. I did not.

So for example, if I try to open an account, it will be the genius account. So I would show how clever I am, how amazing I am. But I would not talk, for example, about my sexuality. But you did.

For example, so I think Facebook and Instagram are forms of multiplayer games. I think that’s precisely the source of the confusion. Because they are multiplayer games pretending to be reality. This is the source of the confusion. It’s a game. But when you enter it, you are forced to, and that’s why, for example, they are called friends, Facebook friends. Friend is something that comes only in reality.

And yet, total strangers, in Facebook, they’re called friends, to deceive you. It’s a very deceitful environment. It is.

Where a game, multiplayer games are called multiplayer games. You know you’re playing a game. You’re not an idiot. You don’t think you are the avatar. You invest a lot of intellectual effort and imagination in becoming the avatar. But it’s a game. It’s like acting in a movie. When you act in a movie, you don’t think you are the character. You still know you’re a George Clooney. You don’t think, you don’t confuse and say, am I George Clooney?

But when you are acting on Facebook, you do get confused. You’re saying, am I Sam Vaknin? Or am I the Sam Vaknin of Facebook?

It’s very disorienting, because they pretend to be reality.

Okay. I tried to be honest. I mean, I posted everything what I felt like posting. It was me, actually. I didn’t choose an avatar.