NARCISSUS.
“I love narcissists they love themselv to buoy them up. T razzle-dazzle show bless
s—even more than ves. You don’t have They are their own w and you are the sed, favored with a front-row seat.”
#discoverportrait An only child in caught between Millennials and Generation Z creates a MySpace profile in the third grade. He had a voice and he wanted to be heard. Everywhere. Anytime. You’d think his veins were fiber optic cables, his eyes cameras roughly 1080p—just good enough for widespread web distribution. Serotonin flows with every message, like, comment, and notification. Serotonin. Never before had he experienced such a rush—until he discovered pornography two and a half years later. He was leaving home for a week for the first time ever and has just finished elementary school. To celebrate the milestone his parents bought him a LG Rumor. The phone had a slide-out keyboard. QWERTY. He learned to type with his thumbs faster than he could speak. Everything was shorthand. Abbreviations. TTYL, BRB, LMAO, GTFO. Acronyms. It wasn’t a T-Mobile Sidekick but it would do the job. He used most of his family’s minutes talking to his first girlfriend. They bonded over their desire to have a Blackberry, like real adults. And then came the age of the iPhone. So many of life’s devices packed into one rectangle. A genius invention that would only ever get him into trouble. Ignored family. Ignored [real] friends. Drunk texts. Drunk sexts. Secrets screenshotted and sent and distributed like newspapers. When was the last time he touched a newspaper? Paper? Finger to glass, glass to skin, pixel to cell membrane. Like opening the fridge four times in five minutes hoping new food would appear. Photoshop pirated from the internet that would likely give his computer a virus and steal his parent’s credit card information. Playing shitty pop music from LimeWire while content aware brushing away blemishes on Photoshop CS4 because benzoyl peroxide doesn’t work instantly like he’d wish. Perfection might not be achievable in the flesh but he’d be damned if he didn’t put his best foot forward online. He could be anyone. Anyone. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram: the holy trinity of the digital age. He chose go by @ntrevino96. The most valuable identity in the 21st century is your digital one. Unified web presence across platforms. Little square photos of dinner. Little square photos of friends. Little square photos of his dog. Little square photos cropping out everything he didn’t want the world to see. Tunnel vision. One account. Two accounts. Three accounts. Multidimensional selfcentered narcissist who wants to shout his musings to the world. Unfollowed. Auxiliary applications to thrust himself into when he wants to avoid the real world. News. Solitaire. Angry Birds. New high score. Serotonin. Never make eye-contact. Never at home. Never at the store. Never on the subway. Eyes on phone instead of the road. Near miss. Retina display burning images into brain. Burning brains. Burning hands. Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe Right. Validation. Ghosting. Wireless charging. Portrait mode. Airdropping memes. Researching the side effects of Xanax. Sending selfies. Sending selfies. Streaming hip-hop dance routines despite not liking hip hop. VSCO A6 filter. Like. Like. Like.
How to Look in the Mirror: A Step-by-Step Guide for the Modern Man Step 1: Acquire a mirror. Any mirror will do but the HOVET mirror from IKEA, measuring 30 3/4” wide and 77 1/8” tall, is best for a full-body experience. However, in a pinch, a simple square mirror measuring 12x12” will suffice. Make sure the mirror is in a well-lit space and wipe it clean. Step 2: Get naked in front of the mirror. Avoid eye contact with yourself. Start from the soles of your feet and work your way up the body. Scrutinize every contour, each freckle, and the few scars that have yet to fade. Flex then think about the last time you went to the gym [it has probably been too long]. Leave the mirror for a moment and take a shot of chilled Stolichnaya—no chaser. Go back to the mirror [still naked] and look yourself in the eyes for 5 seconds. Show no emotion. Leave the mirror. Step 3: Return to the mirror clothed and with music playing. Start with Blue Monday by New Order then shuffle the playlist 0.1%-ers on Spotify or something with a similar pretentious energy. While looking in the mirror comment on how hot you are. Say it out loud. Briefly realize you might be lying to yourself—if you were hot you wouldn’t have that one zit on your chin, those stray hairs on the right side of your head, and—stop. Take another shot and go back to thinking you are an Adonis. Step 4: Repeat step three a minimum of two more times [shots included] until you settle on an outfit. You may average five outfit changes, even as many as ten, if you’re having a bad day. Note: once you’ve hit five outfit changes the music needs to stay above 180 beats per minute. Step 5 [optional]: Powder your nose or light a J. Breathe. Dance a little bit. Repeat once more if you’re feeling bold. Step 6: Obsessively fix every stray hair with your go-to overpriced hair product. Realize you probably need to buy hairspray. Realize Step 6 should be before Step 5. Take another shot anyways. Make a note to see your barber within the next week or so. Do not try and cut your own hair. Step 7: Walk away from the mirror but come back to check on your appearance at least once every 47 minutes. If you are leaving this mirror behind for the evening make sure you locate all mirrors at your destination within 5 minutes of arriving. Each time you return to the mirror you should be more inebriated than the last. Step 8: Bring friends back to the mirror and take selfies. Lots of selfies. Make sure you only get your good side. If you don’t know your good side please consult “Finding Your Good Side - Tips on Posing for Photos” in Marie Claire [June 5th, 2015]. Don’t you dare make a duck-face. Step 9: Delete any photos taken the night before. You don’t look hot enough. Don’t look in the mirror for the rest of the day.
“The most uninteresting thing in the world is watching narcissists each other.�
FUCK
Grievances to My Genome To my dearest Deoxyribonucleic Acid, Without you, I wouldn’t be, well—me. From my conception, you have been replicating to create cells. Together these cells have formed only an average specimen. I don’t like average. This shouldn’t come off as ungrateful, but there is a bit more effort you could be putting in to make me stand out without me needing to spend more time or money on treatments and products. Carrying the code to life and being a fundamental building block isn’t easy, but I don’t think I’m asking for much. With CRISPR apparently working to create GMO babies, I’m unafraid to threaten the existence of things you might find make you unique or quirky. Even if that isn’t obtainable, there is always the option of going under the knife to fix what you screwed up. Firstly, what is with my complexion? I know for a fact this came from my mother’s half of the code but seriously—why couldn’t you just gloss over teenage acne? Think of all the trouble you would have saved us! Think of your chance at survival. It is in your primal code for me to create offspring. What about acne made you think this was going to help our end goal? Have a little common sense here. I had to work overtime just to get laid in high school and it wasn’t even a strong gene pool to pull from. Thank god for time and dermatology. Without them, I fear things never would have gotten better. The only bright side is you did wonderful at combatting teenage pregnancy. Credit where credit is due. On a lighter note, why do I need to sneeze every time I step into the sun? I looked it up and sure as shit this is determined by genetics, so here I am knocking at your door for answers. Not to dig at my mother’s genetic makeup here, but this also came from her. My father said that if I was a primal hunter and I sneezed I would either never eat or something larger than me would kill me. I guess if he was really right, this part of my genome wouldn’t have even made it out of prehistory. How’d you of all things sneak past evolution? Buckle up, I’m going to complain about my schnoz. Even though this is resolved it took me twenty-one years to grow into it and be satisfied. I don’t know why but growing up my nose was always four years ahead of my face. This thing was egregious. In middle school I started pricing out plastic surgery just so I could potentially save the money to get work done before college. I quickly learned that was out of my price range and that I am bad at saving money (I don’t think I can blame you for that one though). While I receive many compliments on my nose now, the pain of growing up hating it can never be forgotten. I don’t need financial compensation for emotional damage but I would like a formal apology. Lastly, (although not truly the end—this list could go on forever) who let you control my emotional disposition? I have never witnessed something so wavering and unpredictable— and I am living under the reign of Donald Trump. One day, everything is wonderful, I am warm, and filled with love. The next, I find myself rooted to my mattress in the dark and cold. Lifeless. Going from states of mania to depression to anger to love is a tiring exercise. I guess it is still contested whether this is nature or nurture. I think you are meddling in this— even if it is in the slightest. Pull it together. With these formal complaints in front of you, I wish you the best in working through them in in your next iteration. Someday, I’ll leave half of you with my offspring and I’d hate for them to get any of the bad bits. You have potential to do great things, I just think you need to rearrange some proteins or mutate a little. Not too much though—I don’t want my children to have it that easy. From a place of love, Your Creation
“Dude—do you shave your chest?
“No man, I Nair it. It’s festival season.
Small Victories He looked into the full-body mirror and could only find fragments, as per usual. Getting here was a bit of a blur—escitalopram and alprazolam tend to do that sometimes. No longer in the depths of his gray room in Chicago, but this time in a London tattoo parlor, he scoured the mirror to see if any new pieces were missing but this time found something new. Behind him, looking for approval, stood a giant no more than five foot four. She asked what he thought. He searched for words to describe his love, his appreciation, his excitement—but all he could muster was, “I’m ready.” It felt as if a peach pit was caught in his esophagus. It felt as if his skin was on fire. It felt as if he might have been making a mistake, but he shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind. How could he purge those thoughts so easily, but not the ones about the joy he had lost over the course of the year? It felt as if he could have just been faking it. Was he faking it? He wanted to take another one of his alprazolam even though they tasted like aluminum foil. He instead tried to think about how they say aluminum differently here. She asked if he was doing okay. What a loaded question. Would he even be getting this tattoo if he was okay? Trying to get past the over-analysis he decided he was okay in this moment. She was probably asking about the pain anyway. To be honest, he kind of liked the pain. It was rather satiating. He worried that this might become a problem. Craving pain is such a curious feeling. She asked why he was getting this tattoo and he wondered if he should over or under-share. He chose under. Decided to describe what he was going through as a rough patch because over the years he’s learned clinical diagnoses tend to make people a little uneasy. It only took an hour. Most of the time he had his eyes shut trying to pretend he was just taking a nap and having a dream. When she was done, she walked him over to the mirror and said congratulations. Was it normal to congratulate someone for a tattoo? Was she congratulating him on something more? She wrapped the inky wound in plastic and gave him instructions for aftercare. She was more thorough than his doctor ever was. He felt a small spark of happiness. Fumbling through pastel currency he found the right amount of pounds and walked out of the shop. His arm stung. The sun was shining that day which he found strange because all he knew of was an England that was dim and gray. If there was a God he must have been in his or her good graces for once. All he needed now was a pint, or three. Okay, maybe four. Instead of consulting Yelp or a map, he took to the foreign streets. He wanted to be lost. He got lost. And drunk.
Down the street he saw a crowd. He looked into the window and saw a ghost of himself in the Italian restaurant. He begged for a table and somehow it worked. Sitting down, he realized this would be his first meal of the day and it was already 10PM. At least his first meal would be pizza, it was one of the only things he could muster up the strength to eat nowadays. After another beer alone he decided to eavesdrop. They seemed like a lovely couple, mid-fifties perhaps. He missed his parents. He interrupted them and decided now was the time to over-share. They listened intently to his story. They asked him about how he got here and where he wanted to be. They told him their favorite spot for fish and chips. He honestly hated fish and chips, but he would go anyways because he respected them despite having just met. They made him feel like family. They made him feel at home despite being three thousand nine hundred and forty-five miles away. They made him not want to take alprazolam and escitalopram. They ordered him a digestif and insisted they pay for his meal. They wished him luck and good health. He wished they would cross paths again in this lifetime or the next. He woke up the next morning scabs stuck to the bedsheets in a crowded hostel room. There were tears in his eyes again. The usual feeling of dread felt less severe today but he still took his medicine and got to the train an hour early. His fear of missing things ranged from trains to shooting stars to birthdays to major life events. Over the year he’d miss all these things and many more. Over the year he would learn that missing things was okay. He would call this one of his small victories and he’d feel an inch closer to happiness.
The Narcissist’s Manifesto With the onslaught of the selfie generation the diagnosis of narcissism no longer carries the same weight. So what if you love yourself so much it could clinically be defined as psychosis? So does half of Generation Z. Being a narcissist used to mean something. It used to be jarring. It is our job to bring narcissism back to its rightful glory. We must respond to these cultural changes and rise above. Narcissism 2.0 is the only way forward. To evolve, we must first understand Narcissistic Personality Disorder [NPD]. Becoming a narcissist means throwing away Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Grandiosity and admiration are your sustenance and only reason for living. Recognize you will always be the most important person in the room. Demand special treatment. Keep your success, power, beauty, and intelligence at the front of your mind and you’ll be on your way. This is a call to arms. Grab your smartphones, your selfie sticks, your self-timers. The most important battlefield is the digital one. The physical world means little these days. You still can’t ignore it. The more dissonance between your physical and digital self, the weaker the façade. Juggling the internal, external, digital, and physical, will not be easy—but you are special. You can do it better than anyone you know. Social media will be your most powerful method in achieving advanced stages of NPD. At minimum, it is recommended you manage two social media accounts—one public, one private. These will be filled with photographs of you looking your best. You must post frequently. Captions should be witty and relevant. Hashtags must be carefully curated to garner the broadest audience of friends, peers, strangers, and bots. Let their engagement validate you. Feed you. Fuel you. Now that you’ve strengthened the digital presence, work on the physical. Drink Diet Coke. Not all of it, but make sure people see you with the bottle. Eating is not important—don’t do it unless you start feeling immense physical pain. Cut out carbs. Cut out beer. If you’re going to drugs, only do stimulants—they’ll curb your appetite and make you seem edgy. Go to the gym—but only work on the glamour muscles. These are the ones that will give you a model’s body. Take an interest in disco-house music. Start with the playlist Bumpin’ on Spotify if you need help. Practice walking like the world is a runway. Command attention. You’ve established your dominance, don’t let go. There is zero room for humility in the world anymore. Humility must be eradicated. Ritualize your attacks. Shards of mirrors make for great weapons if you are trying to remove the physical form. For the digital: belittle, berate, bully. Eradicate the weak. Strengthen the self. You might be on top now—but watch your back.