Before YouTube there was... narcissism?

AND America's Funniest Home Videos, and before that I draw a blank.

((sister thread to this one about youtube))

Is it not the same concept though? Crappy videos people think are gold and then they submit it hoping the world will see and give them stardom?

Or is it just plain narcissism?

Which brings me to Narcissistic Culture. Stolen from Wiki, where average Joes post their ramblings in a glorified blog-encyclopedia. A blogopedia if you will. Which brings me to my chat with an analysist/therapist, his card reads "analrapist". (for my AD fans )

Historian and social critic Christopher Lasch (1932—1994) described this topic in his book, "The Culture of Narcissism", published in 1979.

He defines a narcissistic culture as one in which every activity and relationship is defined by the hedonistic need to acquire the symbols of spiritual wealth, this becoming the only expression of rigid, yet covert, social hierarchies. It is a culture where liberalism only exists in so far as it serves a consumer society, and even art, sex and religion lose their liberating power. See Decadence and Determinism.

In such a society of constant competition, there can be no allies, and little transparency. The threats to acquisitions of social symbols are so numerous, varied and frequently incomprehensible, that defensiveness, as well as competitiveness, becomes a way of life. Any real sense of community is undermined -- or even destroyed -- to be replaced by virtual equivalents that strive, unsuccessfully, to synthesize a sense of community.