Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists were more likely to engage in attention-seeking behavior on Instagram like “Hashtagging popular or expensive brands,” “Posting photos of things you want, but do not have,” and “Posting photos of celebrities or people you admire,“ the study reports.
If you want to spot a narcissist on Instagram, look out for the type of photos they post and what they write as captions. You'll observe a narcissist always post flashy photos, brag about things incessantly, be overly optimistic, don't sympathize with others, and manage to make everything about themselves.
Other than this, findings were generally similar across Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and entitlement was generally not strongly related to people's use of social media. Overall, then, people who post a lot on social media may tend to be higher in narcissism, particularly in terms of higher grandiosity.
Narcissists could also use social media as a way of seeking out validation and admiration from other people, which could be more prominent among vulnerable and communal narcissists because they tend to be concerned about the opinions of other people more than agentic narcissists.
Their Online Persona Is Attention-Grabbing and Dark
For example, narcissists in the study used more physically and emotionally suggestive images, that included accompanied photo descriptions with aggressive terms (like “hate”).
Abusive narcissists can create numerous anonymous accounts to troll and stalk their former victims on their various social media platforms, post the victims intimate photos or personal information, hack into their accounts, stage smear campaigns online, or even create fake accounts of the victim in an attempt to ruin ...
A lot of research has shown narcissists are more likely to use social media as a way to tell their friends about themselves. More than that, what they share is more likely to be about showing off. They brag, post especially attractive photographs of themselves, and take more selfies, especially revealing ones.
They fantasize about their own success, power, brilliance, beauty or perfect love. They believe they are special and can only be understood by other special people (or institutions). They demand admiration. They have a sense of entitlement and expect favorable treatment.
Here are some narcissism red flags to look out for: Lacking empathy. They seem unable or unwilling to have empathy for others, and they appear to have no desire for emotional intimacy. Unrealistic sense of entitlement.
A Narcissist's DMs
A previous study indicates that narcissists use Instagram for surveillance, monitoring others' socioeconomic status, relationship status, number of friends and so forth.
They found grandiose narcissism to be linked with taking and posting a greater number of selfies (especially ones with only themselves in the photo), feeling good while taking selfies, and being motivated by self-presentation.
The study also discovered that narcissistic users have more Facebook friends than others, create more posts in general, and more self-promotional posts than informative ones in particular, while they also write longer descriptions in the About section of their pages.
They use blocking you on social media as a way to show they are unhappy with you but don't actually confront the actual issue. The narcissist is more than willing to block you on social media because they are passive-aggressive and don't know how to appropriately confront issues.
As the authors noted, differently from other SNSs (e.g., Twitter), Facebook may be particularly appealing to grandiose narcissists because it is a readily available tool for self-promotions where users can easily share their updates and obtain frequent positive feedback [23].
Most narcissists will view being blocked as an act of aggression. A blocked narcissist won't have any ability to silence or control you, which is very important for them. This is highly likely to be an overwhelming and scary feeling for them.
In addition to hoarding conversation time, narcissistic communicators also tend to control and direct conversation topics. They focus on what they want to talk about, the way they want to talk about it, with little or no consideration for alternate views.
Ridiculing you. Those who live with narcissism may find it difficult to hold positive and negative feelings for someone at the same time. As a result, things may get heated in an argument. You may experience insults, put-downs, and even mocking behaviors, like laughing as you express hurt.