Virtually You The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality

by Aboujaoude, Elias

• ISBN13: 9780393070644
• ISBN10: 0393070646
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-07
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Whether sharing photos or following financial markets, many of us spend a shocking amount of time online. While the Internet can enhance well-being, Elias Aboujaoude has spent years treating patients whose lives have been profoundly disturbed by it. Part of the danger lies in how the Internet allows us to act with exaggerated confidence, sexiness, and charisma. This new self, which Aboujaoude dubs our "e-personality," manifests itself in every curt emailwe send, Facebook "friend" we make, and "buy now" button we click. Too potent to be confined online, however, e-personality traits seep offline, too, making us impatient, unfocused, and urge-driven even after we log off. Virtually You uses examples from Aboujaoude's personal and professional experience to highlight this new phenomenon. The first scrutiny of the virtual world's transformative power on our psychology, Virtually You shows us how real life is being reconfigured in the image of a chat room, and how our identity increasingly resembles that of our avatar.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. 9
E-Personality	p. 15
Delusions of Grandeur	p. 46
Narcissism	p. 68
Ordinary Everyday Viciousness	p. 88
Impulsivity	p. 119
Infantile Regression and the Tyranny of the Emoticon	p. 137
Love and Sex Recalibrated	p. 163
The Illusion of Knowledge	p. 189
Internet Addiction	p. 214
The End of Privacy	p. 235
Marking Time, Making Memories	p. 256
Virtualism, or the Art of Being More Real than Real	p. 275
Acknowledgments	p. 291
Appendix: Young's Internet Addiction Test	p. 293
Notes	p. 295
Index	p. 329
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