18 ms·

Proof of X

181 points by dguo 6y ago

mdip 6y ago
Apparently I'm not the only one trying to load this page; Text-only cache link (full wouldn't load either): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061jXf0IkJ:https://julian.digital/2020/08/06/proof-of-x/&strip=1 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061j...
- input_sh 6y ago
  As someone that semi-regularly follows this blog, that is pretty much the the full one. It's pretty simplistic in its design.
xerxespoy 6y ago
> At their core, social networks are primarily about one thing: Building social capital through signaling. Maybe for the author. People also use social networks without expecting or requiring any net social "capital" benefit through "signalling". Examples: - keeping in touch with people (privately or publicly) - inform others about something they may be interested in (without needing or requiring acknowledgement) - lessening loneliness - gathering or dispensing intel on a topic - filling in time / looking for entertainment I can readily think of many more reasons than the singlular one of signalling to heighten social status. I'm sure that occurs, but listing it as a primary reason cast the article immediately in disfavour for this reader.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  The problem with "signalling" theories is that they can explain nearly anything. Why did you do X? Why, to show other people that you are the sort of person who does X. Even if you didn't know it at the time. It's hard to see how you would go about falsifying it. It's way too convenient as an explanation for whatever you want. It's less a theory and more a very particular lens to view the world through. Nearly anything can be slotted into it.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    Any theory that can't be invalidated is not worth seriously debating. It may be true or it may not - what difference does it make if it's impossible to know? Person A: "Social signalling explains all of human behavior!" Person B: "But how do we know that's true?" Person A: "Who cares? It explains everything." Person B: "So what can we do with this knowledge?" Person A: "Explain things we already observed to be true." Person B: "So what have we gained from this information?" Person A: "A theory that explains everything." Person B: "But that theory doesn't actually teach us anything new?" Person A: "Yep! We already know everything! Wooo!"
    - ravi-delia 6y ago
      There are very real situations where signaling actually explains something. Mostly they involve people doing something that seems irrational or hypocritical on the surface; the hidden variable is of course social approval. In other situations, however, 'People do X to signal they do X' really is just a complicated way of saying 'People like to do X'. Once you have the action, it really doesn't make any sense to bother figuring out why.
    - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
      It's valuable because it explains some actions that may be foreign to the observer. It may not be particularly common in most people's lives, and it may not occur to some people at all, but it's especially true in some politics or business relationships that are incomprehensible if you don't have it as a tool.
      - Judgmentality 6y ago
        I really don't see how a theory that can't be invalidated is useful for anything, other than a rhetorical device. Apart from a thought experiment along the lines of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, what good is a theory that can never be tested? It's a tautology.
        michaelt 6y ago
- irae 6y ago
  My impression is that the author is analyzing the successful social networks. Think about all the ones that died in the process of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, etc getting to where they are? All of those lacked ways to "building social capital through signaling". I might be wrong though, didn't put a lot of thought on it, but friendster, orkut, myspace, and many others were not quite as good in signaling or proof of x as the ones that are now well stablished.
- mushbino 6y ago
  I agree with your assessment and honestly, it's refreshing to see. A lot of writers/podcasters have made their name by diminishing issues as being purely about signaling alone. It's not possible for some to imagine someone has certain beliefs for their own value. For example, they believe people support issues, not because they believe in them, but purely to show people in their social circles that they are a part of the club. While this may be true in some cases, I find it hard to believe it''s large enough to be of any particular concern. Also, it's a pretty boring non-issue to make ones name on.
- bcherny 6y ago
  You’re both right. In philosophy, you call this an “ultimate” cause, vs. a “proximate” cause. You push a marble with your finger, and it moves. Why? Because the momentum from your finger was transferred into the marble when you touched it (proximate cause); equally correctly, it moved because you pushed it (ultimate cause). People are complex. Maybe you post for more than one reason.
- cat199 6y ago
  while i agree with the sentiment, if you are viewing this through a 'mass media theory' kind of lens, it can still hold true / be useful, even in the given examples
- globular-toast 6y ago
  None of your examples are unique to social networks. There are many ways to keep in touch with people and many ways to gather information. These methods are usually superior in most respects too. What social media, like facebook, does do, though, is bundle it all together. It's like a supermarket. But it goes beyond just being a supermarket. It has a unique selling point: the ability to signal. In my experience, the number of people who use social networks merely as email/news/entertainment replacements without succumbing to status signalling is very small.
mwilcox 6y ago
#21e8
- keyle 6y ago
  Hey pocket, lock the phone!
polote 6y ago
This post has been submitted 7 times (but not by the same users) in the last 5 months https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital I don't know what to think of that. In one way the articles of Julian are always interesting articles, but in another way it just shows that even on HN bruteforce-posting works Obviously (2020)
- MegaThorx 6y ago
  And I've seen it for the first time. I think it's beneficial if it gets reposted (as long as there is sufficient time in between) as it will reach more readers. Through the short lifetime of entries on the first page, only a small part of HN readers will likely see it.
  - polote 6y ago
    I don't think that's the goal of HN to let anyone know about all interesting stuff that exists. Newsletters are better for that I think. This one may interest you https://hnblogs.substack.com/ https://hnblogs.substack.com/ daily blog posts of HN (disclaimer I'm the owner) and this specific article was included in the 6 august 2020 post
- matt_f 6y ago
  Question: Is there any mechanism in place (aside from upvotes ranking, and astute HN commenters) to prevent endless duplicate submissions? What safety guardrail would prevent a malicious/selfish/merely annoying self-promoter from flooding HN with submissions?
- dguo 6y ago
  OP here. This was my second time submitting this article but only because the mods emailed me inviting me to do it. I got this link for context on the resubmitting feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380
systemvoltage 6y ago
For this new trend of monospaced fonts on a blog - just keep in mind that proportional fonts and the entire study of kerning exists to improve readability. Monospaced fonts, while not bad, aren't optimal for reading long form text.
- keyle 6y ago
  I agree with you as a ux guy but I also have to admit this blog was more readable than most, at least on mobile.
- vaillant 6y ago
  A fun thought: monospaced fonts are appealing to developers because we spend a bunch of time looking at them.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  >proportional fonts and the entire study of kerning exists to improve readability. Any pointers to an actual scientific study to back this?
  - madpata 6y ago
    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001872088302500303 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001872088302500...
5mixer 6y ago
A smaller network that more obviously encourages creative production is streak club. [1] Not altogether different from the mainstream networks, but the clear expectation of both content creation and categorisation boosts the signal to noise ratio. Not affiliated and can't personally speak to it's effectiveness to motivate, but certainly an interesting example. [1] https://streak.club/streaks https://streak.club/streaks
- Nursie 6y ago
  As a British person I half expected that to be a porn site. Does American English have "streakers" and "streaking" meaning "to run naked in a public place, particularly during a sporting event"?
  - np_tedious 6y ago
    Yes we do
centimeter 6y ago
“Strava For Learning” exists; it’s called college.
douglaswlance 6y ago
I am attempting to build a social network that is designed to generate truth, or at least emphasize expertise rather that simply attention. I think of social networks like brains. They're both a graph of interconnected nodes that pass messages. The problem with our networks now as I see it is that the social networks are set up to maximize message transmission (i.e. attention) rather than truth. We need a layer on top, like the neocortex, to connect the nodes and give them different weights to generate reliable outputs like a machine learning model does. That's what I'm building.
- mistermann 6y ago
  This sounds like a great idea, how long until you allow people to have a peek at it? Any plans for a beta tester program or anything like that?
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Isn't Quora like that already?
  - douglaswlance 6y ago
    The problem with Quora, as I see it, is the question-answer format lends itself to a restricted form of dialogue which can't really serve the "sense-making" function for society. Imagine if in the past, journalists could only write about what their readers asked them about. It wouldn't have generated the best result. We need a system that allows people to put forth their ideas and let them be evaluated by peers. We need the scientific method at scale.
    - galaxyLogic 6y ago
      I see. So in Quora several people can answer a question but 1. Nobody can critique the answers 2. Nobody can critique the critique (if you could have such) 3. The Quora-format does not really invite posts like "I think this is the way it is, is there anything wrong with my analysis?" 4. There is no mechanism to vote on consensus about what is the "truth"
vaillant 6y ago
I'm of two minds about this sort of analysis of social capital. 1. It's interesting; a lot of human behavior involves presentation to other human beings, and social media platforms can definitely be seen as a medium for signalling. 2. It's dismal and reductive and other words that signal that I don't like it for personal reasons.
tshaddox 6y ago
That Patagonia vest is $100, not $500. I’m not sure where people get the idea that Patagonia gear is ludicrously expensive.
- twic 6y ago
  It's clearly a myth put about by the people who want to signal how rich they are! It's funny, to me, the only things a Patagonia vest signals are (a) a lack of style (b) a lack of understanding of how heat escapes from the body and (c) a craven desire to fit in to a particular social scene.
  - heidar 6y ago
    I never understood the whole vest craze. I put it down as a California thing, something about the weather.
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      I can't comment on vests for fashion, but for outdoor activities they're a nice big of kit to have, particularly when it's cold but you're exerting yourself. They add warmth while keeping your arms mobile and preventing you from overheating.
dvt 6y ago
I don't mean to be the typical "stick-in-the-mud" HN poster here, but the concept of "proof mechanisms" is absolute nonsense. Anything can be a proof mechanism, and therefore nothing is. See that Benz? It's proof that she's got money. See that guy's biceps? It's proof that he lifts heavy weights. See my clean apartment? It's proof that I just spent 4 hours cleaning it. "Proof mechanisms" are vacuous. It would be more interesting to see why some social networks nail building feedback loops that give us that sweet dopamine hit and compel us to come back for more (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and why others suck at it (Google+, MySpace)
Kelamir 6y ago
For those interested in signalling, you might also check out "Too Cool For School? Signalling and Countersignalling" https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf
qndreoi 6y ago
Author asks for "Strava for reading". Goodreads already has this functionality. You show off which books you have read, rate and review them, and set goals for books read per year, then compare with your 'friends'. The implementation is a constant source of complaints here and other places, but it does have the basic idea the author wishes for.
Clewza313 6y ago
> Has anyone built a multiplayer version of Anki yet? Flash cards would be a perfect proof-of-knowledge mechanism and could easily be turned into a game where you compete against friends. Isn't this basically Duolingo? Complete with internet points, leaderboards, and reinforcement mechanisms for signing up your friends.
- thayne 6y ago
  Yes, but Duolingo is specific to learning foreign languages. Anki is more general.
- dirkc 6y ago
  Memrise also comes to mind - I actually found Anki as an alternative to memrise
- Kelamir 6y ago
  Yes. The Anki Leaderboard add-on.
twic 6y ago
So many things in this post are just baffling. > The cost to participate in TikTok’s status game is a lot higher than Instagram’s (compare a well-made dance choreography on TikTok to your median Instagram travel post) TikTok is dominated by teenagers dancing in their bedrooms. What does he mean by "cost"? Because if it's financial cost, making a viral TokTok costs nothing, whereas taking an instagram photo with your partner on a hill in Athens at least costs two tickets to Athens. It's not technical skill either, most TikTok stars have not studied for years.
- tleb_ 6y ago
  I believe he means time. Taking a picture such as the example takes a few minutes while on vacation. Tiktok dances are made after entire days of training. The cost is massive for what the dance brings.
bobobo 6y ago
Strava for giving me money.
tleb_ 6y ago
I find it weird how no one here in the comments acknowledges this signalling behaviour. I identify to this, see it as a problem and fight it every day. It's present everywhere, I realise that I always want to signal that I'm doing something nice to others or cool that people could/should envy me for. I'm aware of it but it's not enough to make it disappear. How did you handle it?
- heidar 6y ago
  I've been thinking about signalling a lot lately as well. I guess we're hard wired to some degree to do this sort of stuff? It's a way to express yourself and who you are in many ways, but doing it excessively is narcissistic?

181 points by dguo 6y ago

mdip 6y ago

Apparently I'm not the only one trying to load this page; Text-only cache link (full wouldn't load either): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061jXf0IkJ:https://julian.digital/2020/08/06/proof-of-x/&strip=1 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061j...

input_sh 6y ago
As someone that semi-regularly follows this blog, that is pretty much the the full one. It's pretty simplistic in its design.

xerxespoy 6y ago

> At their core, social networks are primarily about one thing: Building social capital through signaling. Maybe for the author. People also use social networks without expecting or requiring any net social "capital" benefit through "signalling". Examples: - keeping in touch with people (privately or publicly) - inform others about something they may be interested in (without needing or requiring acknowledgement) - lessening loneliness - gathering or dispensing intel on a topic - filling in time / looking for entertainment I can readily think of many more reasons than the singlular one of signalling to heighten social status. I'm sure that occurs, but listing it as a primary reason cast the article immediately in disfavour for this reader.

roywiggins 6y ago
The problem with "signalling" theories is that they can explain nearly anything. Why did you do X? Why, to show other people that you are the sort of person who does X. Even if you didn't know it at the time. It's hard to see how you would go about falsifying it. It's way too convenient as an explanation for whatever you want. It's less a theory and more a very particular lens to view the world through. Nearly anything can be slotted into it.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  Any theory that can't be invalidated is not worth seriously debating. It may be true or it may not - what difference does it make if it's impossible to know? Person A: "Social signalling explains all of human behavior!" Person B: "But how do we know that's true?" Person A: "Who cares? It explains everything." Person B: "So what can we do with this knowledge?" Person A: "Explain things we already observed to be true." Person B: "So what have we gained from this information?" Person A: "A theory that explains everything." Person B: "But that theory doesn't actually teach us anything new?" Person A: "Yep! We already know everything! Wooo!"
  - ravi-delia 6y ago
    There are very real situations where signaling actually explains something. Mostly they involve people doing something that seems irrational or hypocritical on the surface; the hidden variable is of course social approval. In other situations, however, 'People do X to signal they do X' really is just a complicated way of saying 'People like to do X'. Once you have the action, it really doesn't make any sense to bother figuring out why.
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    It's valuable because it explains some actions that may be foreign to the observer. It may not be particularly common in most people's lives, and it may not occur to some people at all, but it's especially true in some politics or business relationships that are incomprehensible if you don't have it as a tool.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      I really don't see how a theory that can't be invalidated is useful for anything, other than a rhetorical device. Apart from a thought experiment along the lines of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, what good is a theory that can never be tested? It's a tautology.
      - michaelt 6y ago
irae 6y ago
My impression is that the author is analyzing the successful social networks. Think about all the ones that died in the process of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, etc getting to where they are? All of those lacked ways to "building social capital through signaling". I might be wrong though, didn't put a lot of thought on it, but friendster, orkut, myspace, and many others were not quite as good in signaling or proof of x as the ones that are now well stablished.
mushbino 6y ago
I agree with your assessment and honestly, it's refreshing to see. A lot of writers/podcasters have made their name by diminishing issues as being purely about signaling alone. It's not possible for some to imagine someone has certain beliefs for their own value. For example, they believe people support issues, not because they believe in them, but purely to show people in their social circles that they are a part of the club. While this may be true in some cases, I find it hard to believe it''s large enough to be of any particular concern. Also, it's a pretty boring non-issue to make ones name on.
bcherny 6y ago
You’re both right. In philosophy, you call this an “ultimate” cause, vs. a “proximate” cause. You push a marble with your finger, and it moves. Why? Because the momentum from your finger was transferred into the marble when you touched it (proximate cause); equally correctly, it moved because you pushed it (ultimate cause). People are complex. Maybe you post for more than one reason.
cat199 6y ago
while i agree with the sentiment, if you are viewing this through a 'mass media theory' kind of lens, it can still hold true / be useful, even in the given examples
globular-toast 6y ago
None of your examples are unique to social networks. There are many ways to keep in touch with people and many ways to gather information. These methods are usually superior in most respects too. What social media, like facebook, does do, though, is bundle it all together. It's like a supermarket. But it goes beyond just being a supermarket. It has a unique selling point: the ability to signal. In my experience, the number of people who use social networks merely as email/news/entertainment replacements without succumbing to status signalling is very small.

mwilcox 6y ago

#21e8

keyle 6y ago
Hey pocket, lock the phone!

polote 6y ago

This post has been submitted 7 times (but not by the same users) in the last 5 months https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital I don't know what to think of that. In one way the articles of Julian are always interesting articles, but in another way it just shows that even on HN bruteforce-posting works Obviously (2020)

MegaThorx 6y ago
And I've seen it for the first time. I think it's beneficial if it gets reposted (as long as there is sufficient time in between) as it will reach more readers. Through the short lifetime of entries on the first page, only a small part of HN readers will likely see it.
- polote 6y ago
  I don't think that's the goal of HN to let anyone know about all interesting stuff that exists. Newsletters are better for that I think. This one may interest you https://hnblogs.substack.com/ https://hnblogs.substack.com/ daily blog posts of HN (disclaimer I'm the owner) and this specific article was included in the 6 august 2020 post
matt_f 6y ago
Question: Is there any mechanism in place (aside from upvotes ranking, and astute HN commenters) to prevent endless duplicate submissions? What safety guardrail would prevent a malicious/selfish/merely annoying self-promoter from flooding HN with submissions?
dguo 6y ago
OP here. This was my second time submitting this article but only because the mods emailed me inviting me to do it. I got this link for context on the resubmitting feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380

systemvoltage 6y ago

For this new trend of monospaced fonts on a blog - just keep in mind that proportional fonts and the entire study of kerning exists to improve readability. Monospaced fonts, while not bad, aren't optimal for reading long form text.

keyle 6y ago
I agree with you as a ux guy but I also have to admit this blog was more readable than most, at least on mobile.
vaillant 6y ago
A fun thought: monospaced fonts are appealing to developers because we spend a bunch of time looking at them.
ur-whale 6y ago
>proportional fonts and the entire study of kerning exists to improve readability. Any pointers to an actual scientific study to back this?
- madpata 6y ago
  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001872088302500303 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001872088302500...

5mixer 6y ago

A smaller network that more obviously encourages creative production is streak club. [1] Not altogether different from the mainstream networks, but the clear expectation of both content creation and categorisation boosts the signal to noise ratio. Not affiliated and can't personally speak to it's effectiveness to motivate, but certainly an interesting example. [1] https://streak.club/streaks https://streak.club/streaks

Nursie 6y ago
As a British person I half expected that to be a porn site. Does American English have "streakers" and "streaking" meaning "to run naked in a public place, particularly during a sporting event"?
- np_tedious 6y ago
  Yes we do

centimeter 6y ago

“Strava For Learning” exists; it’s called college.

douglaswlance 6y ago

I am attempting to build a social network that is designed to generate truth, or at least emphasize expertise rather that simply attention. I think of social networks like brains. They're both a graph of interconnected nodes that pass messages. The problem with our networks now as I see it is that the social networks are set up to maximize message transmission (i.e. attention) rather than truth. We need a layer on top, like the neocortex, to connect the nodes and give them different weights to generate reliable outputs like a machine learning model does. That's what I'm building.

mistermann 6y ago
This sounds like a great idea, how long until you allow people to have a peek at it? Any plans for a beta tester program or anything like that?
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Isn't Quora like that already?
- douglaswlance 6y ago
  The problem with Quora, as I see it, is the question-answer format lends itself to a restricted form of dialogue which can't really serve the "sense-making" function for society. Imagine if in the past, journalists could only write about what their readers asked them about. It wouldn't have generated the best result. We need a system that allows people to put forth their ideas and let them be evaluated by peers. We need the scientific method at scale.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    I see. So in Quora several people can answer a question but 1. Nobody can critique the answers 2. Nobody can critique the critique (if you could have such) 3. The Quora-format does not really invite posts like "I think this is the way it is, is there anything wrong with my analysis?" 4. There is no mechanism to vote on consensus about what is the "truth"

vaillant 6y ago

I'm of two minds about this sort of analysis of social capital. 1. It's interesting; a lot of human behavior involves presentation to other human beings, and social media platforms can definitely be seen as a medium for signalling. 2. It's dismal and reductive and other words that signal that I don't like it for personal reasons.

tshaddox 6y ago

That Patagonia vest is $100, not $500. I’m not sure where people get the idea that Patagonia gear is ludicrously expensive.

twic 6y ago
It's clearly a myth put about by the people who want to signal how rich they are! It's funny, to me, the only things a Patagonia vest signals are (a) a lack of style (b) a lack of understanding of how heat escapes from the body and (c) a craven desire to fit in to a particular social scene.
- heidar 6y ago
  I never understood the whole vest craze. I put it down as a California thing, something about the weather.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    I can't comment on vests for fashion, but for outdoor activities they're a nice big of kit to have, particularly when it's cold but you're exerting yourself. They add warmth while keeping your arms mobile and preventing you from overheating.

dvt 6y ago

I don't mean to be the typical "stick-in-the-mud" HN poster here, but the concept of "proof mechanisms" is absolute nonsense. Anything can be a proof mechanism, and therefore nothing is. See that Benz? It's proof that she's got money. See that guy's biceps? It's proof that he lifts heavy weights. See my clean apartment? It's proof that I just spent 4 hours cleaning it. "Proof mechanisms" are vacuous. It would be more interesting to see why some social networks nail building feedback loops that give us that sweet dopamine hit and compel us to come back for more (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and why others suck at it (Google+, MySpace)

Kelamir 6y ago

For those interested in signalling, you might also check out "Too Cool For School? Signalling and Countersignalling" https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf

qndreoi 6y ago

Author asks for "Strava for reading". Goodreads already has this functionality. You show off which books you have read, rate and review them, and set goals for books read per year, then compare with your 'friends'. The implementation is a constant source of complaints here and other places, but it does have the basic idea the author wishes for.

Clewza313 6y ago

> Has anyone built a multiplayer version of Anki yet? Flash cards would be a perfect proof-of-knowledge mechanism and could easily be turned into a game where you compete against friends. Isn't this basically Duolingo? Complete with internet points, leaderboards, and reinforcement mechanisms for signing up your friends.

thayne 6y ago
Yes, but Duolingo is specific to learning foreign languages. Anki is more general.
dirkc 6y ago
Memrise also comes to mind - I actually found Anki as an alternative to memrise
Kelamir 6y ago
Yes. The Anki Leaderboard add-on.

twic 6y ago

So many things in this post are just baffling. > The cost to participate in TikTok’s status game is a lot higher than Instagram’s (compare a well-made dance choreography on TikTok to your median Instagram travel post) TikTok is dominated by teenagers dancing in their bedrooms. What does he mean by "cost"? Because if it's financial cost, making a viral TokTok costs nothing, whereas taking an instagram photo with your partner on a hill in Athens at least costs two tickets to Athens. It's not technical skill either, most TikTok stars have not studied for years.

tleb_ 6y ago
I believe he means time. Taking a picture such as the example takes a few minutes while on vacation. Tiktok dances are made after entire days of training. The cost is massive for what the dance brings.

bobobo 6y ago

Strava for giving me money.

tleb_ 6y ago

I find it weird how no one here in the comments acknowledges this signalling behaviour. I identify to this, see it as a problem and fight it every day. It's present everywhere, I realise that I always want to signal that I'm doing something nice to others or cool that people could/should envy me for. I'm aware of it but it's not enough to make it disappear. How did you handle it?

heidar 6y ago
I've been thinking about signalling a lot lately as well. I guess we're hard wired to some degree to do this sort of stuff? It's a way to express yourself and who you are in many ways, but doing it excessively is narcissistic?