By Greg Hudson
I have an ever-growing list of the most depressing books I’ve ever read. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, topped the list for a long time. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman has a place. The Da Vinci Code makes an appearance, but for reasons unrelated to subject matter. (That book is this popular? Really?)
Now I have a new addition. The Ego Boom: Why the World Really Does Revolve Around You, by Canadian Business editor Steve Maich and Maclean’s staffer Lianne George, thoroughly got me down. That isn’t a bad thing. I probably needed to read it. A lot of people, from generation X right on down through generations Y and Z (once they’re out of grade school) need to read it.
Ego Boom documents the rise of the “You Sell.” Maich and George explain, “Where marketers used to primarily sell products or brand values, they’re now selling You – an idealized, self-actualized version of yourself – back to you.” Take L’Oreal’s recent slogan tweak. The company’s catchphrase once was, “Because I’m worth it.” Now that first person singular has been replaced by the second person: “Because you’re worth it.” Or consider that Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 was none other than You.
Marketers have changed their messages from aspirational to affirmational because they’ve realized consumers are increasingly narcissistic. Such self-esteem building has created a generation of individuals who each believe they are unique – too unique for mass-produced computers, entertainment, or spirituality. Companies like L’Oreal reaffirm this trend by showing how products will enhance that individuality. It’s a compelling argument, but it makes me wonder if there is too much mythic power attributed to large corporations.
New media, meanwhile, has created its own constellations that revolve around you. In a chapter titled “That’s Show-Me Business,” Maich and George propose that the “me media revolution” means that “by selling us on our own individuality, putting a feeling of control in our hands, big business has engineered a new golden age based on the same old star system.”
What makes this especially depressing for me is when my generation (the millennial, generation Y, generation next, whatever you want to label us folks born from the late 1970s to the early ’90s) is singled out as the most self-involved of the bunch. We know the least, we participate in society the least, and we think the highest of ourselves.
Maybe we (and you) need the reality check of a book like Ego Boom, distressing only because it forces us to re-evaluate our relationships with ourselves, with each other and with consumerism.
A little bit of humble pie never hurt anyone. Case in point: Kanye West. “The danger,” the authors astutely point out, “is when the ascendancy of ‘You’ crowds out any sense of ‘us.’” And if the message is hard to swallow, remember it’s because we’re worth it. U
+ Enter to win one of 22 copies of Ego Boom. Contest runs from December 1 – 31, 2009.
+ Listen to Unlimited’s CareerJoy blogger Alan Kearns’ conversation with Steve Maich and Lianne George.
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