Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who’s The Most Problematic Of Them All: A Deep-Dive into the Infernal Cycle of Narcissistic Traits and Social-Media Fame

 Ashruth Marla

TW: Sexual Assault, Gaslighting, Near-Death Experiences, Body-shaming, Slut-shaming and Coercion. 

Conventional ideas of “fame” commonly exhibit boundaries—one between the unreachable, pedestalized celebrity and the fan. However, the advent of democratic mediums like YouTube has started to make the process of “getting famous” more accessible, deepening interpersonal relationships. Given that narcissism is a predictor of social-media posting (Damon & Louis, 2011; Alloway et al., 2014), it becomes essential to interrogate how this newfound-accessibility to fame is conducive to the overrepresentation of narcissistic-traits on such mediums. This prompts a deeper exploration of how such grandiose-narcissistic-tendencies can be fuelled by internet-fan-culture. This blog post aims to study narcissistic-traits, and how they aid the pursuit of internet fame, precipitating detrimental effects to interpersonal and parasocial relationships by discussing the case of David Dobrik, a widely-contentious online-presence.  

To do this, it is important to understand narcissistic-traits. The Diagnostic Manual and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) outlines that individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) exhibit “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, low-empathy, high-desire for praise, high sense of self-importance and entitlement,” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 p. 669). These individuals also tend to be interpersonally exploitative and arrogant with low regard for the needs of others (APA, 2013 p. 670). 

Traits characteristic of narcissism can be corollaries to social-media fame. According to a meta-analysis done by Gnambs & Banchi (2020) social-media-usage containing self-presentation exhibited stronger effects on grandiose-narcissistic traits. Content generation on social-networking sites has also been found to be predicted by narcissistic-traits in college students (Damon et al., 2011). With social-media-algorithms being designed to optimise engagement and retention, regularly-posting content-creators who are able to maintain their retention-rate are favoured and recommended (Stern, 2021). This could explain the over-representation of people with narcissistic-traits as they may post more owing to their higher attention-seeking tendencies (Hooley et al., 2021). The ability to monetize their content also adds an extra incentive to keep posting. Due to the personal nature of influencer-content, individuals become commodified as content (Andari, 2017). This can be exceptionally hazardous when considering its mixture with specific narcissistic-traits such as low regard for others and can cause individuals to become tools in the achievement of fame like in the case of David Dobrik.  

David Dobrik, former vine-star and founder-leader of a now dormant influencer group called The Vlog-squad. Dobrik is known for his short yet entertaining videos containing pranks, and having highly-personal interactions with his friends on camera. Despite David prioritising his content and image over the well-being of his friends around him, he upheld his favourable image due to his charming nature and grand giveaways. However, his widely-acclaimed online-persona was affected when two survivors came out with their sexual assault during the filming of one of David’s vlogs. This brought out previous instances of Dobrik facilitating sexual assault in his videos. Dobrik also coerced his friend Seth Francois into kissing his 47-year-old friend Jason Nash, by tricking him into believing that he would be “making-out” with Corrina Kopf, another Vlog-Squad member in 2017 (O’Connor & Haylock, 2022). 

Dobrik commodifying his “friends'' for the sake of content is a recurring theme throughout his career. He often exhibits no regard for how his actions affect people, also seen when he coerced his friend into getting bitten by a snake and forced his friends to get drunk hoping to see them injure themselves. He is also observed to find comedic value in objectifying, body and slut-shaming his friends (Dobrik, 2022). Once, Dobrik “jokingly” gifted his friend Gabbie Hanna, who has been very open about her gruelling journey with eating-disorders, diet pills, after repeatedly bullying her over her weight (Dobrik, 2022). 

Grandiose-narcissism is linked with high reward-seeking behaviour (Miller & Maples, 2011) this can be dangerous when combined with the nature of online-celebrity where influencers are commodified (Andari, 2017). An instance where this had near-fatal consequences was in the case of Jeff Wittek, a member of the Vlog-Squad. During the pandemic, similar to most businesses, David Dobrik’s career took a pause. Dobrik was not satisfied with this and wanted his “grand-return” to the internet to be especially notable. Dobrik hosted a party where he coerced Jeff to stand on a rope attached to an excavator despite Jeff refusing to do so multiple times. Dobrik reminded Jeff of “the exposure” he provided Jeff, stressing he owed his career to David, manipulating Jeff to do the stunt on the condition that he would rotate the excavator slowly. 

Once he started, however, David thought that this was not exciting enough. With one hand on the steering wheel and another filming everything, he then increased the velocity of the excavator to the point where Jeff was vertical to the ground. When Jeff was screaming at him to stop, he eventually acquiesced but stopped abruptly which launched Jeff into the steep water, gravely injuring him. Jeff’s doctor had stated that if he fell just a few centimetres differently he could have been killed on-spot. After not delivering on his promise to pay for Jeff’s medical-expenses, Dobrik condemned him for asking for “too much” (Wittek, 2022). He dismissed Wittek’s experience entirely when he shared that David’s actions led to a credit-infraction, convincing him that this was all his fault while refusing to take accountability for his own actions—exhibiting gaslighting mechanisms employed by individuals high in narcissistic traits (Levin, 2021). 

Despite this, his fans continued to stand by him through these instances and continue to do so. After his return to the internet, he immediately started involving his friends in similarly dangerous stunts without any professional supervision. This illustrates a pattern of behaviour that rests on endangering the lives of those around him, without any regard for their well-being. The controversy did not end up hurting his career; he is currently partnered with Marvel (Ghoshal, 2022) and hosts a series on Discovery channel (Brown, 2021). Before his ongoing-hiatus, he was still able to amass an average of 6-million-views per video (Dobrik, 2022). His inability to empathise with his victims, aversion to accepting accountability and constant need for appreciation from his fans helped keep his career afloat as fans simply denied any evidence of David’s transgressions. Karg et al. (2022) note how prior commitment can predict post-scandal support of social-media-celebrities and is linked to less negative moral-emotions, more positive moral-emotions and increased attempts to defend the transgression. Thus, in this way, David’s endangerment of the lives around him was consistently rewarded. 

Hence, social-media fame is conducive to an overrepresentation of narcissistic traits that can create self-fuelling cycles with extremely detrimental effects, such as in the case of David Dobrik. This becomes especially pertinent to consider keeping in mind that channels like David’s largely draw their viewership from adolescents and young children, forming an impressionable audience. He thus models behaviour that presents an acute disregard for those around him, while also maintaining a “happy” persona, friends who endorse his actions through association, as well as large monetary gains. By seeing this behaviour be rewarded and encouraged in this way, it reinforces that such disregard is valuable for these audiences. 

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