Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I think he's right, the pressure is real on a social reputation site like Facebook (which he cites)... you have to present the best image of yourself, which as he says, comes down to making yourself in the image of others. That pressure does subside when you get older, but it's certainly there if you're a high schooler or 20 something.
I meet a lot of smart young people who really go way too far in the self-image game, I think without realizing how it tends to make them dull and conformist, as BEE says.
I've not read any of his books, but from interviews I've heard and from reading this article, Mr Ellis strikes me as one of those people who has so remarkably little self-awareness about their own poor behavior that they gripe endlessly about how oversensitive the world is to their offhand profoundly honest and truthful observations, never once realizing that, no, they aren't actually particularly insightful, they're really just a big jerk.
"He is a self-proclaimed satirist, whose trademark technique, as a writer, is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style."
Which doesn't really cover it, I don't think, but is a good start. If you removed the murder from 'American psycho' you would have a book about a guy who was incredibly obsessed with how things he bought and wore effected a person's image. Really, that's kind of what the movie does. (note, still lots of murder by movie standards, so again, not really everyone's cup of tea, but the book goes over each act of violence in the same detail as describing the aftershave he uses.)
You could say that the book was about image? "Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark..."
But the point is, the main character, this status obsessed person, was incredibly unlikable on all levels, even leaving aside the violence; one interpretation is that the things we do for status don't make us more likable; in fact, they make us rather less likable. I see a relationship between that and the article, where he seems to complain, essentially, "Everyone is a critic!" - difference being, of course, is that we're now all critics who are published, whereas it used to be that your platform was only as large as your voice is loud.