Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

In defence of narcissism

I am that rare thing, a vice-signaller; a breed defined by the fact that unlike our virtue-signalling opposites, we delight in presenting ourselves as somewhat worse than we are. Reasons vary; sometimes we were Bad People in the past and changed but (like teenage wallflowers who grew into table-dancing divas and still describe themselves as ‘shy’) we keep an image in our mind of the way we were. Sometimes we choose to present in this way because we are repelled by people who consider themselves good but behave in a manner which we see as substandard; for example, regard the hardcore hypocrisy of racist, misogynist Corbynites who believe that they can never do wrong because they have ticked the box marked Brotherhood Of Man. Looking at such self-styled Good Guys, we vice-signallers cling tight to the comfort blanket of our allegedly wicked ways. Sometimes we are just very honest about what we want.

In our determined desire to show our bad side, we can be funny and original in a way no approval-seeking virtue-signaller ever could. For instance, after having a prolonged online ding-dong with an angry transsexual who first threatened me with a beating-up by their alleged Hell’s Angel partner and then threatened to report me to the police for hate crimes, I lost patience and phoned the local cop-shop to report myself. (They refused to believe me, as my voice is so cute and youthful, and suggested instead that I file a hate crime complaint against my erstwhile sparring partner.) Another time I implored my second husband to divorce me for adultery – which sounds wicked and thrilling -rather than unreasonable behaviour which sounds rather babyish but not half as bad. Sadly, the second option was chosen as I had committed not-strictly-adultery with a gorgeous 25-year-old girl; with true vice-signalling swag, I protested to my solicitor, ‘Have you seen her? It would have been unreasonable not to!’

To sum up, I know that I am a show-off, a grand-stander and maybe just a teeny bit of an Attention Whore.

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