We are all performers. Or rather, at some point, we all perform versions of ourselves to fit in. Maybe it means trying a hobby that everyone on TikTok is doing. I mean, everyone and their mom has picked up a crochet hook in the last two years or read a book in a café. These are not extraordinary activities invented by a cool 22-year-old wearing Sambas. These are things that have been done and brought joy for ages. However, everyone has also felt a tinge of embarrassment, almost like they are “trying too hard”.
Why is that? Does it really matter?
The why starts here: you could be alone in your room, with no audience and still feel like you are performing for one, wondering, “If someone were here, they would think I’m performative… fake… cringe.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines being performative as doing something for the sake of appearance, to impress others, or to improve your image. If you ask yourself whether you are doing something simply because you want to or for what it will do for your image and you cannot figure out the answer, that is the point. The two motives cannot be fully untangled. Sociologist and social psychologist Erving Goffman developed the idea that compares human interaction with a theatrical performance, arguing that people know how others perceive them, which then informs how they behave when they are on the “front stage” – when everyone is watching them (or it just feels like it).
It is the same idea that is running quietly in your mind as you work your crochet hook or flip a page in your book that you have angled just right in a café window. You are not just doing the thing, you are simultaneously watching yourself do it, questioning yourself and your authenticity.
You can spend so much energy asking if this is authentic enough that you never get to the part where you just do the thing. You are allowed to exist without justifying why you are not “unique enough” or “an individual”.
So, does it matter? Maybe it does, just a little. While performance and genuine interest can converge, they diverge the moment interest dies out as soon as the internet moves on to underground music tastes as the next intellectual or uniqueness indicator. Then, you might have just rented an aesthetic and not done anything for your own joy, which is by no means a crime but is worth noticing. Choosing an interest and keeping it out of online discourse may offer you a pleasure that is different – one that finds individuality and authenticity within the internet’s interest.
It is okay to exist just as you are. It is also okay for you to join in on the internet’s fun with no fear of an audience, whether the audience is there or not.
Visual: Amy Lamplough
