The Performance of Self
Nowadays, even the "social media" is not a place to socialize anymore. People do not want to be theirselves, they don't want to reflect what they feel or think. They don't want to be raw and whole. Instead they put theirselves in a tailored role for society they admire. It is not the place for a genuine person now.
It is an infinite theatre.
People don't even express their ideas. They just market theirselves as a consistent product of culture they lived in. Just so they can be accepted. Accepted into more plays, more expensive stages. In the end, they feel alone in a crowd. They are not wanted, whom they are trying to be is wanted. Where their self disappear and they turn into a living cloth. Some wolves in sheep clothing and some sheeps in wolf clothing. They are scared of being genuine. They love to act into the rules and obediences of people who would applause. Even the silence became performative, trying to signal mystery, depth, restraint and mystery. Just for the sake of being applauded, being accepted or loved. Even into a point that having a private self is a endangered breed.
Their identity became a make-up, which is cleaned with tears.
In such a world that is saturated with eyes, through appearance of digital, psychological, social and intellectual sides. The self is no longer discovered but curated. Identity became a performance, where the audience is endless. Thus, what is left of a person when no one is watching? Personality traits became commodities, such as being "mysterious", "relatable", "broken but healing". Even the authenticity became a brand, not a truth. People's own self is divided, modular. Adjusted for classrooms, lovers, families and followers. Even when alone, the gaze persists through our own mind with imagined audiences, internalised standards and ghostly judgments where the self becomes a rehearsed loop. Foucault's panopticon applies to daily life, people internalize the watcher.
Solitude was a space for reflection, a space for enjoying your inner self. Now it is a space to plan your next performance.
That is why people have an empathy and protagonizing to the villains, they are very aware of the performance. Mostly unapologetically, they know the script, they know the stage and rules. They often choose to break it. Unlike the heroes whose are always applauded, even stereotyped into the best of us now. They turn the stage into the spectators and reveal the hypocrisy in the theater. People don't live villains for their cruelty but rather because villain is not fractured by the needs of perceived to be good. They don't bother theirselves on trying to be loved, kind, healed or acceptable. In a society where everyone is addicted to appearances, that kind of self-possession feels like a liberation. People are exhausted from pretending to be the heroes of stories they don't even believe in.
The villains are not admired for their actions but for their refusal to act in denial of themselves.
In the absence of audience people feel irrelevant now, not free. Let me take you to the dark once. Strip all your roles, peel off "whom you should be", look at your face once without a single judgement and admire yourself. Without anyone else's ideal or prohibition, look at yourself. Let the good and evil go, behold your own self for a second.
What remains?
Few memories? Colours that you like and musics you dance without caring about how it looks? Few words that make you feel special? Perhaps, nothing. Which is fine at this point of life, right?
Yet, perhaps something ancient and terrifying... A self, unobserved, undefined, unvalidated, altered, unwanted and alienated. The worse is some people won't even look at that. They would rather let it disappear into darkness, out of existence.
Is this the self-claimed freedom?
Here your eyes looking through the text for an answer. A salvation for misery, coming from lack of self. Fortunately, no answer can be given.
Take a mirror and watch yourself for few seconds, minutes or even hours.
Discover this special soul and be your own saviour.
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