William Shakespeare once famously wrote:

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

In 1959, Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman published his work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In this book, Goffman argued that individuals perform for each other their whole lives, and that what others see is “rarely a person’s ‘true self’ but rather a contrived set of behaviors and props used to complete the performance.”^[1] In that regard, Goffman is basically likening all of us to actors attempting to portray a role, like what Shakespeare did.

Now, I am not a big social media person. Is that even the right term? User? Whatever.

My social media presence is mostly limited to a couple of life posts, some artistic endeavours, and little splashes of self-expression. I get the appeal, though. I am an artist, first and foremost—a little showmanship is part of the job. A performative life is no stranger to me than dressing up nicely or getting a haircut. Writing in itself is a performative art. Right now, the words I typed on the screen for you to read have undergone rounds of proofreading and editing before getting approved for publishing. As I’m writing this, I aim to be as concise and digestible as I can to lessen the editing burden (thank you, self). All of this, so you, my dear readers, don’t have to read incoherent rubbish. Goffman argues that performance exists regardless of the mental state of the individual, meaning I don’t have to be aware or cognizant that I am performing; I only need to have a persona shaped by the impressions I want to showcase, and the goal of maintaining this persona upon observation. In essence, the little interaction between me, the writer, and you, the reader, in and of itself, is a performance, regardless of how authentic I, the performer, try to seem.

Being a performer isn’t inherently a bad thing; smiling and being friendly when you’re actually sad or preferring solitude can be performative. Being polite as a default can also be performative. So are proper manners and etiquette in relevant social settings. Courtesy and civility might not be something you want to do for other people, but doing it for yourself is still a valid and worthwhile reason to be. This is behavior that every individual exhibits at some point, a behavior Goffman called Impression Management.^[1]

Now, how does this apply to social media? Let me paint you a picture:

Amelia is a 23-year-old marketing graduate who is about to start her first job at a mid-sized agency. Online, she maintains a presence on at least four social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Now, clicking on the first site, Amelia’s Facebook profile displays a bustling family, a thriving network of acquaintances, and a busy academic life pre-graduation that seems well-poised to continue well into her professional career. A cursory check on the overall stats would show that Amelia’s own engagement with all of these tagged or posted activities is quite low, though.

Clicking on the second site, Amelia’s Instagram exhibits a quiet collage of happy, memorable moments: traveling to Japan, a sunrise over her first apartment, her favorite work OOTDs, and intimate portraits of a thriving social life with her partner and closest friends. Also, cats. Looking at the stats shows Amelia’s engagement with the site to be significantly higher than on Facebook.

Moving on to TikTok, a sense of hyperrealism hung over the air as a wide array of content marched across the screen. Beauty trends, memes, dance challenges, and skits show off a lively, active life—all captured on camera.

Lastly, YouTube presents Amelia’s life in a more narrative light, with videos from the present and videos going as far back as her college days, painting an almost chronological story of various ups and downs—Song covers recorded from her teenage years, her very first vlog in her bedroom recorded with her laptop’s built-in webcam, moving in to said apartment, etc. There might be periods with no activity in between, and the last video might be 9 months ago.

Across four separate social media sites, Amelia’s life is told, curated, displayed, and presented in such a wide variety of perspectives and disparate lenses. Across four different social media sites, numerous people watch Amelia’s everyday life, all painting their own unique impression of her with every photo, video, and post she makes or gets tagged to.

This wide audience will definitely consist of family, immediate, and extended. Of close friends, all collected from childhood up to the present day. A wide selection of acquaintances, professional and not. Depending on her privacy settings, possibly even strangers who don’t know Amelia in real life and are only seeing her for the first time.

Here’s the thing: Amelia’s chosen persona, the identity she intended to be shown, won’t always match the perception of the audience around her. These are all people she might have to interact with, either online or in real life, and how this interaction would go might be dependent on impressions built on the performance by Amelia’s online personality, her “Front”, not her real-world, authentic self, the “Back”.^[1] She might’ve had a choice, but that choice cheapens and weakens with every person that absorbs it, like a long game of telephone, but rather than a message, it’s your identity and reputation that might end up garbled, whether you yourself did everything right or not. Every day, besides the face Amelia chooses to show to the world, the pressures of performing force her to wear other faces drawn from other people’s impressions of her instead. While some of these faces can be favorable to wear, some might not be. Either way, to conform to the different social expectations in her environment, Amelia has to perform multitudes of disparate identities, or “roles” as Shakespeare called them, every single day. With the advent of social media, performing has become even more imperative.

Let me zoom out a bit.

There are around 5.66 billion social media users around the world at the time of writing. Statistically, that includes both you & me, and almost everyone else who will read this essay, digital archeologists from the far future notwithstanding, of course. A study from 2023 also concluded that “while profiles often reflect some truth, a considerable proportion of users admit to portraying an embellished or idealized persona online.”^[2]

We are living in an age where almost everyone we know—family, friends, acquaintances—is living some kind of performative life online.

No wonder “Authenticity” is now being touted around more than ever.

But how authentic is authenticity in 2025?

The environment encouraged nowadays by social media, or general internet culture, is built on consistency. The algorithm rewards clear-cut niches, homogenized cultures, and marketable identities.

The keyword here is data.

Everything online is comprised of, driven by, and/or reliant on data. Data in such a huge quantity inevitably leads to massive oversimplification^[3], security risks, and even paradoxes. Data isn’t infallible, and analysis even more so. Zooming in on the social implications of this, we are living in a more information-driven world without necessarily having the capability or bandwidth to process and interpret this information in a manner that is authentic or accurate to those being defined. Personally, in this day and age, “Authenticity” is just another buzzword, wielded by marketers to shove under the rug the reality that even when we try to be nuanced, the system of our current era still prioritizes simplification. I’m not saying that people can’t be sincere; I’m saying that authenticity, as most people know it, is still a massively simplified definition that paradoxically renders parts of that understanding inaccurate or inauthentic. When what used to be authentic becomes the trend, it’s not necessarily the authenticity of said content that gets questioned, but rather, the inevitability of variance and aberrations when something becomes “trending”.

We have shown time and time again that we are kind of terrible at labels. I am reminded of a Toni Morrison quote from her beloved classic, Beloved (Ha, see what I did there?):

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

Joking aside, this is a powerful quote that exemplifies the novel’s themes about lost identities fractured by slavery. About how one’s identity can be denied and suppressed by “definers” due to the power of perception and language. Like it or not, we are creatures ruled by our perception, and language is an extensive part of that. Zooming in even further to the introspective level, constantly having to perform and the potential dissonance between the real and the online can exert pressure on our identity and self-perception, leading to feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, internal conflict, and a sense of inauthenticity. Going back to our best girl, Amelia, while her vivid online presence might show an active and exciting life for a 23-year-old Gen-Zer, trying to make it in the world and living life to the fullest, there’s a chance that hidden under that facade of positivity is a person slowly losing touch with her own self, as inauthenticity and bad faith eats away at her self-respect. Small, maybe, but still a chance.

I am not against the proliferation of social media. Why would I be? In doing this blog, I am finally recognizing that social media primping is necessary if I want to put up a more personable and pleasant face in service to the words I put up on your screen. Goffman calls this Dramatic Realization.^[1] To seem believable and highlight who I am and what my role is (a writer or blogger), I have to project an image that my audience associates with writers and blogging.

Should I make a better go at it?

Probably. The artist in me would say yes. Do it for the art. Executive dysfunction disadvantages me quite a bit in the rigors of maintaining an organized online persona; it’s another pressure point I have to keep track of, too. But I still would if I could.

Is it hypocritical of me to paint quite a negative picture of performative online lives only to then say I want to be more active in social media? Maybe.

If Goffman’s dramaturgical framework is to be believed, performances will happen whether we want them to or not. So long as we, as individuals, have needs to be gained through interaction with others, we are all actors inevitably performing. In that light, why stop the show?

Vesti la giubba. Put on the costume.

References:

1. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.
2. Najar, M.A. & Shabir, Q.A. (2023). Social Media and Reality: Are social media profiles a true representation of people’s lives?. 10.13140/RG.2.2.11367.01449.
3. Lissack, M. (2016). Don’t Be Addicted: The Oft-Overlooked Dangers of Simplification. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 2(1), 29-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2016.05.001