Digital Self

“You have no idea how awful it is when you know you're acting badly.”

- Chekhov

That great Chekhovian line is quite a wonderful understanding if you are speaking about performing or storytelling, or even lying.

I love it when children lie because all of these details about “…and then the hippopotamus did this and that”, and you're like, okay. How'd the hippopotamus get out, and you know there's all this adorable falseness. And I, when I am being lied to, get a sense of a little giddiness because “oh, you think, you're 'pulling the wool over my eyes', okay, little child, continue”.

Right, there's a sense of, mm-mm, continue…

And that leads me to something that I've been musing on as I have been away from my meditations, or rather, I have been away from recording these little tidbits, thoughts, musings. For I have created a little basic book of poetry.

There has been a recurring concept that I've been chewing on, which I'm calling the “digital self”. And it is this idea, past performance, storytelling, or even lying, it is that there's a performance going on, and we are in reality, and [yet] the person performing actually believes the creation.

Who are you performing for, storytelling for, or even lying to?

There is a breakdown, I think, in our collective social understanding of the world.

Because of a few examples, there was a man, and he told his wife I'm going to the Apple store don't text me anything weird, lo and behold, he gets a text message from his wife that says “we're going to work on you pooping in your pants”, or something of the sort and he posted this on instagram.

But who is that for?

Is that actually a man who's posting this?

Or is it his wife performing so that he posts it?

Or is she performing for the person at the Apple store?

Where's the line between I'm making a joke for us, we're a couple, we're having a joke? But then, when you share that joke with the quote-unquote audience of Instagram, then it is… was it always a performance?

With that, there's an even more insidious layer… there's a very successful billionaire songstress who went to TikTok and decided to say, “oh i'm so excited I can't believe I've made number one.”

TikTok ate her alive, though she is one of the most streamed artist and there's an Oxford class taught about her. She's a billionaire, and everyone knows her. She came and said, I can't believe this happened, but that was all architecture, whether it be from her label or her team or whether she personally did it, right? It's all made up.

We, as the audience, can very easily poke it with a stick and be like, what is this performance for?

And so when we think about the performance, then we go to the architecture of that performance.

There's a very famous tour happening where everybody in the front row was posting, look at the front row tickets we bought.

And it's just cameras. You actually cannot see the woman performing. There are just cameras everywhere.

And then when you go to that songstress's TikTok and Instagram, it looks like a perfect performance, and everything was perfect, and her makeup was delightful, and the dancing was on point, and the lighting was spectacular.

It is this constructed reality that it was perfect, and yet the people who were actually there showed the reality.

Then it's quite interesting, this concept of the digital self, which is I am constructing a reality, and you're going to believe it, and on a low level of an Instagram post of a guy and his wife making a joke, whoever it's for, it is fine.

It is a silly thing that over coffee, friends share, and we go, a man was pooping.

And if you're a fan of this billionaire songstress, you could be like, we helped her get to number one, we're on her team!

You get this joy on a low level of creating a digital self that is completely false.

That's fine.

And where I see the danger is, and what I've been chewing on and thinking through, is that society as a whole has this constructed self.

Beyond the performative male reading at a coffee shop, because then he's performing.

We know he's performing, reading a book on the subway or in the coffee shop.

We know that is what he's doing to get attention. But we're getting to the point where he believes he's reading, he believes he can engage in an intellectual ta-da-ta with someone about Chaucer… But we know he was just standing in the subway with the book.

But we're getting to this very interesting and delicate place where the architecture self, the digital self… we are then becoming people who believe it.

And now we have leaders, and we're saying yes, it's this way, two plus two is five, and then that is the danger.

The danger of the digital self [is it] performing storytelling lying what's the difference? Oh, it's blurry.

Oh, it's a joke. Oh, who cares? It's not that deep, bro…

But the difference between acting and lying is an agreement. I am agreeing to have the lights turned down low, to sit next to a stranger, and I'm gonna believe.

I'm shaking hands with that actor on the stage. I agree that this is a performance, but that line of agreement has to be there.

So when you have people of power, global influence, leaders, and billions at stake, when you lose that line of trust, that is where the issues arise that I've been meditating on.

When I brought up these thoughts to my friend who showed me the Instagram post, his immediate gut reaction was like, it's not that deep, bro.

And it's not…

It is not that deep for an Instagram post.

Or your favorite celebrity. You're on their team! You're part of it, you made that movie number one, sure.

But it is that deep, if not more so, when the performance is no longer agreed upon, but it is just lying, and when the agreement is lost, trust is broken, and when you cannot trust, you cannot lead.