Introduction: Performance and Authenticity

ONE PREMISE OF this course reader is that the self on social media is suspended between authenticity and performance.

ONE PREMISE OF this course reader is that the self on social media is suspended between authenticity and performance. The dilemma, which may be an opportunity too, is that the authentic self must be performed—enacted, with forethought and even calculation. To stage manage oneself, then, is to violate a tenet of authenticity: that expression should be spontaneous and unrehearsed. The crux of the dilemma is the ability to curate impressions that most social media apps grant. The services, by way of time-delayed self-editing, give users lots of performative control. In practice this means that the demand to present an authentic self can be met with deliberate care. Other users—the audience for these iterative performances—know this about social media: They too tailor their posts and plandids to come off as #unfiltered. The result is mutual awareness of calculation, a presumption that the seemingly authentic is instead an artifact of strategy. This leaves everyone, from the casual user to the self-employed influencer, caught in a bind.