I'm a big fan of Scott Adams' blog (he's the creator of the 'Dilbert' cartoons) as he always has something well-reasoned, interesting, and generally funny to say. (I don't always 100% agree with him, but I suspect he'd be happy to hear that.) A recent post discusses 'Acting' - not in a theatre, but in the political arena. It's a little scary, to look at the idea that a key element of political acceptance is not just the way a person presents themselves (Regan, JFK), but also that lying is the norm and it's OK because everyone knows it's a lie.
Scary too if you consider that this new perception could be seen as a result of the Internet - I could be idealizing the past, here, but I think once-upon-a-time the public had to investigate and really trust their elected officials (who in turn felt obligated to uphold that trust) because it took time and considerable effort to check up on their results. Now, it doesn't much matter if we trust those in office (or if we accept from the outset that they will lie to us) because we can almost instantaneously have reported back to us the things they say and do, and if the results are contrary or self-serving we just say "Well, I knew he was going to do that anyway." (Why is Clinton still respected and listened to, again?)
So then we have Facebook and social networking... a few years ago I would have said it was understood that on Internet dating sites the majority of the participants would be 'performing', or 'putting their best selves forward by lying'. Now, considering the continued popularity and usage of such sites, I have to question if that's really the case. How can they successfully connect people if everyone lies? The week's reading seems naive at this point (ironically, only two years after writing - can we get something equivalent to 'dog years' for the Internet?) and I'd be interested in a follow-up and re-write. I see the point, that it's performative in that people will generally try to present themselves in a certain way. I, for example, tend not to update my status with anything depressing or gloomy, even if that's how I 'am'. I will always try to find something funny or clever to say (uplifting as a last resort) because that is how I want to be perceived, which is performative. On the other hand, I would also say that a certain percentage of the online users I'm connected to don't take much thought as to how they're perceived - they use the Internet as a general receptacle for whatever they happen to doing, thinking, or feeling at whatever moment they happen to be doing, thinking, or feeling it. (I'm not involved with Twitter, but from what I understand this could define 95% if everything posted there.) As such I wouldn't call their action performative, any more than a conversation with a group of friends out on the quad is performative. (Which it could be, of course, but usually only among theatre kids.)
There were lots of things I disagreed with in the article, several points I felt were vague and unsupported, and some things that I just guessed could be wrong because they have changed since the article was written. I'm looking forward to the class discussion - and would you look at that, the vehicle for the death of face-to-face interaction giving us even more to talk about!
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