@rush

Publication For Performative People Not everyone who performs is lost. We perform for progress, especially in the stage of social media where content is king, and the creator its obedient servant. All of us go home each evening, and at some moment in time, with whatever degree of consciousness, we go back over all the signs that aid in the continuity of our character.  The dilemma of the performative person is thinking one day the act will be done. “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.” The passport bro may say, “I will travel and sow my wild oats...only then will I settle with a woman to have children.” The situationship may think to herself, “If I stay with him long enough, he’ll commit to me one day.” They are both on the pretense that things will be different in a fundamental way as long as their act continues. It rarely ever does. They may not intend for malice, let alone plan for it, but such performative people justify to think highly of themselves. “I am good, am I not, very, very good? All right then, tell me why I am so good.” The clueless consultant who is sent into his office to gather clients, is hardly encouraged to fix their problems. He sees his clients and computer, and nothing beyond, then sinks into the role of being a cog in the corporate machine. Boring professors scarcely give an ideal worth to lectures, they are ridden by the routine of research, subjecting their soul to dollars. Dull students may become messengers to artificial intelligence, outsourcing their lessons to machines that are far from creative. A daily rehearsal can become permanent. The man who rents intimacy learns to negotiate desire. The consultant who sells certainty learns to avoid doubt. The student who delegates thought learns without understanding. They wake up more refined at being what they already were. So it goes for consultants, professors, students, passport bros, and situationships. The solution is simple and deeply uncinematic. Identifying a performative male is like running a Turing test to find if a machine is human, you’ll know they're real when they stop pretending. Like the For You Page, they are clever algorithms designed to manufacture admiration, not meaning, and it runs until the man inside it realizes he has worked overtime to impress people who are not actually there. The only sensible escape is without an audience. It's the same feeling Truman felt when exiting his show, “In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.”

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