being performative is good, actually

why you shouldn't post videos of yourself crying online, the economy of affect and the allure of authenticity culture

Thank you for reading Irrational Technology. I’m Lou, a UX Designer, writer, and social media expert from Glasgow, Scotland. On this substack, I critique technology and design, mainly social media, through a lens of leftism and create a technological future for the many, not the few!

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Maybe if you bare your deepest, darkest thoughts and desires for thousands to see on the internet, you won’t have to think about the reality of living under capitalism.

Wider media persuade us to be "authentic" online, often seen as an inherently positive value. I have discussed this before regarding a social analysis of political bots and the affective economy.

Recently, however, I have come across the idea of deliberate performativity as a way of rejecting authenticity culture and everything that comes with it. “Performing” on social media is considered inherently wrong, but what if it’s liberating? What if leaning into performance allows us to ask ourselves what we want to see on the internet and what we want to put out there? What if performance liberates us from the pressure to share our lives with the internet and encourages us to be more intentional with our content creation?

Authenticity culture conditions us to view "confessing" as a way to redeem ourselves in society's eyes. We are desensitised to what we see online in authenticity culture - we are used to seeing our favourite influencers capitalise on whatever tragedy is happening in their lives. When they dare to keep this private, people call them “entitled” and say they owe their audience authenticity. But why do we think that we are owed this? It has become such a pattern of behaviour that it is ingrained in our culture that being “authentic” = good. The constant presence of the algorithm further complicates this, rewarding more shocking confessions with more views and likes, creating a culture of scandal and gossip.

The economy of affect describes how this phenomenon ultimately serves data accumulation and, by extension, capital accumulation. Every confession video or post creates more data points that can be used to sell products promising to fix our problems.

Situating in the context of data capitalism & persuasive design

Persuasive design enables and encourages this data collection through incessant, seductive techniques that reel you into yet another doom scroll. Often, in conversations about the impact of technology, this vital perspective needs to be included - and as a result, we also leave out how to deal with this. In this case, the power of understanding persuasive design involves understanding the psychological rewards we get when participating in the economy of affect. Most of the rewards, in this case, occur through social recognition.

Recognition theory plays a huge role in how we interact online. Recognition theory is the idea of “seeing oneself in the other” - we define ourselves through how we interact with others because we want to be. This is important for our social development because we all want to be recognised as valuable by others. Posting, liking, and commenting have become recognition processes, part of how we understand ourselves.

Many scholars of recognition theory have argued that social media can benefit recognition processes by amplifying historically silenced voices. Others say that digitally mediated recognition creates “weak” recognition that corporations ultimately control. The structure and design of social media platforms reward certain kinds of recognition over others—sometimes, these can be argued to be “weak” forms of recognition. Algorithms reward rage bait and scandal.

Persuasive design techniques such as screen layout, disappearing content, and likes and comments all contribute to this because they mediate how we “see ourselves in the other.” When so much of this recognition is digitally mediated, it plays a large role in how we understand ourselves—and the valuing of these “weaker” forms of recognition can create increasingly individualistic attitudes.

How this creates "unreality" and "surrealness" by limiting user autonomy

Whenever I dive into an issue people are having with technology; whether it is frustration with Substack’s follow feature, smart devices driving us all crazy, or the ever-constant presence of doom-scrolling, I end up back at user autonomy.

We live in late-stage capitalism. All areas of our lives feel taken over by advertisements and news of tragedy. This creates a sense of “unreality” caused by hopelessness and echo chambers, where everyone sees different versions of the same newsfeed, and most of it tells us about how we are all doomed. This sense of unreality and the hopelessness that goes along with it is symbolic of a lack of feeling in control over our lives and our digital experiences.

The authenticity dilemma is no different—we crave authenticity as another way of dealing with the lack of autonomy that capitalism thrusts on us and that modern technology enables.

Seeking out the “real” version of ourselves and representing it through our online presence can seem like an obvious solution to this sense of unreality.

So, to liberate ourselves from this, we must understand both the motivations and limitations of this cultural value of authenticity. The motivations are ideological and ultimately profit-based. The limitations of this idea lie in questioning whether this idea of an “authentic self” exists at all. What does it mean? There is no “real you” you can access if you post enough videos about your private business online.

And, when you examine profit-based motivations, the ideas of authenticity fall apart even further. Selling us all an idea of authenticity as an essential cultural value has a twofold benefit for the capitalist class:

1. Making money off of selling your data

2. Convincing you that societal issues are mainly caused by algorithms deepening political and social divides. The problem isn’t the undemocratic and opaque nature of social media platforms and the algorithms that govern them, but you!

To quote one of my favourite TikTok - “Remember, you don’t need to worry about being your true self under all the layers of artifice. It’s performative all the way down!” And the top comment on this post - “Nah, the layers of artifice are the true self in aggregate. We are each of us a shifting multiplicity of collaborative and conflicting perspectives.”

Recognition Theory

Recognition theory is a crucial concept in understanding our online interactions. It's all about "seeing oneself in the other" - we shape our identities through our interactions, driven by our desire to be seen as valuable. Every like, comment, and post becomes a part of this recognition process, influencing how we understand ourselves.

The debate around social media's impact on recognition is complex. Some argue it amplifies historically silenced voices, while others claim it creates "weak" recognition controlled by corporations. There's no simple answer - the digital age has transformed our struggle for recognition in intricate ways.

Through their design and algorithms, social media platforms tend to reward certain types of recognition. They often prioritize rage bait and scandal, potentially promoting "weaker" forms of recognition. The very structure of these platforms—from screen layouts to disappearing content and like buttons—mediates how we "see ourselves in the other." With so much of our recognition now digitally mediated, it's shaping our self-understanding in ways that might foster more individualistic attitudes.

However, we can't ignore the benefits. Social media has given voices to the voiceless and allowed recognition for those previously denied it. The ongoing genocide in Palestine is a stark example that there's so much value to be found on these platforms - we can see a genocide happening in real-time, and it’s creating a very unique social movement advocating for the freedom of Palestine.

I post in-depth content that might only get a couple thousand views rather than chasing the 100K-view posts. For me, this creates stronger, more meaningful recognition by reaching people who genuinely want to engage with my ideas. But I won't lie - the lure of the algorithm is strong! The key is to recognise these processes as they happen and focus on how to extract real benefits from social media.

The moral argument for leaning into this and performing deliberately online

I will always advocate for understanding technology instead of fearing it. This is why, despite all these issues with authenticity culture and its limits, I don’t think we should all delete our social media accounts. Instead, we should be more aware of our motivations for participating in it, asking ourselves what we really want to post online.

Our online existence can be viewed as a form of method acting. We embody the character of the person we think society will wish to us to be—the person the algorithm will reward. We often embody this character in our non-digital lives, whether in the books we choose to read or how we express ourselves to those around us.

It is worth noting that this does not always have to look like the token influencer in an expensive bathroom, crying about how difficult their life is - it can take many different forms. Sometimes, this character we embody online is that of a “thinking person,” but we are more concerned with how this appears to others and having the “correct” opinions about the latest Ottesa Moshfeg book. This can take precedence over learning and expanding our worldviews by embodying what we think the coolest Substack writer should look like rather than making meaningful contributions that resonate with us.

Emotional tension occurs when we perform subconsciously to fit societal roles. The tension does not arise from the performance itself - but from not realising we are doing this performance unintentionally leaning into a version of ourselves that society wishes us to be. Acknowledging this performance allows us to pivot and craft our own narratives. What we are feeling is not a discomfort with performance; it is a discomfort with a lack of autonomy over our experiences.

We can use this understanding to approach our online presence more intentionally, performing consciously rather than subconsciously due to social conditioning. This might look like examining our motivations for posting what we do, then re-evaluating whether they align with our values and what we want to contribute to the world—and then consciously crafting the character we present online to resonate more with this. However, this examination can only occur if we detach ourselves from “authenticity” as the ultimate state of being.

This can allow us to co-opt our internet experiences and disarm the power of data collection. We can do this concretely by being more anonymous or more abstractly, through performance art, stretching the limits of what's considered acceptable. We perform for our ends, not for a society that profits off our insecurities.

Interview - Neural Mag x Molly Soda

If you were around ye olde Tumblr (yes, I am old enough for that), you might remember a creator called Molly Soda. Recently, she did an interview with Neural Mag, in which she talked about the way her online identity has developed, criticising the idea that “performance” is inherently wrong and that it is exclusive to our online experience

my online identity has taken many forms and gone through many experiments and iterations over the last 20 years. it is something that is constantly being performed, refined and refreshed. each new post complicates existing ones

real life involves a level of performance as well... being online and my posting self is an extension of the everyday performances i already engage in.

Here, we can see an example of the limits of the digital/real distinction. We tend to think of virtual experiences as somehow “not real” and non-virtual experiences as “real.” But what does “real” mean here? How are we distinguishing this? This distinction is unhelpful and can limit our understanding of technology and our relationship with it. Seeing digital technology, including social media, as part of our “real lives” is the only way to frame our relationship with it.

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My social media presence is a performance - it is a performance that serves my goal of educating people on the importance of reclaiming autonomy over their tech experiences. This isn’t a bad thing. I’m rarely going to talk about my gender identity, for example, or Scottish politics, even though I am constantly aware of these things (because I have to be). But I’m not going to do that because it takes away from what I’m trying to do with my internet presence, and it doesn’t feel good for me to talk about things that are that close to my heart. So I don’t have to.

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Books/Resources

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781838388737?gC=5a105e8b&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAi_G5BhDXARIsAN5SX7qhDHuCvB0GVCNDFKpiEYFdonntiu-4VpKdrdwHEmIf_m3Rr3qN2P8aAlPyEALw_wcB

https://sublime.app/card/who-needs-method-acting-in-the-age-of-unreality

https://neural.it/issues/neural-75-artificial-corporeality/