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Randolph Carter's avatar

More on topic, I was just talking to a friend about how strange it is that our culture seems to push everyone to try to be at least mini-celebrities. You're expected to live your life publicly, and it changes the way you approach everything you do - instead of experiencing your life, you're more like a director, framing and contextualizing shots and text in real time to create an illusory persona for others to interact with. The ultimate dream is that you can gain a large following of people interested in your constructed persona.

It's like Erving Goffman gone off the rails - while there's an element of performance in all human interaction, now there is an element of mass performance in all human interactions. And it's turned real relationships into fandoms and fandoms into bizarre parasocial monstrosities.

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Aaron's avatar

I felt like a similar dynamic played out with the recent John Mulaney special. Mulaney wasn't just a comedian that had a drug problem, which led to the dissolution of his marriage. He was a Wife Guy who had committed a moral crime against his fans. I was just blown away by how many people would name-drop his ex-wife's name in comments or reviews. What the hell? Was the special funny or not? I don't care how bad you feel for his ex. Way too many people were personally invested in a marriage that was none of their business.

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