My friend was in Miami on Thanksgiving weekend. He had the pleasure of visiting one of those not-very-cheap, but certainly very gaudy, very South-Florida-esque outfitters near the upscale suburb Aventura. He entered the fitting room and took a full-body selfie of himself in a quarter-zip—obviously the most performative of fashion choices—and sent that picture to me. He described what it was himself: “performative.” It was all performative. Performative clothes in a performative outlet in a performative town for performative people. Then at school on Monday, he was wearing that same quarter-zip.
Everyone in that story had to put in some level of effort. My friend had to put in the effort to leave Miami for Aventura, to find “performative” clothing, to send me a picture of that clothing, to make a joke about a trend and its participants. I had to put in the effort of listening to his remark and coming up with my own in sympathy, “Yes, yes—how performative.” You could even argue Aventura itself was showing off for tourism. What person really needs to live in an area like that?
You could argue, the various performances in life are so entrenched that the quarter-zip doesn’t come close. You could. But I’m not going to. Tourism is very good economically because it brings revenue in with barely any service cost. Quarter-zips genuinely look good on people, which is why people wear them—performative or not. But then you could say quarter-zips don’t look good without context, and that it’s the performative trend which actually makes them look good. You could prove it by pointing to my friend wearing the article, and calling him the most hypocritical cog in the machine. You could say “the system”—whatever it is—encourages performance through rewarding it, but that it came down to my friend to participate. But I’m still not going to agree with you.
I feel there are two components of performance, and that most people distract themselves from the first by alluding to the perceived “vainness” in the second. Every human interaction is a performance to some degree because in most human interactions, all parties wish to 1. present an “adequate” view of themselves, and 2. receive something from the other. This “something” does not need to be literal. It can be as simple as “respect” or “friendship.” There are very many friendships that begin in what I would describe as “crushes,” where one of the individuals really wants to get to know the other person and for the other person to understand them. Nearly all modern dating also begins this way. You could call it selfish, but it’s really very basic. Very few people would consider complaining about life, or venting, or finding confidence in another person to be one of the more phony types of performance—but in the end it is still a performance; you want other people to feel for you. In my view, performance really only becomes painful when it moves from that survivalistic “I must present the best version of myself” (which I will call preserving decorum) to performance for status (like with Aventura).
I had an interaction with Mr. Honig recently—one of those interactions you kind of obsess over. I mentioned how four separate people had shouted “hi!” to me in the last ten minutes. He remarked that I was very popular, to which I—not really comprehending what he said quickly enough—responded with the vain sounding “I try.”
“Oh, do you?” asked Mr. Honig.
“Yeah…”
The reason I often default to “I try,” is because I realized some time ago that there’s no easy response to compliments. “I try” can serve as an acknowledgement of your own effort without sounding like you’re so self-obsessed you’re convinced you actually believe you have the complimented trait. It’s a bizarre thing to worry about, since you’d suspect that the person complimenting you would already believe you have the trait, and thus would prefer you accept the compliment—right? But it feels wrong. In a way, doesn’t wanting to seem humble also make you self-obsessed? You care so much about being perceived a certain way—even if it’s arguably a positive way that shows lack of ego—that you over-analyze yourself and the way you appear. What’s that? It’s a performance.
Why did I even tell Mr. Honig at all? Part of it’s because it’s the most recent thing that happened to me; part of it’s because it was funny; but some of it may have been because subconsciously I do want others to perceive me as a gregarious person whom people want to be friends with. But what actually sociable person—that ideal I want to achieve—would blunder so badly as to seem like they want to be social?
There’s the “nonchalance” angle too. Some people see nonchalance as some sort of escape from the performance that’s in nearly everything else. That you are so detached from the petty going-ons of life and expectations that you are realer than others. This, of course, also becomes a performance as soon as there is the intention to give an impression and receive a certain treatment.
You may believe I’m building up to the idea that everything is a performance, but as I said originally, that’s not my point. When one does become good friends with a person, the performance fades more and more. In that sense the performance is a necessary part to a deeper connection, because the awkwardness of telling a disinterested stranger on the subway all about your “Coca-Cola” incident where you and your crush both drank from the same can and “wow! It’s almost like you kissed!” is an interaction no one but your closest friends want to participate in. And that’s fine.
Of course—by principles of quantity—very few people can totally know you. There are other strangers on the subway overhearing your weird conversation—impatiently waiting for their stop—just so they can go and complain to their own friends. To them you are the weird subway girl. But you probably don’t see yourself as the weird subway girl. And to ensure other people don’t see you as the weird subway girl, it would be preferable you protect your precious identity with a performance. The performance in this case is a necessary evil. You are giving the impression of a person who respects decorum and expecting the something that the strangers don’t humiliate you or hurt your ego and identity.
There is a very bizarre, unorthodox view of identity in our generation. We value it so highly as to treat it as inseparable from the person. But in doing so, we end up making the performance of it all more painful to bear. Because we end up expecting more from it; we let it burst into phoniness, and its decorum-preserving nature curls into the status-gaining kind. It ruins the nuance.
I hate LinkedIn. Every part of LinkedIn, I hate it. Everyone’s on there bragging about their extracurriculars and their fit and their modernity and their AI skills and their new startup. It’s too much in a way that hurts my own ego and builds up their performance as a part of an identity. “I am a tech CEO in quant, see my GoFundMe,” “I am a finance girlie,” I am Souryashubhra Chatterjee and I don’t goddamn care! What even is any of that stuff!? you just made it up! You have a list of achievements you think define you so much that you’ve turned that performance into part of your identity. Now you’ve created a standard where you did not simply do research, no. You are a researcher. Let me tell you one thing: you are as much of a researcher as the girl on the subway is a Coca-Cola kiss-can sharer. Tell me about who you are. What’s your favorite song? You like classical music?
Fine, let’s talk about Mozart, the man who literally wrote symphonies to be performed. What do you know about him? Ah, Mozart. What an immature genius. He’d procrastinate to the last moment and come up with genius symphonies for the European courts; he’d make all these scat-humor jokes! Okay, yes, he did both those things. But is that what Mozart is? Is that Mozart’s identity? None of us knew Mozart, why are we building a caricatured sculpture of him based on such easily digestible knowledge. Why are we reading jokes in letters addressed to his sister and judging him for them when we aren’t his sister? Why are we ignoring how at that time, bodily humor was a lot more acceptable in high-circles than it is nowadays? Why are we focusing solely on the playfulness of his private action and ignoring the sincere, weighty, passionate, dark, emotion he put into Requiem? Does judging Mozart for this identity, built off of Coca-Cola cans not meant for us, make it harder to enjoy his masterpieces? Do we see less complexity in him through doing so? I’d argue we do. That’s when we end up losing our humanity in performance.
That is the trap of the “disgustingly educated;” another one of those self-prescribed nuance-killing identities. It’s the halo effect. I am disgustingly educated; I subscribe to the most popular cultural interpretations of ideas, of art, of culture—thus I am fully confident my view of Mozart is not a caricature. But by going along with the performance given to the rest of society, connecting the idea, even, of following that performance with your identity, you are dooming yourself.
Ironically enough, a lot of the most performative gestures come from a want of that real, sincere connection. But they doom themselves. If all of us are in agreement, we are connecting. Now—we need destroy those who disagree. That is the final end of nuance, of art, of everything coming from the more natural, the less performative, dimension of human connection. That is the reduction of identity into such simple puzzle pieces that nothing really gets done, and everyone is happy, and no one is a chud, and no one is the subway girl. We are all the same, we are all disgustingly educated, and we all hate the performance that elevates us.
But it’s not over. Forget about Aventura. Because through finding real connections, to finding real friends, to expressing yourself truly, to making art, you can escape that trap of status performance. But that comes from one large sacrifice. You must accept that even if it’s more difficult, you must seek nuance. You must tolerate your friend making a joke about quarter zips, or yearning for her crush’s cola because those are the little performances that build real connection. You have to. You can’t afford to do anything else.
