When I say that existence is performance art, I don’t mean some sort of cliche Shakespearean trope. Yes, the world is a stage. We are all actors.
However, I mean more from a semiotic perspective. After years studying semiotics from traditional academic viewpoints as well as through ritual and occult symbolism, I’ve noticed that ‘existence’ is often dictated by the observer. You can take any amalgam of morphemes, string them together out of context, and present them however you’d like. As long as something is easily perceivable to be authentic, the mind won’t debate what is being put in front of it.
Going onto malware forums repeatedly going “but it’s a false positive!” to everything will eventually give off the perception to future researchers that most viruses are falsely positive, understating the actual numbers severely.
Imagine for a second you were privy to information about the inner-workings of a TV show and were bound by NDA to not disclose relevant plot details. The producers were reading your tweets, scouring your posts, etc, making sure you were staying compliant. But then you started writing fanfiction about the TV show under a pseudonym. You’re not spoiling anything anymore you’re just conveniently ‘getting things right.’ The people who told you know it’s you but they can’t do anything to you publicly because it would then confirm that you were spoiling their TV show. (Instead, they just mass report you, lol.)
You change a few things here are and there. You get a number of things wrong on purpose to make it seem like you’re not privy to insider information. But they still know it’s a leak.
They might change the plot of the show, they might not. You never know. The only thing you can say for sure is that you have somewhat changed the course of history simply by knowing and expressing yourself.
You turn this song and dance into a whole performance. Am I going to break your NDA? Does it count as a leak if it’s just lyrics to a song? That’s the fun part. That’s the performance art of life. The ability to lose oneself to the dramady of deception.
The truth is, you just wanted to process the information you’ve been given. You’re an artist. A tortured artist, even. You needed an outlet. Isolated in your madness, you devise a way to capture the attention of the people whose TV show you’re spoiling and write for them a very elaborate string of bait so that their response to you is more entertaining than whatever they wrote in the first place.
This definitely isn’t about me. I’m not that important.
Extrapolate this onto anything. Nobody can observe what’s in your mind. And you can play, you can pretend, you can do anything you want with yourself. It’s all acting. Only you get to decide what’s genuine, but it’s “all” a performance. Even the more aleatoric tendencies. Is anything ever really an accident? I didn’t click the giant red button, but my village is still destroyed (in the TV show.) Is that my fault? Maybe.
You can say anything. Do anything. You’ll always have imposter syndrome probably. That’s fine. Just remember that you can write your own TV show about being in someone else’s TV show just to piss them off. You won’t win an oscar or anything, but you’ll always know that you put on the show of your life.