Some people act as if they are being constantly filmed by an invisible camera through their whole lives. But unlike Truman, they know and feel like they’re being filmed, and, again, unlike Truman, the hidden cameras don’t exist. When people are overly concerned over these invisible cameras, they are experiencing what I would call The Truman Syndrome. (Argh! The Institute of Psychiatry in London beat me to it.)

This usually happens when the person is alone, sometimes talking to themselves about how everyone is dumb and how cool a main character they are. They also act like they’re in a movie or something. I did notice a larger proportion of people with that attitude in the US (particularly, Los Angeles, which is not surprising). I’m pretty sure they do that even at home, trying to be the main character of their lives as much as possible. They dance in front of the mirror and do cringe stuff for the invisible likes. Social media is slowly making the invisible likes a reality. Nowadays, you can literally stream your whole life, and people will watch without questioning the absurdity of it.

I noticed main characters like to post a lot of selfies on Instagram. In particular, they like to post a sequence of slightly perturbed selfies. For example, one selfie with a smile, one selfie without a smile, one with a slightly different angle, one in black and white, etc. Yes, we get how cool you look in all of these angles, and we did notice that the first selfie is slightly different from the second one, yet they both convey a different level of exquisiteness that we have to be aware of. Those who post slightly perturbed images of themselves are so conceited, they feel the urge to show the world every dimension of elegance they can possibly emanate.

It’s not a coincidence that this type of behavior is prevalent in Los Angeles. Lots of actors there. Now, have you noticed that some actors like to act what they want to be? For example, some actors like to act in roles in which they are strong, beautiful, badass, and heros because they want to be exactly that. These actors always act the same roles because they’re not really acting, they’re just being themselves. They have a cool character in real life, and they just adapt it to new settings with different backstories. They often don’t like to be in roles in which they are not cool (which is why there aren’t that many uncool Hollywood actors). Ok, for example, remind me of a role in which Brad Pitt or Samuel L. Jackson portrayed a loser and not appearing cool in it. Even loser roles in Hollywood are transformed into a cool role in the context of the film. Have you seen Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street, for example? Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect, etc. It is absolutely not a coincidence that both have undergone impressive physical transformations later after all the fame, and I’ll leave the interpretation of that to the reader. Ok, one last obvious example that I have to mention is The Rock. He’s a very famous actor because he’s The Rock, and not because he’s a great actor, ok. This is not a bad thing to say about him, per se. I don’t even remember when he started acting. I used to be a fan of The Rock when I played WWF as a kid. He was my favorite wrestler because I thought he was really cool (I mean, have you smelled what The Rock was cooking?)

Some people are just so damn lucky that their personas are so like-able, they can gain money by just existing. In fact, this seems to be true for existence itself. Losers don’t have as many friends as cool people because nobody wants to see more of losers and less of cool people, so cool people tend to have more opportunities and easier time in their lives. Same for Hollywood. Who wants to see a movie about a loser who didn’t do anything significant in their lives? But hey, some people actually watch movies for the acting, believe it or not. Acting as in accurately portraying a role from a novel or from history no matter how uncool that role is. However, seems like nowadays we always want to see movies about cool people, so Hollywood movies tend to be biased toward cool culture. Even historical events about a boring person become cool, greatly changing the narrative and context rendering it an inaccurate portrayal in some cases. A movie about a loser can be a masterpiece, but it will surely be boring except for movie critics who really appreciate good acting. I cannot think of non-comedy examples, but maybe The Big Lebowski, Her, Taxi Driver, and American Beauty can be considered as candidates (I mean, the leading actors are the among best in the world, so no surprise).

So how does this relate to The Truman Syndrome? Well, it’s about the very thin line between acting and being. We act everyday because of social norms and personal goals. It is very natural to behave differently depending on the context. Poetically speaking, we are projecting our perceived selves on a 3D screen. This is not a new realization. For example, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman discusses this very similarity between being and acting and proposes the self-presentation theory. We all have an image or model of our (past, present, and future) selves that we want to realize, so we work on presenting our selves in a way that makes progress toward achieving this realization via impression management.

Now consider this scenario: what if you wake up tomorrow realizing that you used to be the head of the largest secret criminal organization in the world, and your brain was, in fact, erased temporarily and timed to retreive some of its (fragmented) memories on this very day. And let’s say you found papers and proofs to make it even more dramatic. You have two options now: 1) act like you were before coming into this weird realization and not embrace your true self, living your everyday life like you used to and ignoring the fact that you are not truly the person you are acting like right now (i.e. you are not truly the normal, boring person you are acting like), or 2) embrace your true self and not act, which is itself acting like you’re not acting until you completely adapt to your criminal overlord personality (i.e., you avoid being the self that you know of and try to embrace some new self).

We all have images of ourselves in our heads, and our physical selves are a mean for our minds to act in this world, so we will always act what we are and what we want to be. The only difference with actors is that they sort of “wake up” in a movie ready to embrace their new imaginary selves.