When everyone has their own television channel and performance is the key to monetization, what people witness is everyone in performance mode. Not everyone realizes this, so they believe they are watching natural interaction. The result is that the majority learn to imitate what is essentially “contrived theater.”
In my generation, many who were inspired by “musical theater” from the Television Era ended up incorporating contrived theater into their performer persona during the first “YouTube Star Era” (2007–2012). Later, when anyone could be a “YouTube Star” (or Instagram/TikTok Star) for any reason, contrived theater evolved into the singular persona of social existence worldwide.
What we were really learning by observing was how to adapt to the displayed surface persona in order to gain acceptance and financial reward. I objected to the surface-level claims like, “I played a festival/school auditorium for schoolchildren yesterday, and how wonderful it is to inspire them to play music.” My response was, “Inspire them to do what, exactly? With all of this Facebook-style persona advertising protocol in effect, music has been reduced to nothing more than the soundtrack of a conformity-encouragement program.”
That’s what it was. You weren’t inspiring anything—just demonstrating the rules of the current internet social engagement program. Music had become an advertisement for coolness and confidence, selling the illusion that these qualities were attainable only through adopting a conformed social persona, one that lived in a state of constant contrived theater.