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Erving Goffman, the iconic sociologist born in 1922, lived in a time where gender roles were much less debatable, where you had to call or post letters if you wanted to hear an opinion not in direct proximity, where self-portraits produced by artists were the closest thing to a selfie, and self-improvement books were nowhere to be found. During this time, he wrote about the social dynamics he observed and published “The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life” in 1956. This sociological work paints the picture of a society in which every individual is performing an act, and the sum of the acts constitutes the community in which we live. Although pre-dating the social and virtual developments of social media, online self-presentations, and notions of authenticity that seem to overwhelm today’s youth, Goffman thereby challenges, if not accuses, the genuineness and individualism of misleading us. Despite the different times it was written, his work is still important for addressing the more pressing challenges today. Our generation grew up in the pivotal time of offline childhoods and frighteningly unregulated online adolescence. We understand and embrace the new cultures of self-exploration, being true to ourselves, and pressures to stage a virtual presence that seems as real and transparent as possible. The expectations, and their twisting paradoxes, cause increases in mental illnesses, insecurities, and anxieties amongst our generation. Who would have thought that Goffman, pictured below, could help us reshape our perspective?

According to Goffman, we are all engaged in social deception. He argues that encounters with others are largely constructed by our ambition to convince others of a “personality” that is nothing more than a farce. He explains that society’s functionality is maintained most effectively when we meet each other at “occupational face value” (Goffman, 49), regarding the person we encounter as a character that can be generalized, in turn allowing our reactions to be generalized. For example, the form of interactions we have with professors are usually quite predictable, and our mannerism is decided by their professor-ness more than anything else. The “real” selves — that may, according to contemporary trends, be findable when enough effort is invested — do not matter in the majority of our social interactions anyway. Ultimately, it is all a performance. If Goffman is right, then accusing someone of being “fake” is nothing new, and the presentation of authenticity remains presentation at heart (the quality is merely what changes). He intrigues us with the proposal that we are all in the same boat. While we accuse others of non-transparency and performing an act, we ourselves are pursuing a role! Goffman establishes “fronts” (24) that assist our performance, which include our looks (hairstyle, what we wear, what “aesthetic” we choose to identify with) or the company we surround ourselves with. For example, if I am frequently seen in the gym, this allows for a certain character of mine to be dominant, whereas if I am most present in the library or at the mosque, this conveys a different version of me. He claims that to uphold our different characters in different settings, we practice “audience segregation” (49). By keeping groups in our lives separate, we secure several roles without sabotaging the overall deception. Finally, Goffman argues that we as characters of society cooperate to protect our respective roles, engaging with “tact” (14) and covering up others’ embarrassments. This translates to us assisting each other if we slip up with the division of our roles (for instance, acting like a university student at home with our mothers, or like a professor at a funeral). Through these mechanisms, Goffman shows us how society enables us to be as convincingly fake as possible…. This goes against all contemporary doctrines of “realness,” but he might be onto something!

Goffman tells us to give up hope on being real in today’s society. According to his “bureaucratization of the spirit” (56), we have been tamed and restricted through learning to control our emotions, reactions, and expressions in terms of social values and to help us adhere to the frameworks outlined for performance. Sounds hopeless? Indeed!

This notion of fake realities has an undertone of pessimism with a hint of nihilism (“nothing matters anyways”). However, his argument remains valuable, especially in contrast to today’s overly self-involved generations where one could benefit from being contextualized concerning one another.

Of course, Goffman is not the only author writing about the Self, and since his time, literature revolving around ourselves has rocketed. In 1987, Roy Baumeister published “How the Self Became a Problem,” analyzing the historical and cultural evolution of selfhood and the impact of the rapid increase of choices paired with increased pressure to achieve fulfillment in this life in line with individualism. Baumeister explored a key development that has created a roughly 40-billion-dollar industry of self-improvement, exponential increases in teenage depression, and the mainstream notions of “being lost” and “finding yourself.” This is where Goffman’s theory can be of help. Despite his views seeming to go against the current trends of authenticity, they can offer a counterbalance, easing some of the pressure and fostering a more positive outlook on the opportunities we have today.

In a way, the circumstances under which Goffman wrote his masterpiece have radically changed. Apart from the evolving forms of communication and society, we are witnessing an increasing crippling of audience segregation: the unwillingness to combine two separate aspects of your life. In Goffman's time, the characters of different parts of your life were easily separable. For example, bringing your baby to work, conducting an operation on your grandfather if you are a surgeon, and being a teacher while having your child in your class were all considered improper. The reason for this, he points out, is that a collision of performances and roles we have built up would damage our believability and confuse the others involved. As Goffman wrote in 1959, “Thus if a man wants to be served a restful dinner, he may seek the service of a waitress rather than a wife” (49). Today, it requires much more effort to separate your audiences. Many might not want to put in this effort. Nowadays, it is popular to showcase a full unison of your life: Instagram bios read “Mother | Small business owner | Bestie to Jessica.” We like showing ourselves as universal personalities, being the same way around everyone is a compliment. The roles we play are part of our personality, and our personality is what sells us, taking the place of merit and social status. Employers want to hear our “story” before hiring us, we achieve scholarships by talking about our hardships as a child and gain respect for juggling multiple roles, such as being a mother, employee, and wife at once.

This is not to say that the concept of audience segregation doesn’t exist anymore, there are still plenty of settings in which mixing areas of one’s life is regarded as inappropriate, but the concept is suffering under the highly valued authenticity notion. The reasons for shifts towards what I will call “audience merging” are plentiful and include the further increase of social mobilization (Baumeister) and gender equality so that women are at work and home, external factors like the Covid pandemic that required merging of sectors of one’s life (home-office), and the developments of personality and merit-based value assigning (Baumeister). Having established the circumstances under which Goffman wrote his book, when audience segregation was the norm, and the circumstances today, which prioritize authenticity, it seems counterintuitive that Goffman’s theory would still hold. However, what hasn’t changed, or maybe even increased, is the importance of the roles we play, whether we aim to be “professional” or “authentic”. So how does Goffman apply today?

If a 13-year-old teenager becomes aware of Goffman’s principles of fronts, performances, roles, and generalized types, they will understand that their favorite influencer is simply good at playing a role, that the seemingly authentic actress they love so much has simply learned how to curate the most crowd-attracting role of hers, and so on. Seeing today’s world through Goffman’s lens, the farce of authenticity can be identified as a farce without causing rebellion and expulsion from society. Instead, it can help regulate how one measures oneself and the pressures we put on ourselves and others.

Individuals in today’s society face many challenges, some of which involve the philosophical questions of who our true selves are, and the answers to this have become increasingly difficult. Goffman’s half-a-century-old theory on performative selves and deception as a key inductor of social life as we know it, offers relief for the pressures that authentic selves bring about. Changes in audience segregation and forms of contact with society reshaped the conditions under which Goffman had written his theory, but its relevance should not decline, given that the omnipresent notion of authenticity and self-improvement gives perspective to Goffman’s absolutist notion of performance and façade. Goffman’s idea of performance regulates today’s obsession with authenticity and being true to yourself by introducing a realistic flavor of deception and intention.