The Internet Is Turning People Into Performers

I’ve started noticing this thing people do.

Before doing something, there’s this small pause.

Like they’re thinking— How will this look? What will people think?

And it’s not always obvious, but it changes things.
The way they talk, the way they stand, what they choose to show.
It stops feeling like they’re just doing something for themselves.

And after a while, it doesn’t even feel like a conscious choice anymore.
You don’t really stop and ask: why do I want to do this?

It just turns into, will this get attention?

That shift is small, but it changes everything.

Things that don’t get noticed start feeling pointless. Things that do get a reaction start feeling more important than they actually are.

You end up doing more of what works, even if you don’t really care about it, and less of what doesn’t, even if you actually enjoy it.

And slowly, your decisions stop coming from you. They come from what gets a response.

It’s not like people sit down and decide to live this way. It just happens over time, through small adjustments. You try something, it gets attention, you repeat it. You try something else, it gets ignored, you drop it.

At some point, you’re not really choosing anymore. You’re just following what gets noticed.

Feedback Loops

The feedback loop is where this really starts to matter. You post something, it gets attention, and your brain quietly files that away as a win. Not always in a dramatic way, but enough to matter. The next time, you are a little more likely to repeat the same kind of thing. Maybe you talk a little differently, maybe you present yourself differently, maybe you choose different moments to share.

That is how feedback loops work. Positive response reinforces the behavior, and repeated reinforcement shapes habit. In social settings, this can happen with almost anything. If a joke gets laughs, you tell more jokes like that. If a certain photo style gets more likes, you start taking more photos like that. If a certain kind of opinion gets more attention, you become more likely to express that opinion again.

The effect is not always bad, but it is powerful. Sometimes it makes people more expressive. Sometimes it makes them more careful. Sometimes it makes them perform more than they actually live. Over time, what gets rewarded starts feeling like what matters, and what gets ignored starts feeling worthless. That is the strange part. People do not always change because they wanted to. Sometimes they change because the response trained them to.

And once that happens enough times, the reaction from others stops being just feedback. It starts becoming direction.

Experience Becomes Secondary

This is the part that annoys me the most. Recording itself is not the problem. Taking a picture, shooting a video, saving a memory — none of that is wrong. The problem starts when the recording becomes more important than the thing itself.

You see something beautiful, and instead of just letting it hit you first, you immediately start thinking about framing, angles, lighting, whether it will look good online, whether it is worth posting. The moment is still there, but you are no longer fully in it. You are standing slightly outside of it, trying to capture it for someone else.

That is what bothers me. The experience turns into a setup. The real thing becomes secondary to the version of it that can be shown. And once that happens enough times, people stop living moments and start arranging them. I am not against taking a photo. I do it too. But the experience should come first. The picture should be a quick way to keep the memory, not the reason the moment exists at all.

Living Vs Staging

This is where the line starts to blur: are you doing this because you actually want to, or because it looks good? That sounds like a small question, but it changes the whole thing. Once you start caring more about how something will appear than how it feels, the moment stops being a moment. It becomes a scene. Life turns into something you arrange, something you set up, something you shape for a viewer — even if that viewer is only imagined. And the strange part is that this can happen so quietly that you do not even notice it at first. You are still living, technically, but part of you is already standing back and watching it happen.

Influencers Normalize the Extreme

And then there are influencers…

They live in a completely different version of reality. Everything is curated, everything is optimized, everything is pushed a little further than normal because that is what gets attention. Their lives are not just lived, they are produced.

On its own, that would not matter much. The problem is how visible it is. You see it constantly. Perfect angles, exaggerated reactions, carefully selected moments presented as everyday life.

And after a while, it starts to feel normal.

Not because it is normal, but because it is what you see the most.

So people start copying it. Not fully, not consciously, but in small ways. A slightly more staged photo, a slightly more exaggerated reaction, a slightly more filtered version of themselves.

That is how the extreme spreads. Not all at once, but piece by piece, until something artificial starts to feel like the baseline.

Availability Heuristic

And this is where the really strange part begins. When you keep seeing the same extreme behavior over and over again, it starts to feel normal just because it is so visible. That is basically what happens here. The mind gives more weight to what is easy to remember and easy to see, so the loudest and most repeated examples begin to feel like the standard.

Suddenly, over-documenting every part of life does not look excessive anymore. Overperforming reactions starts to feel like how people are supposed to react. Constant sharing feels less like a choice and more like the default.

That is the problem with visibility. It does not just show you something. It teaches you what to expect. And when the extreme is always in front of you, the ordinary starts to look unusual. Rare behavior begins to feel common, and once that happens, people stop noticing how far the line has moved.

The Result

And once that line shifts, the rest follows pretty easily.

People start copying what they see. Not in an obvious way, not all at once, but in small adjustments. A slightly different way of reacting, a slightly different way of presenting things, a slightly different idea of what is worth sharing.

The strange part is that it does not even have to feel natural. It does not even have to be enjoyable. If it looks like that is how things are supposed to be done, people will move in that direction anyway.

Over time, those small changes add up. What started as something exaggerated and rare spreads outward and becomes common.

And at that point, it is no longer just a few people performing. The performance becomes part of everyday behavior.

Just to be clear, I am not against recording things. Taking photos, saving memories, sharing moments — none of that is the problem.

What I am against is turning your life into something that is constantly performed for an audience. Because once you start doing that, even in small ways, it does not stay small. It slowly starts shaping how you think, how you act, and what you choose to value.

And the shift is subtle. You do not suddenly become a different person. It happens through small adjustments, repeated over time, until your behavior starts aligning more with what gets attention than with what you actually want. That is the part that matters to me.

The experience should come first. The recording should come after, if at all. A photo should be a quick way to keep a memory, not the reason the moment exists in the first place. For me, it is simple: my experience comes first.

Don’t let attention decide who you become. Be aware of the change, or it will happen without you.