There is a word you see often in news coverage of politics today. The word is “performative.”

It describes elected officials of the extreme right or left and the strange way they do politics. Instead of running for office to accomplish something, they seem to see public service as a call to express things – specifically, things that make the news. They introduce divisive laws that have no chance of passing. They ignore real crises in favor of creating imaginary ones. They label their opponents as criminals because they are too liberal or conservative, and members of their own party as traitors because they are not liberal or conservative enough. Sometimes, if these antics alarm enough other elected officials, they succeed in getting divisive laws passed. But their real goal is triggering the praise and outrage that follows.

There have always been such people. But we’re not dealing today with a few jokers high on the juice of being somebody. We’re facing something else. Call it the plague of performativity.

How big is your audience?

Performativity is devotion to acting a part in the white-hot spotlight of others’ attention rather than being, well, a person. Why are “performative” and “politics” mentioned so often in the same sentence? Because politics, like acting, is a public occupation that tends to attract a certain kind of personality. Unlike acting, however, it matters in the real world.

And yet, performativity in politics is only a small part of the story. As duly elected representatives of the people, politicians reflect the people who elected them. And in the electorate, performativity and performers are everywhere.

On YouTube, they are weight loss and beauty influencers, and those nice people who show you how to fix things. They are gamers trying to make a living on Twitch, TikTok fashion influencers, Facebook travel experts and Instagram home decorating advisors. They are tourists sharing their tours, moms and dads showing off their kids’ mishaps, sociopathic ex-boyfriends sharing revenge porn and businesspeople trying to become thought leaders. They are the trolls who hang around chat groups and say terrible things to people they don’t know and hope they will never meet. They are children sharing what they shouldn’t and learning the bitter taste of humiliation from those they thought were friends.

Vector for the virus

Performativity is one more gift the internet has given, one more evolution that its inventors could never have imagined. Most of us have an audience now: a few thousand people supposedly follow me on LinkedIn. On TikTok, 50% of users have 1,000-5,000 followers. The average female user of Instagram has 617 followers while males average 453. The size matters less than simply knowing the followers are out there following you.

Viruses like COVID explode into pandemics when they evolve a new capability that matches a vulnerability already existing in the population. That vulnerability becomes the vector, the fault line that was never a problem until the right pressures were applied. Well, social media has become a virus that excels at finding our fault line – that, deep down, even the shyest among us crave the white-hot spotlight. We want to be famous, to be recognized by face or voice or the thoughts and images we share. All of us are vulnerable to getting high on the juice of being somebody.

Social media is a virus because businesses use powerful algorithms to exploit our hidden fault line. By coincidence, their power has also knocked the financial foundation out from under legitimate news organizations, becoming a new source of public truth with no commitment to reporting actual facts. Performativity in politics could ask for no kinder environment in which to flourish.

Social media can be fun. I like funny animal videos as much as anyone else. Social media can be rewarding when it builds community. But bad governance has terrible costs, and until we develop immunity to social media’s worst effects, it will continue to endanger us. It will determine how much longer we continue down our present path and how soon we can pivot from performativity to the vital work of meeting the real challenges of our time.

Photo credit: Vanilla Bear Films on Unsplash