Your Life Is A Movie That No One Is Watching*

Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

The concept of audience has been on my mind ever since I started guest blogging at Bitch.  Their audience isn’t the same as GenMeh’s audience or True/Slant‘s audience. I’m still getting the hang of writing for an entirely new set of eyes and perspectives. At a more concrete level, the very candid replies to my recent column about how living so publicly condemns us to always making comparisons with our peers reminded me of the audience issue again. As did this article and spending yesterday afternoon doing a photo shoot with a friend for a side project I’m working on.

Photo by B Rosen

Often, there’s a significant disparity between who we think is watching us (everyone) and who is actually tuned in (not everyone, not by a long shot).  Same goes for the way that they view us and form opinions on our lives. Hint: it  lacks the intensity, fervor or level of emotional investment that we assume our every move and choice commands. I told myself this while lying perfectly still on a subway grate (in a dress no less) pretending to be dead for the sake of art. The truth is that we have far fewer devoted followers of our lives than our egos would care to have us admit and we are much less compelling to the world at large than we think. Our exploits aren’t keeping other people up at night (well, unless they are and I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. WINK, WINK, NUDGE, NUDGE). The increasing (voluntarily and otherwise) publification of our lives coupled with the evolution of celebrity gossip into a form of surveillance (vs. entertainment info) and a major component of the 24/7 new cycle has warped our perceptions of who’s keeping an eye on us and just how much they care. We are not walking-talking newsfeeds, as much as it might feel so.

It’s a double-edged sword, really. On one hand, it’s comforting to realize that the rest of the population hardly notices if our zipper is down or we have a lisp or that time we tripped on the curb and spilled our grande frappuccino all over a parking meter. On the other, there is something uncomfortably  and acutely humbling about also realizing that our greatest triumphs, the ideas that set us on fire aren’t all that earth-shattering or interesting or even accessible to people outside our immediate circle and that the energy we pour into exciting these people, wooing them with our enthusiasm, secretly fantasizing about inspiring their epic envy is more than likely for naught (in the words of that eloquent late 20th century philosopher, S. Twain, “That don’t impress me much”). They might nod reassuringly or wish us luck on our endeavors or like our Facebook status in which we proclaim that we’ve been accepted at La Sorbonne, but they really don’t care. They’re frankly too busy with their own triumphs and fire-starting ideas that they find infinitely more interesting and engaging than our own.

Your world isn’t filled with an endless audience of would-be critics and/or fanboys. In fact, when it comes to audiences, the theater is pretty much empty. Liberating? Disappointing? True.

*On my shortlist of titles for the future book, so back off, kiddos.