Act I

“How are you?”
Is perhaps the most common conversation starter.

“I’m fine.”
Is perhaps the most common answer.

But that is such bullshit and you know why? You know why it’s all bullshit. It’s because, 37% of college students had serious depression according to a study in 2025. It’s because, 1 in 5 adults has a mental illness in any given year. It’s because 20% of high school students seriously considred attempting suicide and almost half of them attempted it.

In fact the reality is that the person asking doesn’t really care about your state of being. Likely you don’t want to spill the beans and potentially overshare. It’s a transaction that both parties have mutually decided to have just for the sake of having it.

Act II

“Good Morning!”
Is perhaps the most universal greeting.

When you walk into an office, when you walk into a group of friends, when you walk into a meeting, these two words are the first thing that most people utter.

If you really think about it, in most situations you are not wishing the other person a ‘good’ morning. It’s mostly just become a way of announcing your presence. Let’s be honest in e.g. a work place setting, most people dread being there, and don’t give a shit if you would have, again, a ‘good’ morning.

Subtext

Act I and Act II are labelled the way they are because they are performances. These people are not really have really conversation. They are just performing a well rehersed dialogue. A dialogue which we more commonly know as small talk.

It’s a way for humans to indicate that they are not a threat. It’s serves as a scaffolding to have deeper, more meaningful conversations. As Professor Asif Ghazanfar summarized: “Talking is a social lubricant, not necessarily done to convey information, but to establish familiarity.”

Act III

You enter the cabin of the plane, you smell the recycled air and observe the seats that have way too little leg room. You’re headed back home after a long and tiring semester.

As soon as you enter, you see the flight attendant, who is dressed professionally and standing with her hands clasped neatly. She gives you a big smile and asks for your ticket.

You hand over the ticket and receive a warm, “Welcome on board!”. With a lot of nodding and smiling she directs you towards your seat.

As you are walking to your seat you catch a glimpse of her. Her expression BLANK.

You wonder if she was actually happy to see you or if she’s just being kind as a part of her job. She can’t acutally be happy to see your right? You just met. You’re unshaven and you don’t look so good.

You linger on to that thought for just a little too long. You turn your head around and see the smile coming back as she receives the next passenger.

Act IV

You’re on your very first date. You’re dressed in your best clothes, a calculated splash of perfume, a final obsessive check in the mirror to make sure your smile is locked in.

10 minutes in and the rhythm is set. You’re hitting every mark, laughing exactly when you’re supposed to. You’re nodding in all the right places, mirroring her expressions precisely. You act surprised when the script calls for it, you show empathy when you’re required to.

Your date seems to be reflecting your perfection.

You stare into her eyes and there is this awkward silence for just a moment. You seem to have run out of things to say. You give her a warm smile and excuse yourself and go to the toilet.

You sigh deeply letting your shoulders drop as soon as you click the door shut. You sit there in the silence for a moment, replaying what has happened so far. You need to keep up the show throughout the evening without the facade crumbling. But nothing comes to mind. Nothing.

On the toilet you’re sitting down frantically typing away. You’re narrating everything to your friend and asking for his advice. In a few minutes he gives you a fresh script.

You collect yourself, take a deep breath, put up your shoulders, adjust your hair in the mirror and head back to the table, smiling.

Analysis

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) by Erivng Goffman, explores this idea that all social life is a performance. That we’re constantly managing impressions, controlling expressions, and following unspoken rules about how to behave in different context with the goal of appearing competent and normal. He calls it impression management.

The book explores this idea of how characters act on the front stage vs the back stage. Act III and Act IV highlight this.

The flight attendant has to be polite to the passengers no matter how her day. She has to be polite even if she recently lost a loved one. She has to be polite even if she’s going through a break up. She has to be polite because that’s what is expected of her and that’s what she delivers.

In fact this applies more generally to every job in the service industry. The barista is nice to you because he/she has to be. The doctors seem calm, collected and confident just because they have to be.

On a date both parties are trying to present their best version. Trying to curate every conversation, trying to seem interested in the other person. Why do that? Because that is what the setting calls for and you’ve adapt your social behaviours accordingly.

Director’s Note

Sometimes I wonder if all the performance is really such a bad thing, you know. If nobody said, “Good Morning” in the office and just sat down to do their work. If nobody ever asked, “How are you?” and when you really needed a check in. If the flight attendant didn’t smile at you when you were boarding the plane and if your date decided to be on their phone the entire time instead of actually paying attention to you. Then life would feel just a bit dull.

Imagining a world without all these social performance does sound kind of bleak.

At the end of the day a smile is a smile even when it is faked. It’s a symbol of affection and kindness and our body has learned to respond to it in a certian way. You cannot help but feel connected to the person who shows you affection even if it is forced in some sense.

The fact that once you become aware of these performances the curtain falls apart and you cannot pull it back up. You start to notice social performances, impression managements all around you and life becomes a bit stale. You start to overthink even the simplest of interactions.

“Why is this person being nice to me?”
“Why is this person smiling?”
“Should I smile back?”
“Should I start small talk?”
“Am I getting anything from this conversation?”
“Should I sit next to this person on the bus?”
“Why was that person so rude?”
“Should I be rude to this person?”
“Should I even talk?”
“Is there any meaning in conversation at all?”

Personally I find most conversations distasteful. I’ll try to avoid any and all conversation if possible. But the irony of it all is that often times I feel the need to talk to other people. Maybe I’m looking for the deeper conversations which pre requisites small talk, which I’ve come to dread.

To wrap up, someone might look at this and really and think, oh having conversation is just a skill and I can use this knowledge to my advantage to ‘manipulate’ people or direct conversations. Personally I don’t take it too optimistically as I mentioned earlier. So it can be a blessing or a curse depending on your attitude.

I had a lot more ‘Acts’ that I could’ve written about but I’ll leave those for the reader to observe from their day-to-day life. If you find some interesting ones please leave them in the comments below.

Until next time.
So long.