The triumph of performance

Tomorrow’s conversation: On PvA, we’re discussing why performance has triumphed in the Information Space and what that means for the media industry. Get PvA.

On Wednesday, October 22, at 1pmET, we are holding the first edition of TRB Live, which is a new interactive show we’ll be holding every other week to give a deep dive into the mechanics of media. This episode will feature a case study on how TechCrunch overhauled its email strategy. This session is free to attend and sponsored by Beehiiv. If you cannot attend, we will send a replay to registrants. Sign up.

In 2018, Max Read wrote a prescient piece asking how much of the internet was fake. Turns out quite a lot. The web was infested with ad-clicking bots, phony metrics, and scams that were features, not bugs, of the system.

Read wrote his piece in the hangover from the mocked pivot to video. It was more right than wrong. What was once known as “social media” is now an endless supply of short-form video, a medium that rewards charisma over clarity. Text is falling out of favor because it demands coherence. Writing exposes thought; video flatters bullshitters and performers. I’m biased.

Trump has filled his administration with media figures, from cable news personalities to YouTubers. The result is a strange environment where social media performance trumps policy points. “It doesn’t have to be true,” said a leading MAGA memelord. “It just has to go viral.” (The same is true for the Resistance. The inflatable animals of the Portland ICE protests are ideal viral content to communicate how fake the idea is of the city as a war zone.)

The fake internet is a result of bad incentives. The optimization machines must be fed. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is a monster for shocking his dog. No, wait, maybe he didn’t. Does it matter?

It’s easy to dismiss all of this as something that‘s only a concern to a small set of extremely online weirdos. But the Information Space is moving from somewhere we visit to where we live. Ambient computing is more of a threat than a promise.

When attention is disproportionally rewarded, you build an incentive structure for performance in the service of narrative. The drift into conspiratorial thinking is a natural consequence. Conspiracies are good narratives, particularly when told by skilled performers like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. They’re more compelling than the messy reality where incompetence explains more than cabals. Besides, you’re not being paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Institutions once mediated truth. Now individuals perform their versions of truths. The Information Space rewards going just a bit farther to find a patch of open ground. Next thing you know, you’re just asking questions about the Kabbalah. That’s why news organizations are losing ground to influencers: institutional authority doesn’t scale like charisma, even if it makes a hell of a lot more sense. And the lines between journalist and creator are blurred. I am willing to be a B2B influencer if that’s more premium. 

The only option is to perform. Being a reporter isn’t enough; you need to be a podcaster, event host, TikToker. Being a pretty good wordcel is risky. 

The uproar over Bari Weiss taking over CBS News — and the union’s performative resistance — shows how much of the business has become theater. The layoffs will come whether anyone hits reply or not. This is “free severance,” in the words of Anonymous Banker.

The supposed premium placed on “authenticity” in the Information Space is overblown. Relatability matters more. What counts are the trappings of being real, so long as they serve the overarching narrative.

As the direction of the creator economy in an AI era becomes clearer, there’s new fear. Platforms preferred individual creators to big media companies because millions of small fries were easier to push around. Now they’re poised to replace those suppliers with synthetic content tuned to user interests. ChatGPT’s pivot to what Sam Altman chastely calls “erotica” is a sign of where this will go. Sometimes a bit of friction is OK.

“What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t ‘truth,’ but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be,” Read wrote. “Years of metrics-driven growth, lucrative manipulative systems, and unregulated platform marketplaces, have created an environment where it makes more sense to be fake online — to be disingenuous and cynical, to lie and cheat, to misrepresent and distort — than it does to be real. Fixing that would require cultural and political reform in Silicon Valley and around the world, but it’s our only choice. Otherwise we’ll all end up on the bot internet of fake people, fake clicks, fake sites, and fake computers, where the only real thing is the ads.”

This won’t end media as a business. The marketplace will self-correct. As everything becomes synthetic, real connection feels scarce and valuable. 

During the interactive livestream, we’ll talk about cleaning disengaged lists, rebuilding workflows, and the practical lessons from moving fast without breaking the audience relationship. Sign up.

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