Stepping Outside the Cave
On Living in The Truman Show
The first movie I watched in 2023 was The Truman Show (1998). This was my first time viewing the film and I’m fairly certain I’m one of the last people on Earth to watch it. I’ve heard the basic premise of the movie in the past, that it’s about a man realizing his entire life is being played out on a film set and broadcasted as a television show 24/7 to a global viewership. I had also heard about the comparisons between the movie and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. When I was first introduced to the Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners are convinced that shadows are accurate representations of the world, I was shocked that a text written around 514 CE-520 CE seemingly predicted the outcome of social media. With The Truman Show, I was just as readily stunned.
If I had read the Allegory of the Cave in the 500s, I feel like I would have found it a bit pretentious. The premise of it is essentially that philosophers seek to understand and perceive higher levels of reality, while “prisoners” are stuck, chained within a cave, and perceiving a false reality they believe to be true. In the 500s, there was undoubtedly disillusionment in society, but in the twenty-first century, this disillusionment feels particularly glaring and widespread. Not only do we have an entire genre of mainstream entertainment that thrives off being a doctored version of reality (e.g. reality TV), but social media content is increasingly scripted as well.
Many of us, particularly within younger demographics, take great care in composing effortless social media feeds, particularly on apps like Instagram that revolve around physical appearance. Even though social media was invented on the pretext of human connection and self-expression, its uses today largely lean toward entertainment. Sure, many of us follow people we know on Instagram, but we gravitate towards apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter for our own amusement. Users like influencers who amass their following (and in some cases, wealth) due to a persona rely heavily on others’ perceptions of themselves for their livelihood.
In this way, social media users are living in their own Truman Shows. For Kylie Jenner, it’s the Kylie Show, for Elon Musk, it’s the Elon show. For me, it’s the Madison Show. Not only do influencers, in particular, rely on the magnification of their daily lives to garner success, but they do so while in a state of constant self-surveillance.
In The Truman Show, the television set that Truman lived on was outfitted with thousands of cameras to follow his every move. His life decisions were swayed by television producers who would write in new “characters” to help inch Truman towards the storyline they deemed most engaging for audiences. Rather than cameras, producers, and writers, influencers are most often a one-person team. Thus, they must shape their own life decisions in a way that satisfies their audiences, always on the lookout for outfits, events, and people who will appeal.
Most interesting to me are the ways in which these false perceptions of reality affect viewers as much as the performers themselves. At one point, the director and creator of The Truman Show, Christof, boldly asserts “we accept the version of reality with which we are presented.” If you tell a child that the sky is purple and expose them to no contradictions, the sky will be purple in their reality. We believe what we’re presented with as the truth. For example, TikTok and Instagram users that follow influencers begin to believe that it’s normal and expected to look visually perfect everywhere they go, even if it’s just walking to the kitchen to make breakfast. They start to think that it’s normal to define themselves with a series of products (e.g. being a Dyson Airwrap, Dior Lip Oil, Djerf Avenue girlie) without realizing that that’s not an entirely normal (or healthy) way to live. Before we know it, products start equating personality. Consumption defines character.
The question that I have is: when does falsehood cross the threshold from phony to real? At one point do we stop consuming a perception of life and start living that perception as our truth? When does fallacy become reality?
Because today, viewing ourselves through the eyes of our followers is becoming progressively embedded within our conception of life. In high school, I remember when going and “taking photos” for Instagram became an average activity to engage in when hanging out with friends. Restaurants, cafes, and their products become marketable because they are Instagrammable. In New York City, for instance, lines wrapped around Lafayette Grand Cafe & Bakery all summer so eager consumers could purchase a viral “Suprême” croissant, rip into it on camera, share it on social media, and finally eat it as if it’s an afterthought.
I’ve written about the problematic aspects of this type of online performance before, specifically in the context of photo dumps and self-aestheticization. It’s no secret that we are in a constant state of performance, even offline. This is something explored consistently in Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Through our own physical presentations and interactions with others, we teach others how to perceive us. Portray the character we hope to be understood as, whether that’s an approachable person, a cold person, and anywhere in between.
The internet complicates matters by making us think that this character must be perpetually played, even without an audience. If influencers are offering us windows into their lives - their “real lives” - then they must always behave this way. In order to truly be that person, That Girl, we must always be her. Always photo ready, always watching.
The message from The Truman Show that reigns most resonant today could be a number of things. Our society’s obsession with the spectacle of exploitation. The pervasiveness of product placement in everyday life. But, in my eyes, it’s the lesson of the panopticon. Only a state of perpetual (self-)surveillance can sustain the endurance of a long-time character of ours, as close as that character is to reality or not.
At the end of The Truman Show (spoiler!), Truman is finally able to reach the edge of the television set he lives in. He realizes the sky and clouds on the horizon are fake. He shimmies along the edge of the side wall and realizes that he can escape by climbing up the staircase and exiting out the door (a metaphorical exiting of Plato’s “Cave”). Before he leaves, the producer begs to him stay on the set, telling him that what’s inside this fake world is much better than what’s outside.
From personal experience, it can be a lot easier to make your life appear shiny online than to take the time to construct a fulfilling existence for yourself offline. A lot easier to do the surface work than to dig deeper. Snapping photos and then spending hours mulling over them is surprisingly simpler than seeking sustainable dopamine. Particularly as a teenager, most of what I shared on social media wasn’t an accurate account of my happiness or self-concept. At the lowest moments in my youth, I often worked the hardest to upkeep my online image. Eventually, when TikTok blew up, I found myself feeling overly exposed to too many peoples’ “Truman Shows.”
As many times as you remind yourself that what you’re seeing is a highlight reel - a composed version of reality - moments of delusion persist, like a tiny chip on a window spider-webbing into a shatter. We can journal, meditate, do skincare routines, and set all the social media time limits in the world to assuage our anxieties, but none of that is of any use if it’s still occurring within a fabricated universe.
The interior of the cave is rose-colored. Velvet seat cushions and glimmering chandeliers. But what good is a paradise that’s fleeting and intangible? The only way out is to shake ourselves awake and step out of the cave. And into the warm and real sunlight.
the allegory of the cave🙌👏👏
Profound ! Really appreciate the look into how social media can be our own Truman Show !