“Shiv - what are your views on the phenomenon of “audience capture”? (defined as a situation where a media creator becomes heavily influenced or constrained by the preferences, demands, or expectations of their audience. The creator's original vision, creativity, or content direction begins to be shaped predominantly by the desires and reactions of the audience) Have you experienced this and why do you think this happens to so many creators?”
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The reality is we are all held captive by one another.
Your question points to a phenomenon that every human being experiences, not just us so called “content creators”. Audience capture is a universal phenomenon, the only difference is public individuals have larger audiences than those who are not in the public eye. Having said that, social media has been a great equalizer in that one need no longer display exceptional talent or accomplishment in some narrow field of expertise. One can, with timing, good marketing and a certain amount of luck, achieve fame (or notoriety) with relative ease these days. Like the Instagram influencer known as “Bread Face” who has earned hundreds of thousands of followers by squashing various baked goods with her face. To understand the phenomenon of audience capture, we first need to investigate the underlying dynamics that lead to it…
BEING, IDENTITY & PERSONA
There are three ways in which a human being can experience themselves. Three formats in which this sense of “self” manifests.
The first is as the root sensation of Being. This is a primal and instinctive awareness of our own existence. We feel this primarily in the nervous system through our body’s sensations, our experiences of pain and pleasure and our emotions.
The second is as the abstract idea we hold of ourselves called the Identity. Also called the “ego”, our identity is related to the mind’s story of who we are - our name, our gender, our sexual preferences, our race, our ethnicity, our political, spiritual and social beliefs, our opinions, our likes and dislikes, our biases and prejudices, our hopes and aspirations. It includes our narrative of the past and how we choose to frame it as well as how we envision the future.
The third is as the experience of being an object in other people’s reality. We create what is called a Persona in response to this- the image we want others to see of us that may or may not be aligned with how we perceive ourselves. When a man sucks his stomach in the moment an attractive woman passes by, he is subconsciously presenting the persona of a trimmer and fitter version of himself for her sake. He experiences himself not only as he is but also as how he imagines he appears to her in her world. And he modifies himself so that he may appear more pleasing to her sensitivities.
This experience of projecting a persona is commonplace. We all do it. When you smile for a photograph, you are doing it. People are rarely as happy as they look in photos. When we greet others with politeness and an even disposition we are communicating a calm and collected persona even if what we may be feeling inside is confusion and chaos. The professional image many of us are expected to portray at our jobs is another example of the persona.
These three layers of self are universal to our experience. Of the three, Being is the constant. It is always active, mostly instinctive and does not require us to be conscious of it. Identity is not constant but may feel that way because it intermittently appears when triggered by thought. And since most people think incessantly, identity remains a steady feature of their experience of self. The illusion of its consistency is not unlike the illusion that a rapidly spinning fan creates of having a smooth and opaque disc-like surface. Finally, the persona is typically activated when we are aware of the presence of others. We assume a set character role for the other person and when we are alone we relinquish that role.
THE THREE HELLS
You mentioned “audience capture” in your question, but let’s analyze what this word capture means. Who is being captured, in what way and why?
To be captured means to be held in a state without the freedom to move out of that state at will. Soldiers in a POW camp are captured because they are not free to leave the camp. Prisoners in a state penitentiary are captured because they are being held there against their will.
Your sense of self is not fundamentally designed to occupy any one state indefinitely. You are free to experience yourself as being, as identity and as persona and to shift between these states adaptively depending upon what your circumstances requires. For example, while meditating or walking in nature you may experience yourself as pure being. While reminiscing on the past while browsing through a family photo album, you might experience yourself as an identity. In interacting with coworkers in the office, you may experience yourself as playing a persona. None of these experiences imply any kind of captivity in and of themselves.
A captive state is one in which we find ourselves stuck and unable to get out of. So, if you find yourself endless ruminating about your past or fretting about some future event even in the midst of walking in nature or meditating, this indicates that you are held captive by your sense of identity. Let’s call this “identity capture”.
Identity capture is a very common phenomenon and is in fact what most spiritual literature attempts to counter (although often ineffectively and counterproductively). Most people tend to be lost in their ideas of themselves and have little to no awareness of that fundamental experience of being in which many of the imaginary “problems” of their lives simply do not exist. As a result, they get scant respite from the onslaught of their hyperactive minds which project them into abstract realities bearing little resemblance to the reality they actually inhabit.
The reverse, by the way, is also possible although relatively uncommon. This is the phenomenon of being held captive by the experience of being. Let’s call it “being capture”. This is the phenomenon of the meditator, ascetic or overly enthusiastic non-dualist who is so enamored by the immediacy and intimacy that the awareness of being produces, that they attempt to fix themselves within that experience at all costs, by rejecting the natural movement of consciousness into other formats. This phenomenon, that in Zen is referred as “stuck in emptiness”, begins as a voluntary preference but ends up as a captive state in which the individual does not realize they are captured. In this state, individuals become capable of all kinds of spiritual bypass since they become increasingly dissociated from their personhood, detached from their moral compasses and cease to feel any sense of accountability for their own actions. (New Age spiritual culture has exacerbated this tendency by glorifying it as a form of “ultimate freedom”. This is one reason why so many gurus and spiritual teachers tend to be narcissistically oriented.)
The third kind of capture is one in which the persona, that character we play for others based upon the social context we are in, gradually usurps the identity and becomes the default lens through which we begin to see ourselves. Let’s call this “persona capture”. Most people are very different in the bedroom than they are in the boardroom. For example, politicians may portray a certain persona to their constituents but they often behave quite differently in private gatherings with friends. However, when the pressure of having to appear a certain way for the public begins to infiltrate the sense of self in a profound way, a person may gradually begin to believe that they are indeed who others believe them to be.
We have heard countless stories of celebrities losing themselves in their public personas. Facing the pressure to remain young, attractive and relevant, many undergo drastic forms of plastic surgery so they can continue to personify a version of themselves that has long ceased to exist. The more intense the capture, the more extreme the lengths people are willing to go to. (An extreme example of audience capture is the story of Nicholas Perry as told by fellow substack writer Gurwinder in his blog.)
Audience Capture is but a magnified form of persona capture. It results when the social pressure to conform to some ideal set by society overwhelms the ideals we aspire to hold for ourselves. When a student chooses to pursue a career his parents have deemed appropriate over one he is truly interested in exploring, he has chosen to elevate his persona as their child over his identity as an individual, and in doing so will attempt to make this persona his new identity in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises from the conflict between the two. When a woman chooses to remain with an abusive spouse, she is choosing to replace her own identity as an individual with her persona as his wife, and in doing so is willing to endure said abuse because even as it destroys her individuality it allows her role as a wife to remain intact.
Hell, as Sartre so succinctly put it, is other people. But actually hell is simply being in the captive state. It is the lack of freedom to simply be as we are. And so there are really three hells which correspond to the three ways a human being can be held captive and thereby made to suffer. Captured by persona, captured by identity and captured by being.
WINNER TAKES ALL
I was a gambler in my early twenties. I gambled quite often - casinos, private poker games and horse races. I was luckiest by far on the race track. In fact, of the numerous visits I made to the Woodbine racetrack in Toronto, I never left with less money than I had upon entering.
For those who are not familiar with the betting options in horse races, here is a quick primer. The three basic bets you can make are called win, place and show. “Win” is the most obvious - it means the horse you are betting on is going to come first in the race. “Show” means that your horse can come either first or second. And “Place” means that you will get paid as long as your horse places somewhere in the top 3 spots. Naturally, the highest payout of the three bets is for win.
There are other kinds of bets you can make if you are feeling confident. One is called the Perfecta - this is when you bet on two horses coming 1st and 2nd in a specific order and only get paid if both cross the finish line in that exact order. And then there is the Trifecta. This is a bet placed on 3 horses coming in 1st, 2nd and 3rd in a specific order. (Not to be confused with a “trifecta box” bet which allows you to predict the top 3 finishers but in any order).
A trifecta is the equestrian version of a hole-in-one or a Hail Mary. Very few people will place such a bet except as a lark, because the odds of determining the top 3 spots in a horse race are highly improbable. (There is an even more exotic bet one can place at some venues called the superfecta which involves predicting the top 4 finishers in correct order).
And so, when I placed the $2 trifecta bet on my three favored horses to finish the race in a specific order, I hadn’t expected to win. But win I did. I won big. I was 21 years old and that was the most money I had ever held in my hands in cash.
Just like the trifecta is the mother of payouts, existential freedom is what most human beings are betting on winning during their lifetimes whether consciously or subconsciously. We pursue this kind of freedom in its many forms - financial freedom, sexual freedom, political freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of travel or simply the freedom to do what we want and when we want it. But these are all decoys, a fact we eventually discover once we’ve actually tasted these forms and found that they neither last nor satiate for long.
What we are really craving is the freedom to simply be as we are. But this is a tricky proposition because our preconceived notions of exactly what that phrase means often become the very obstacle in the path to that freedom.
Certain spiritual traditions maintain that in the state of being alone can freedom be found. There is a subtle implication that any form of identification with the mind and its ideals is to fall into delusion and causes one to lose their freedom. This sort of rigid stance on the matter then inadvertently vilifies the human ego and considers it the culprit to all human suffering. Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth.
From my perspective, this experience of being human must encompass the possibility of all three states of self. If we are capable of it, then we must have the freedom to express it. If we are capable of abstracting our world through ideals and imagination, then it makes no sense to deny ourselves that capability. If we are capable of putting on a mask (the latin persona means “a mask” or “false face”) when interacting with others, then there is no reason why we should not exercise that power if and when circumstantially necessary.
It is not delusional to express any of these formats of self. Delusion is what occurs when we become stuck or captive in any one of these states. Like stagnant water becomes a breeding ground for disease-causing organisms, so also does a stagnated consciousness become a cesspool of toxic and trapped energies.
THE EXISTENTIAL TRIFECTA
There is a hierarchy to these formats however, which when observed in the right order can produce an experience of existential flow which is the closest a human being can come to the experience of freedom. This is what it means not to be held captive by any one state but to be free to live according to ones own nature. How does a non-captive self experience these states?
The hierarchy begins with being, which is the root of our experience of self. This is the default state that a non-captive self will naturally return to whenever circumstances are not demanding ones attention. Awareness, in this state, is naturally present-moment-centered without any effort or coercion on ones part. Young children, for example, quite naturally exist in this state the moment their environment isn’t diverting their attention in some way. (Young kids are perfect examples of non-captive selves primarily because their capacities to develop identities and personas are as yet underdeveloped and thus do not hold much sway over their consciousnesses.)
The second step in that hierarchy is the identity which is the form our individuality takes. The identity is composed of a unique set of ethics, values, morals, beliefs, character traits, affiliations, aspirations, goals and lifestyle preferences that act as the blueprint for expressing our own unique individuality, setting the guardrails and guidelines for how we will live our lives and relate to the world. A non-captive self only experiences their identity when relating to the world of human affairs, societal matters and when engaging with other human beings.
The third step in the hierarchy is that of the persona which a non-captive self will don as and when circumstantially appropriate and never any longer than is necessary. This persona is simply ones concession to others as the cultural context requires and is never for one moment confused as one’s own self. The non-captive self has one identity but may have multiple personas. (For example, when I lived in Japan my overall persona and presentation was slightly different than the persona I use in the West, adapted somewhat to the cultural sensitivities of the Japanese).
What makes it an existential trifecta is that these states must manifest in this fundamental hierarchy just like a trifecta bet in horse racing specifies which horse will come 1st, which 2nd and which 3rd.
Being is the default resting state to which one always returns when there isn’t a necessity in the environment. Identity is the individuality one sometimes expresses, when engaged in the world of human affairs. Persona is the form one assumes only when necessary to participate in the cultural expectations of ones environment.
Always. Sometimes. Only when necessary.
Being. Identity. Persona. In that specific order only. This is the Existential Trifecta.
Any other order fails to get the freedom payout. Because it implies one is held captive.
Freedom is the experience of effortless flow between these states.
It is the freedom to be as we are.
Bread Face is truly the height of modern art. I feel so uncultured; how have I've never seen this until now?!
Nicely explained, I liked the horse racing analogy!