A life, or something Tweeted as one

Years ago when I took my first job out of college (I ran small no -profit called reBOOT Canada) I joked that I was going to become the world’s first corporate performance artist.

The joke was that I would invite my audience to my office everyday just to watch me work, thereby blurring the lines between my daily work and a performance.

Was I actually doing a job? Or was I merely playing up a performance for my audience? Was my performance a commentary on the tedium of the day to day 9to5? Or was I really just stuck in a tedious job? (actually, reBOOT was anything but tedious, in really loved that job and the organization. But for my audience I would play up the tedium, after all this was performance, not documentary.)

I never actually became the corporate performance artist I dreamed, but I enjoyed talking, pondering and joking about the concept.

But it appears the joke is on me. My corporate artistic sensibilities have been co-opted by the Twitters of the world as we’ve all turned our lives into a performance, a running commentary.

I’m not a Luddite and I love the social web, but the existential question of what is real and what’s Tweeted is a fascinating one to ponder. As we obsessively document our experiences in blogs, Twitter feeds and on Facebook, are we all actually living a life or merely acting one out?