He sets his bag down on the desk.
The room goes quiet. Two hundred students watching. Waiting.
He doesn't say anything at first. Just pulls out his laptop. Connects it to the projector. Takes his time.
The silence stretches. Becomes uncomfortable.
Finally, he turns to face us.
"Good morning."
His voice carries effortlessly. Deep. Commanding. The kind of voice that makes you sit up straighter without realizing it.
"Welcome to Media Psychology 101. I'm Professor Parker."
He's wearing dark slacks. A white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. No tie. Glasses I've never seen him wear before.
Wire-rimmed. They make him look more professorial. More serious.
More devastating.
"This course," he continues, walking to the center of the stage, "is not what you think it is."
A few students glance at each other.
"You signed up because you want to understand social media. Influencer culture. Digital marketing. The fun stuff."
He pauses. Lets that sink in.
"We'll touch on all of that. But first, we need to understand something fundamental."
He clicks to the first slide.
EVERYTHING IS PERFORMANCE
The words fill the screen.
"Every post. Every photo. Every caption. Every interaction you have online is a performance. You are the actor, the director, and the audience. And most of you don't even realize you're doing it."
I feel like he's talking directly to me.
"Social media didn't invent performance," he says. "Humans have been performing since the beginning of civilization. We perform for our families. Our friends. Our partners. We perform different versions of ourselves depending on context."
He clicks to the next slide. A split screen. Same girl in two photos. One is polished, filtered, smiling. The other is raw, unfiltered, crying.
"Which one is real?" he asks.
The room is silent.
"Trick question. They both are. And neither is. Because the concept of 'real' assumes there's one authentic version of ourselves. But identity isn't fixed. It's fluid. Contextual. Performed."
He walks across the stage. Hands in his pockets. Casual but intense.
"The question we'll be asking all semester isn't whether performance is good or bad. It's whether you're conscious of it. Whether you control the performance, or whether it controls you."
My pen hovers over my notebook.
I should be writing this down.
But I can't look away.
"Let's start with a simple exercise," he says. "Take out your phones."
Everyone hesitates.
"I'm serious. Phones out."
We all pull out our phones.
"Open Instagram. Or TikTok. Whatever platform you use most. Look at your last ten posts."
I open Instagram. Scroll through my feed.
"Now ask yourself: who are you performing for in each post? Your followers? Yourself? Someone specific?"
I stare at my grid.
The college glow-up photo from this morning.
The dorm room photo from last night.
The photos from summer. All carefully curated. All designed to project a specific image.
Strong. Independent. Moved on.
"Most of you won't be able to answer that question," Ethan says. "Because you post without thinking. It's automatic. Reflexive. You see something photo-worthy and you capture it. You don't stop to ask why."
He's right.
I never ask why anymore.
I just post.
"That's what this course is about," he continues. "Making the unconscious conscious. Understanding the why behind the what."
He clicks to the next slide. The syllabus.
"We'll be reading extensively. Goffman. Baudrillard. McLuhan. If those names mean nothing to you, that's fine. You'll know them by the end of the semester."
He goes through the course structure. Weekly readings. Three papers. One final project.
I'm taking notes now. Keeping up. But part of me is still thinking about that exercise.
Who am I performing for?
Madison. Liam. Zoey. My followers.
Myself?
Him?
I glance up from my notebook.
And catch him looking at me.
Not at the class. At me specifically.
Our eyes meet for half a second.
Then he looks away. Continues lecturing.
My heart skips.
Did I imagine that?
"Your first assignment," he says, clicking to a new slide, "is due Thursday. I want a 500-word reflection on your own social media performance. Pick one platform. Analyze your last ten posts. What persona are you projecting? Who's your audience? What are you trying to communicate?"
Groans ripple through the room.
"This is an intro class," someone mutters behind me.
Ethan hears it. Smiles slightly.
"Yes. It's an intro class. Which means we're introducing you to critical thinking. If you wanted an easy A, you're in the wrong room."
The room goes quiet again.
He checks his watch. "We've got thirty minutes left. Let's talk about parasocial relationships."
He clicks to a new slide. A photo of a celebrity with thousands of fans reaching toward them.
"Who can tell me what a parasocial relationship is?"
A few hands go up.
He points to a guy in the front row. "Go ahead."
"It's like... when you feel like you know someone famous even though they don't know you."
"Close. More specifically, it's a one-sided relationship where one party extends emotional energy, interest, and time, while the other party is completely unaware of the other's existence."
He pauses.
"Every influencer in this room has parasocial relationships with their followers. Your followers think they know you. They comment on your posts. They DM you. They invest emotionally in your life. But you don't know them. Can't possibly know all of them."
His eyes scan the room.
Land on me again.
This time, they stay longer.
"It's a power dynamic," he says, still looking at me. "You control the narrative. You decide what they see. What they know. What version of you they fall in love with."
My breath catches.
He's definitely talking to me.
Or maybe I'm projecting.
Maybe everyone in here feels like he's speaking directly to them.
That's probably the point.
He breaks eye contact. Keeps lecturing.
But something shifted.
I feel it in my chest. In the way my hands won't stay still.
He knows.
Knows I'm performing right now. In this seat. In this class.
Knows I'm here for more than just education.
Or maybe I'm paranoid.
Maybe he looks at all his students like that.
I focus on taking notes. Force myself to pay attention to the content and not the way his voice sounds. The way he moves. The way he commands the room without effort.
He's talking about authenticity now. How it's the most valuable currency in the digital age. How everyone wants to seem real, genuine, relatable.
"But here's the paradox," he says. "The more you try to seem authentic, the less authentic you actually are. Because authenticity performed is just another performance."
My pen stops moving.
He's right.
My entire rebrand was about seeming more authentic. More mature. More real.
But it was all calculated. Designed. Performed.
"True authenticity," he continues, "would mean not caring what anyone thinks. Not curating. Not filtering. Just existing."
He looks at the class.
"How many of you could do that? Post without editing. Without thinking about likes or comments or optics. Just post."
No hands go up.
He smiles. Not smug. Just knowing.
"Exactly. Because we're all trapped in the performance. The question is whether we can at least be honest about it."
The lecture winds down. He assigns the reading for Thursday. Reminds everyone about the reflection paper.
"Class dismissed," he says.
Everyone starts packing up. The room fills with noise. Conversations. Chairs scraping.
I pack slowly. Deliberately.
Part of me wants to go talk to him. Ask a question about the assignment. Force an interaction.
But that feels too obvious.
Too desperate.
I sling my bag over my shoulder. Head toward the exit.
I'm halfway up the aisle when I feel it.
That pull. That awareness.
I glance back.
He's at his desk. Packing up his laptop.
But his eyes are on me.
Watching me walk away.
The eye contact lasts longer than it should. Longer than is professional.
Long enough that my heart starts racing.
Long enough that I know I didn't imagine it.
Then someone approaches his desk with a question and the moment breaks.
I turn back around. Keep walking.
Out into the hallway. Into the sunlight.
My hands are shaking.
That wasn't nothing.
That was something.
I pull out my phone. Need to ground myself. Need to do something normal.
Open Instagram. My morning post has 25,000 likes now.
Hundreds of comments. People excited for me. Rooting for me. Loving the college content.
They have no idea what just happened in that classroom.
I take a photo of the building. Dodd Hall. The sign visible.
Caption: first lecture done. brain officially expanded. 🧠
Post it.
Immediately, likes start rolling in.
I stare at the screen.
Performing again.
Just like he said.
But this time, I'm fully aware of it.
And I think that might be worse.