You're an actress in your circle of friends.

The famous American sociologist Goffman that life is actually a play, and society is a big stage, social members as performers, in the heart of the desire to be able to shape in front of the audience can be accepted image, so everyone will be on the stage of social life to perform. In contrast to the openness of the personal content of other social media, most of the communication in the micro-credit circle occurs between acquaintances, so the "image" that users create in them will directly affect what others think of themselves in real life.

The crew and the audience: the two-yuan relationship in the interaction

In Goffman's view, in a complete performance process, must include the performer, the audience two kinds of roles. According to Goffman's theory, performers can be individuals but can also be "cast". In general, the performers of the circle of friends are just individual individuals, but the "cast" may sometimes appear in the comment column. In addition to performers, the other participants will be the audience, and according to the level of participation, we will be divided into active audience and passive audience. The active audience will leave their own comments under the works of interest and may interact with the author or other audience of the content. This interaction also means that the audience is actually eager to communicate with the author or other audience according to the content of the article. In addition, the forwarding actor's article is also the active audience with the actor performance important form.

The magical uses of "praise": the initiative of passive audience

In the traditional social networking site, the active audience to see the performance content will send a feeling, the form of feeling is a message, passive viewers only browse not reply. But the function of micro-letter "Praise" is maximized, the passive audience also has the tendency of initiative. So when an actor publishes a content that he is not interested in, the original passive audience can use "praise" instead.

The beauty of "praise" is that you don't have to interact with actors so you don't have to talk about things that aren't interesting. No, no, no, no, no. The passive audience after the performance did not leave any traces, but it is noteworthy that this does not mean that the passive audience does not respond to the impact of the performance.

"Impression Management": The starting point of all performances

"In interpersonal interaction, regardless of individual goals, his interest is always to control the behavior of others, especially to control how others react to him," Goffman said. This is called "Impression management". Goffman that the performance was deliberately or unintentionally designed to give others the impression of who we are, an idealized "ego". In the micro-letter, the actor's performance is divided into four modes:

1. Idealized performance. This is the most common kind of performance model, which is characterized by a focus on the image of their idealized. Before releasing the content, we will consider the content which we want to publish, in the heart secretly evaluates this content whether can obtain the audience affirmation, whether will be ridiculed by some people. The release of the content subject does not represent the end of the idealized performance, because the micro-letter of the non-friend is not visible comments on the principle, so in addition to myself no one knows how much the news received the comment number, so "what is the point of praise" or "Thank you for your children's shoes," Are the publishers in the proof of this micro-letter a lot of people point praise;

2. Misunderstanding performance. The purpose of this kind of performance is to make the audience have the illusion, for example, in order to gain respect, a person who is already empty in the brain has a lot of knowledge in the circle of friends, who is not rich to show off his luxury items or "high-end life";

3, mystery performance. To maintain a certain distance from the interactive side, so that the other side produces a kind of reverence for the psychological performance called "Mystery Show." Some "acquaintances" in micro-letters are more likely to publish content that is not understood or highbrow, separating themselves from the majority of the micro-letters. This is to let the audience to the actor "strange" feeling;

4, remedial performance. The actor may place the friend circle outside the embarrassment to put into the circle of friends, in the micro-letter on the initiative to show this embarrassing behavior, but this disclosure is modified, let people feel "cute".

The appearance of embarrassment: the mask was uncovered

Goffman that the interaction between people is the performance of "I", not the Real "me", but the disguise of the "Me." There are two situations of losing face: One is the audience breaking into the background;

1, the audience broke into the background. The front desk is the stage part of an individual performing in a general manner, setting a specific scene for the audience, and preparing for the performance of the front desk, covering things that cannot be performed at the front desk. In the background, people can relax, rest, but once the front desk audience strayed into the background, the actor's unbearable side will be exposed. When actors perform, the content we release is often decorated, beautified and even distorted. But if someone in the audience sees the beautification and is very candid about the modification or distortion, the actor will be badly hit. When a user publishes a factual message in a circle of friends, he is likely to see critical messages in the comments about "backstage Details" and personality-upright friends, at which point embarrassment is unavoidable.

2, the performance was "non-target audience" to see. The micro-trust circle has a "visible range" feature that users can use to set when they publish content so that some friends cannot see that information. But if the information is seen by them through other channels, the embarrassing situation will arise. My friend C told me about her experience: The story of A and B is a couple, C is their common micro-trust friend Circle friends. One time C accidentally to B told a day a sun in the micro-trust Friends Circle Bubble Bar thing, did not think B don't understand this matter. B realized that his boyfriend A had set up a content shield for himself, that day a lied about working overtime. Then, a breakup between B and her boyfriend began. Here, a wants to set up her own colorful nightlife impression on all friends except girlfriend B, so he excludes his girlfriend from the audience. But he did not expect anyone in the target audience to disclose the content to the target audience.

When we lose face, we become embarrassed. So, when these "awkward" happen, we have to use the new "Face Kung Fu" (face-work) to maintain the integrity of their face.