Every day is The Truman Show and everyone is insane

In April, a content creator named Jackie shared a TikTok of herself attempting to take a selfie at a baseball game in Houston. In the background, two strangers, Litzareli and Alondra, mocked her, flipping a middle finger toward the camera and calling her “lame.” Jackie’s TikTok quickly went viral, ultimately landing in the news. People attempted to dox Litzareli and Alondra, who eventually shared their own version of events on TikTok. For about a week, these three people were among the most famous on the internet; in internet-speak, they were the Main Characters.

Like most definitions on the internet, “Main Character” is a bit flexible. To be the main character like Jackie is to receive a ton of attention; it may be unwanted, but the scale is almost always more than this character bargained for. They may not be the star of reality, but they’re the star of the internet—and, if you’re a person who primarily socializes online, that may not feel like much of a difference. On TikTok, a search of “main character” reveals a different trend: a mocking of people who perceive themselves as the center of reality. This is different from thinking of yourself as the protagonist of your own life—everyone does that. These Main Characters, to themselves or to others, temporarily or for life, think of themselves as the protagonist of life itself. These people believe they’re Truman Burbank.

Truman, of course, is the protagonist and main character of The Truman Show, which was released 25 years ago today. He actually is the star of his reality; the result of an unwanted pregnancy, Truman becomes the “first child legally adopted by a corporation” and spends his entire life as the main character of an intricately constructed TV show. Unbeknownst to Truman, his entire world is a massive soundstage and nearly every person he has ever met is an actor. Every detail of every day is meticulously planned to keep him from finding out that his whole life is a ruse, and audiences around the globe have watched his every move for 30 years.

Pre-social film predicts social-era concerns

The Truman Show is a satire, and since its release on June 5, 1998, the Peter Weir-directed film has frequently been discussed not just for its quality, but for its prescience. It premiered pre-social media and before reality television truly boomed in the 2000s; Big Brother is essentially The Truman Show with willing participants. By 2008, Newsweek reported that a doctor in New York was treating a small number of people for a “Truman Show Delusion,” who suffered from the belief that “their entire lives are being broadcast, and that everyone is in on the joke.” One person reportedly believed that 9/11 was simply a plot twist in his personal narrative.

In 2008, the then-new technology of social media was an obvious catalyst for this. “If you have a predisposition to paranoia, going on YouTube and seeing some guy doing something can really shake you up,” Dr. Joel Gold said at the time. “You could think, ‘Is the world watching me?’” Indeed, using social media is to make yourself the subject of other people’s surveillance, if not on a Truman Show level. Britney Spears’ mental health crisis in 2007 happened when social media was still in its infancy; it’s not a stretch to say that many Twitter or TikTok users willingly offer more intimate details for free today than tabloids could buy about the most famous woman on Earth some 15 years ago.

But Truman, as written by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca), is not a poor fool who opted into surveillance, only to learn it was a mistake for his mental health. He had no choice in the matter. And while there are certainly people who liken themselves to Truman, either through a belief that they’re a Main Character or that their lives are being broadcast, those beliefs feel almost quaint compared to the larger Truman Show-esque belief that has found more disciples in the past decade: that our reality not real, but a simulation.

The blurring lines between the internet and the physical world have also given way to a greater understanding that the world is constructed. We know that the internet is constructed because we know who is behind the changes to Facebook or Twitter. Elon Musk himself has been a big proponent of the simulation theory; in 2018, he claimed it was “most likely” true. Neil deGrasse Tyson also claimed its likelihood was “better than 50-50.” At first glance, this could seem more Matrix than Truman Show, but the former was still a simulation. The Truman Show ends with Truman leaving the safety of his simulation to know what the real world is like; in our real world, people really want to believe that we live in a fictitious one. Perhaps Musk envisions himself as a Truman, the person who knows the secret, the protagonist of reality.

But a major reason why Carrey’s Truman is a sympathetic character is because he’s correct, and every person in the movie and the audience knows this. We know from the beginning that his world is not real; if there was any doubt, he’d be a monster to drive his “wife,” Laura Linney’s Meryl, through a “nuclear meltdown” or to hold her at knifepoint. We can excuse and even sympathize with these actions because we know he’s essentially been jailed in an elaborate prank for 30 years. But even in Truman’s simulated reality, the knife is real. The harm he could have caused Meryl is also real, as is the pain and boredom he’s felt on set. “Fictional” doesn’t have to be an antonym for “real.”

Now, we’re all living in our own Truman Show

For this kind of behavior to be acceptable in the real world, you would have to know with utmost certainty that you’re living in a Truman Show. That kind of certainty is easy to come by on the internet; it’s easy to find “evidence” to support any belief. It’s easy to laugh when this manifests as QAnon supporters camping on the grassy knoll in Dallas waiting for the second coming of JFK Jr.; it’s not when people storm the Capitol based on non-existent “evidence” of election fraud and people end up dead. There is a not-insignificant amount of Americans who are convinced that reality isn’t reality, but a plot. A Truman who’s wrong isn’t a hero—he’s a conspiracy theorist.

The shift toward embracing a more fictional view of reality over the past 25 years makes a certain sense. After all, 1998 was a relative time of prosperity in the United States; by 2023, we’ve lived through terrorist attacks, wars, economic crashes, stagnant wages, and an increasingly likely climate apocalypse. It’s easy to understand why people would want to believe this isn’t actually happening, that it’s all a plot, a simulation, a TV show, a movie. But it’s not. This is real life. And even if this was a Truman Show scenario, we would know it would have to end with our main character waking up, stepping into the light, and committing to live in the real world.