The final and possibly most psychologically destructive, distortion of the social internet is its distortion of scale. This is not an accident but an essential design feature: social media was constructed around the idea that a thing is important insofar as it is important to you.

Within a few years, I would begin to think that the impression I left on people was, like the weather, essentially beyond my ability to control.

But this imputation—this self—is a product of a scene that comes off, and is not a cause of it," Goffman writes. The self is not a fixed, organic thing, but a dramatic effect that emerges from a performance. This effect can be believed or disbelieved at will.

People often make faces, in private, in front of bathroom mirrors, to convince themselves of their own attractiveness. The ‘lively belief that an unseen audience is present,’ Goffman writes, can have a significant effect.

Goffman observed that we need both an audience to witness our performance as well as a backstage area where we can relax, often in the company of 'teammates' who had been performing alongside us.