Read What You Want

As reliably as the sun rises and falls, I opened Bluesky the other day to a post that made me sigh in resignation. You know the sort of post I’m talking about: the sort that turns your head from your phone to the sky, to dissociate into the blue; the sort that turns your face into the 😑 emoji; the sort that leaves you immediately physically tired. And, this being Leaflet, I can easily embed the post and spread the wealth.

The concept of performative reading was once again rearing its head—in an article that, when read, turned out to have no evidence to back up the existence of such behavior other than the Hot Dudes Reading Instagram account, an observation that secondhand book sales are up (at least according to a website for secondhand goods), a note about Elle’s promotion of book-sized tote bags, and a gesture toward a possible trend of more in-home reading nooks.

That none of these things are concrete indicators of performative reading doesn’t seem to matter. The article, and numerous others like it , are happy to perpetuate the possibility of a trend solely on vibes. If enough of them talk about it, then it must be happening.

This isn’t to say no one has ever picked up a book and opened it in public with the hope of being noticed for reading it, but the fact that the articles I’m able to find never seem able to point to actual examples leads me to believe the phenomenon is wildly overreported. (And if, however unlikely, someone wants to send me examples, here are some immediate checks: first, having a book on your shelf that you aspire to read is not performative reading, for in that case you’re not yet reading, and your aspirations may well be genuine; second, claiming to have read something you haven’t is just lying and not the same as actively reading performatively; and, third, pretending to performatively read , as a bit, in a photo or video for social media, is not performative reading but performing performative reading.)

What the articles actually seem to evidence is a deeply felt anxiety, by basically everyone of a certain age, over whether anything they’re doing isn’t performance. Peep this NBC News quote from a freshly graduated former college student:

“I think social media makes everybody perform, whether they acknowledge it or not,” she said. “We’re all performing, and a lot of us are saying that we’re not performing, but the fact that you’re on a platform at all implies the existence of performance, right?”

In each article, the question arises: am I doing what I’m doing for me, or am I doing it for other people? And in each article, a suspicion pervades: a lot of people must be doing what they’re doing for others, for they couldn’t possibly want to do it for themselves.

Engagement-based media might not have lit the fire of this particular paranoia, but it’s certainly the gas can that’s made it uncontainable. In a world where reactions to one’s choices are quantifiable, everyone must be acting all the time with the intent to juice their numbers. But such paranoia ignores the important difference between intentional artifice and the basic choices everyone makes to present themselves outwardly to the world. I tend to believe most posting, especially from those without a large following (which is most people), is sincerely meant.

And when it comes to reading, such paranoia ignores that it’s mostly a private act, even when done in public. The Hot Dudes Reading, for example, are not posting about their reading; outside observers are. Many of them may well have wished not to be perceived at all.

There’s a lot that sucks about aging, but one of the great things is how much less you care about this shit, at least or especially when it comes to more innocuous matters of taste. Your time is precious, and spending it wringing your hands over strangers’ perceptions of the books you post about or sit with in public is a path to madness. And the people who remain certain that you have ulterior motives for reading the books that you do are telling on themselves as much as, if not more than, they’re telling on you.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I second Rob Palk’s “Oh fuck off.”