Nearly all of human behavior is foundationally involved with the process of display. Nearly all of our communications and behavior are display-oriented, and all communications acts include aspects of this process in their form and results. This is, primarily, a process involving ‘presentation’ of a self-image, and meta-cognition (imagining the responses of real or possible others in an internal theater) relating to the results of presentation behaviors.

The ‘audiences’ involved are both real and imaginary. What we call ‘the self’ is not actually a possession; there is no proper container in which it can be possessed. It is, rather, an amalgamation of perceived, remembered, and imagined predispositions toward real and possible others, and a potentially real but relationally delicate and introspected self image. This is as imaginary and cognitively derived as it is real.

The obvious domains of display are public (this is almost entirely imaginary), ‘cohort’ (those with whom one is in relational confluence), and private (internally experienced and largely or completely unavailable to the direct experience of others). Over time, as our cultures have become more technologically biased and dependent, these domains have been compromised, mixed, and invaded. This creates a perfect opportunity for the domination and ‘scripting’ or programming of cognitive, relational and emotional schemas, which, in turn, creates a breeding ground for double-binds and psychoemotional damage.

In what I am exploring here, the primary term ‘display’ is evocative of the central issue: the failure of play-like exploration of possible selves, roles, relationships and accomplishments. I use the term here to emphasize the displacement of play and positive regard for self and others into highly representational, fictionalized and fundamentally toxic modes of behavioral travesty and self-betrayal. While no one desires to participate in such a context, or to be subject to its results, the nature of the human orientation toward ‘the attention of others’ inclines us to be extremely vulnerable to this kind of compromise, especially when our actual membership in mutually protective and nurturing societies and relationships has been simulated or destroyed.

While our modern situation is, for most of us, extreme and dire, the beginning of the chance to transform it is conscious awareness of how deeply influenced we are by our need for and perceptions of meaningful roles and relationships. These are founded on and influenced by a complex web of display behaviors and responses. This medium, facebook, and electronic social networks in general represent the power to continue this process of compromise and simulation, and our recognition of this endows us with the ability to study and transform these systems.