Mugging for the Audience

There’s a thing we run into that we call “mugging for the audience.” It’s when you feel compelled to perform whatever you are, whatever you’re doing, as some piece of noble political theater intended to prevent your (unseen, at times entirely hypothetical) audience from coming after you. Anything that fails that performance shows secret evil within you and justifies whatever “they” do to you (whoever “they” are).

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