In this Netflix adaptation of the British reality show, contestants live in the same apartment building, but do not meet face-to-face. Instead, the contestants have to use their social media personas to charm their way up to the final prize.
After watching the show, it seemed very interesting to me the various choices some of the players made on the show. Obviously, since the players don't meet in person, some chose to use catfishing as their major tactic. In all of these cases, appearance is what drove these decisions. It seemed obvious to them that prettier faces and rocking bodies was the ultimate winning edge that they needed.
The other half of the contestants chose to come as themselves and thought that being "real" was the actual winning statement. But what does it mean to be "real," anyways?
According to the Circle contestants, being real means to be personable, flirty, and funny. But Mead would argue that their definition of "real" is actually obtuse.
Mead's discussion of the self involves the "I" and the "Me". The "Me" is the outcome from other people or environments, while the "I" is the individual's response of the "Me."
In the case of The Circle, the "Me" is the prior knowledge the contestants have of social media coming into the show, and the "I" is the active decisions that contestants make on the show to get ahead with this knowledge.
For the non-catfish contestants, what they believe to be their "I's" is really just their "Me's." Their identity is really just a Franken-self created by the "Me." While they think that they're just being themselves and not being fake, in reality the contestants are conforming to the rules of social media that they learned while using it.
Arguably, the catfish contestants are more honed into their "I's" than the contestants claiming to be their true selves. The catfishers also conform to the non-explicit rules of social media, but the difference is that they actively chose to do so. Since it is a game, these behaviors could just be merely described as strategy, but really there has to be a sense of "Me" to create a strategy in the first place.
Overall, all of the contestants had a shared knowledge of social media as an environment, and they all used that knowledge to their advantage. Female contestants used relatability and support as a tactic to get closer to other females, and used flirting to get closer to the male contestants. It was the same vice versa, too.
By the end of the show I found myself wondering what I would do if I were a contestant on the show. While catfishing seems like the most self aware choice, I don't think I could stomach pretending to be a different person entirely. Inevitably I think I would chose to play as "myself."
Whatever the hell that means, anyways.
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