The Problem With Viewing Yourself as a Fraud

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I try to let my actual what I think of as my actual personality shine through in the teach in the teaching and meeting with students. But at the same time I'm also aware that it's creating an impression and I want to fine tune that impression sometimes. And then yeah, I think it's that tension that can be exhausting too. It's this this this guy that's taking notes that's giving you notes on how you're presenting yourself like you're giving a theatrical performance.

Our whole lives we’ve been frauds. We’re not exaggerating. Pretty much all we’ve ever done is try to create a certain impression of us in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. This episode is a perfect example, Tamler pretending to be a cinephile (check out his four favorite pieces of 2019 “pop culture” in the first segment), David trying to connect with the people (Baby Yoda, Keanu Reeves etc.) – and of course what could be more fraudulent than a deep dive into a David Foster Wallace story, rhapsodizing over the endless sentences, the logical paradoxes, the seven-layer bean-dip of metacommentary (Jesus Christ I’m surprised there aren’t like eight footnotes in this episode description), and meanwhile the Partially Examined Life dudes refresh their overcast feeds and wonder through the tiny keyhole of themselves how David and Tamler have sunk so low that they’d ramble on about “Good Old Neon” like a couple of first year Comp-Lit grad students trying to impress that girl who works at the Cajun bakery.