I confess, I occasionally had this impression even BEFORE the movie came out. I always thought of it as Hey-weren’t-you-the-guy-on-the-bus?-syndrome…like they had to recycle actors so the guy on the bus would also play the guy on line at the DMV.
Although, when I think about it, I’ve never lived in big cities, so it’s entirely possible that it WAS the guy on the bus.
I remember this simple poem Warty Bliggens as being particularly deflating of self-importance when I was a teen. Kinda stuck with me through the years.
It’s one of those not a real poem thangs, but I like the image of the self important toad. Would love it if one of the reality show production companies would use the name Warty Bliggens Productions.
One good thing about having your very own Truman Show and being aware of it is that you already know that the sky’s the limit…
What do you call the syndrome where you feel like a bit player in someone else’s reality show?
It’s the kind of thing I’d imagine going on just to kill time when I had to walk somewhere far away, but no, I’d never actually believe it. I don’t even find my life interesting enough to watch all the time (why else would I make up shit just to kill time?), I can’t imagine anyone else would.
I sounds a lot less like a new illness and just a new fantasy that some schizophrenics have latched onto as a result of ubiquitous reality shows on TV.
Since I have been back in the States, I have noted how interesting everyone else’s lives are than mine. I have determined my nephew is the center of a Truman Show scenario and somehow I have been cast as the whacky uncle.
I suffer from Harry Truman Syndrome, criteria being at least two of the following: taste for bourbon, tendency to tell off authority figures, fondness for two-tone shoes, and no hope in hell of pulling it off - until one actually does.
Judging by the number of friends I have on LJ and the amount of responses I get to my posts, I am definitely not the center of a Truman show.
Nobody cares about lil ol me, sigh.
"Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir: You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next --and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine.
"Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines… **rave machines, cowardly machines, truthful machines, lying machines, funny machines, solemn machines. Their only purpose is to stir you up in every conceivable way, so the Creator of the Universe can watch your reactions.
“The Creator of the Universe would now like to apologize not only for the capricious, jostling companionship he provided during the test, but for the trashy, stinking condition of the planet itself.”
Don’t know if it was a form of schizophrenia, or just an overactive imagination, but when I was a kid I was always looking over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the TV cameras that I knew were following me. Why did I never see any? Because the cameramen were too quick and would duck away whenever I would turn around.
I suffer from the other Truman Syndrome. I keep feeling the urge to call Stalin and brag about the Manhattan project.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern syndrome?
My life is so dull that if someone’s watching me, at best it’s just a research assistant and my life is “Sample #74396C”.
Crap! The specimen is aware of the observation!
umm, by which I mean.
Garula don’t be silly. You’re not part of some staggeringly complex experiment which will shed new light on the human mind. I mean, seriously. The very thought of a transmitter buried deep in your corpus callosum is ludicrous.