Hollow Protestations: A Meditation on Actors, People, and the Theater of Modern Outrage

I have always been haunted by a line from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, spoken by the Player with that peculiar blend of smugness and resignation: “We’re actors — we’re the opposite of people.” It’s a line that, once heard, refuses to leave you alone. It lingers like a riddle, or perhaps like a diagnosis. What does it mean to be the opposite of a person? And why does that phrase feel more relevant now than ever? People, after all, are supposed to be real. Authentic. Burdened by the mundane obligations that tether us to the earth: children, work, bills, the slow erosion of idealism under the weight of daily life. People have to pick up groceries, negotiate with toddlers, and remember to pay the water bill. People are grounded.

Actors — the kind I’m talking about — are not.

And I don’t mean Hollywood actors, though they too have their own peculiar detachment from the gravitational pull of reality. No, the actors I mean are the ones who populate our streets, our feeds, our public squares, our comment sections. They are the political actors, the social actors, the crusaders of the moment. They are not hired, not professional, not part of some shadowy conspiracy. They are simply people who have slipped, perhaps unknowingly, into a role. People who have mistaken performance for purpose. People who have become, in the Player’s sense, the opposite of people.

These actors are convinced — passionately, theatrically — of their principal right, their principle right, their righteous right. They are convinced that the world should be arranged according to the geometry of their feelings. And through a kind of self-indulgent fantasy, they become crusaders of the why and wherefore, bearing down on the rest of us with the weight of their convictions. They give birth to causes the way some people give birth to excuses: frequently, loudly, and with very little reflection.

They make daily bread out of what the Player calls “hollow protestations.” And hollow they are — all surface, no substance, no internal scaffolding to hold them upright. They are the pursuits of the hollows, the actors, who often do not know what they are protesting, nor for whom they are supposedly fighting. They are caught in a nexus of nonsense so thick and convoluted that they themselves cannot see it. And so they march, chant, post, and perform, believing themselves to be the protagonists of a grand moral drama.

But the tragedy — or perhaps the comedy — is that they are not on a stage. Or rather, they are on the wrong one.

The Player says, “We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off.” But the modern actor does the opposite. Where they should be on stage, they are in the streets. Where they should be in private reflection, they are in public spectacle. They act out their self-indulgent moments of glory in front of cameras, behind cameras, for cameras. They are crusaders of the momentary flash, a societal caste lost in the image and forever caught in the instant.

There is no memory. No memory of past protestations, no continuity of cause. There is only this one, at this time, about this thing — whatever “this” happens to be today. Presidents, bathrooms, skin color, religion, immigrants — all become props for the actor. All become interchangeable set pieces in the theater of outrage. The content of the protest is irrelevant; the performance is everything.

And perhaps that is the most hollow part of all.

I remember once walking through a downtown square where a protest was underway. I don’t even recall what the protest was about — which is fitting, because I’m not sure the protestors did either. They held signs with slogans so generic they could have been purchased pre-printed rom a catalog of indignation. They shouted chants that had the cadence of meaning without the burden of specificity. One young man, red-faced and sweating, screamed into a megaphone with such intensity that I felt compelled to ask him what exactly he was protesting.

He blinked at me, confused, as though I had interrupted him mid-soliloquy. Then he said, “Everything!”

Everything. A bold stance. Hard to argue with, harder still to define.

He returned to his performance, and I walked away, feeling as though I had just witnessed a dress rehearsal for a play that would never open. At least this is my protest — my own small, quiet protest against the hollow ones. When you want to protest, make sure you have a goal. Make sure the thing you’re protesting is real, not a self-indulgent fantasy. Make sure you are not merely playing out a stupid notion on the stage of life, mistaking noise for meaning.

There are real problems in the world — truly nasty problems that need fixing. Hunger, poverty, exploitation, suffering. Problems that do not trend, that do not go viral, that do not lend themselves to clever signs or catchy chants. Problems that require people — real people — not actors. People help others quietly, without cameras, without applause. People do not need an audience to validate their compassion. People do not need to broadcast their virtue to feel virtuous. People do things from the heart, not from the script.

Actors, on the other hand, need the audience. They need the applause. They need the validation of being seen, being heard, being acknowledged. Without the audience, the actor ceases to exist. Without the performance, there is no self.

And so the actor protests not to change the world, but to be seen protesting. The protest is not a means to an end; it is the end itself. The protest is the performance, and the performance is the point.

I sometimes imagine a world in which the actors suddenly stopped. A world in which the cameras were turned off, the signs put away, the chants silenced. A world in which people — real people — stepped forward and quietly began to fix things. No hashtags, no livestreams, no choreographed outrage. Just people doing what needs to be done. It would be a quieter world, certainly. Less dramatic. Less theatrical. But perhaps more humane.

Because the truth is that taking everything personally — every slight, every disagreement, every difference of opinion — shows a lack of respect and tolerance for other people. It shows an inability to distinguish between personal identity and public discourse. It shows, ultimately, that one has become an actor, an idiot dancing on stage for the applause of an audience that may not even be paying attention.

And so I return to the Player’s line: “We’re actors — we’re the opposite of people.” It is a warning, I think. A reminder that the line between person and actor is thin, porous, easily crossed. A reminder that we must guard against the temptation to perform our convictions rather than live them. So the next time a hollow protestation occurs to you — the next time you feel the urge to shout, to post, to march, to perform — consider this: am I being a person, or am I being an actor? Am I acting out of conviction, or out of vanity? Am I helping, or am I merely performing the appearance of helping?

Ask yourself, honestly: Am I simply being a self-indulgent, idiotic actor? And if the answer is yes — then perhaps the most meaningful protest you can make is silence.

Kenneth Myers