Theatre review: Like Me, Sweet Grassmarket, Edinburgh

Facebook is a game, says the twenty-something man standing before us, and if you don't know how to play it, you're losing at life.
Like Me, Sweet Grassmarket (Venue 18)Like Me, Sweet Grassmarket (Venue 18)
Like Me, Sweet Grassmarket (Venue 18)

Like Me, Sweet Grassmarket, Edinburgh * * *

He's been on the social media platform since the age of thirteen, he tells us; and so, he believes, has everyone younger than he is. For the most experienced players of the game of social media are millennials; and through his own mastery of this ‘game’, he has extended the bitter high school feeling of craving for attention and approval in the face of public mockery on into adulthood.

The man has a methodical way of harvesting as many likes as possible, putting up a profile picture with just the right pose and level of digital manipulation, the comment beneath it selected to be pithy but not attention-grabbing. His 1500 'friends' are graded according to how they are connected to him, with a surprisingly small number of them actually personal connections, while the profile of an acquaintance from school is mocked as being bland, as ‘losing’ at life.

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There are any number of points which could be raised about social media’s glitches or potential pitfalls, but this satisfying short monologue – which is performed by a male or a female actor on alternate days – puts across essential questions on the subject of its impact on growing minds.

Until 25 August

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