Kayfabe
everyone's in character, nobody breaks it, and the bit becomes the brand
Grounded in the research on Wikipedia: Kayfabe (professional wrestling); Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
what it actually is
Kayfabe is the wrestling industry's word for treating staged stuff as real on purpose, in front of everyone, forever. Faces and heels stay in character offstage, never admit the script, never break the illusion. Applied to you, it's the unspoken pact where you present a curated bit as your real self and your audience agrees to believe it. Nobody calls the act. That's the whole game.
the origin
The term comes from carnival and wrestling slang, likely pig-latin-ish for 'be fake' or 'protect the secret' (etymology is contested, so hedge). It went mainstream when WWE essentially admitted the matches were scripted in the late '80s. Sociologist Erving Goffman never used the word, but his 1959 dramaturgy theory is the academic backbone: you're an actor managing impressions, and breaking character costs you.