Goffman takes up the issue of individuals who are present during a performance but who acquire information that, if made public, may ruin the impression given off to their audience. Goffman terms the type of information that can ruin a group’s image “destructive information.” Goffman focuses on “destructive information” and the various subjective positions within a performance that are on its receiving end because it includes all those facts that, if acquired by an audience member, would shatter the public image and impression desired by the performance team. Goffman categorizes those individuals who do acquire such information as “discrepant roles.” Of these discrepant roles, there exist six main types and three subtypes (the six main types are informers, shills, spotters, professional shoppers, go-betweens, and non-persons; the three subtypes are specialists, confidants, and colleagues).

An informer is “someone who pretends to the performers to be a member of their team, is allowed to come backstage and to acquire destructive information, and then openly or secretly sells out the show to the audience” (145). These kinds of people typically work within the political, military, industrial, and criminal sectors of society. A shill “acts as though he were an ordinary member of the audience but is in fact in league with the performers” (146).