Greg Heffley begins his diary by wondering if the world revolves around him. He believes that there might be a secret film crew documenting his life, which he thinks is pretty cool. He got this idea from watching a movie about “a man whose whole life is secretly being filmed for a TV show” (1). When Greg thinks that his life might be a bit too boring to broadcast, he makes sure to “do something entertaining every now and then to give the people watching at home a good chuckle” (2). Because he believes that his whole life could be a TV show, Greg also wonders if his life is rigged, or if someone is “pulling the strings” (4) behind the scenes. He puzzles over how everyone in his life could be paid actors, or even robots, including his parents and brothers. He concludes that if they are actors, at least his real parents “are set for life” (7). 

Greg admits that there is a chance that he is an “ordinary kid living a normal life, and …NOT the star of some TV show” (13), but that either way, he feels like there is someone “keeping tabs on [his] life” (16), and potentially, these observers could be aliens.