Such a thing is also existential because it affirms the existence of yourself as you are and who you wish to become (e.g., a Hoosier turned New York City fashionista). Unlike objective or constructive authenticity, “existential experience involves personal or intersubjective feelings activated by the liminal process of tourist activities.”

The second kind is constructive authenticity. It answers the question, Have I witnessed what I expected? We experience constructive authenticity when expectations set by media and advertising are fulfilled.

To truly read as “authentic” according to internet studies scholar Crystal Abidin, influencers have to “actively juxtapose this stripped-down version of themselves against the median and normative self-presentations of glamour, to continually create and assign value to new markers—faults and flaws, failures and fiascos—to affirm the veracity of

The result is an ironic twist of fate: the very thing that made the area popular to begin with is diluted by corporatization.

Striking the right balance between bespoke authenticity and market compatibility is what I call “predictably unique.” Something is different enough that it can transport us, offering an existential experience or fulfilling a previously constructed expectation, but it is not so alien that it gets rejected outright as too intimidating or simply a bad

Practically, they are also the only places that provide a decent assortment of options to try on. They also force us into cash economies because the scarcity of land makes it such that the necessities of life must be bought rather than made or grown on a homestead. Cities are, definitionally, social things.

We seek out authentic experiences because we want a break from modern drudgery and to experience something untouched by marketing and the profit motive. But because fulfillment of this desire is so valuable, our search for authenticity is “precorporated,” a word coined by the cultural theorist Mark Fisher to describe the “pre-emptive formatting and

Even better if you can develop your resistant identity (“everything around me is fake and trivial”) into a project identity (“I will move to Albany and make a new community worthy of my conformity”).

While there are some overt relationships between economic development professionals and the worlds of reality TV and online influencers, the reason all three professions have started to look the same is that they share a common goal: to provide a convincing story about authenticity to an increasingly cynical and savvy audience whose attention is