Perhaps, then, we should return to our initial supposition: authenticity isn’t about a person’s or a thing’s origin; it is about how we feel. What if authenticity emerges out of a relationship between tourist and destination, audience and celebrity, or, generically, subject and object?

The value of direct monopoly rents works in degrees along a spectrum. If you sell a famous landmark, you’ll probably get a hefty chunk of change. Sell a house that is next to a nice park, and you will also see an increase in the price of the property, which is derived from your direct monopoly rent of being one of the few houses next to the park.

We have entered a hyperreal era where simulacra come before, and therefore define, that which we call real. To put it in the language of authenticity: the media that is essential to constructive authenticity has now come to influence the character and selection of subjects that might be chosen for authenticity peddling in the first place.

Because “everything is for sale” on social media, writes media scholar Zoe Hurley, it is assumed that “everything and everyone participating in the social media landscape is doing so for commercial gain. Projecting a fantasy or giving a performance of ‘authentic’ life is the important thing as authenticity itself becomes commodified.”70

Maybe another way to ask all these questions at once is to wonder what exactly is being sold when you sell the character of a place? Not just the amenities or the architecture per se, but how do you put a price tag on the vibe of a town?

Whereas in pre-modern times, you were just a peg looking for a hole and authenticity meant nothing, the postmodern condition tells us that authenticity is something you create rather than something you achieve. You are a drill boring holes to fit the pegs that life throws at you.

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

Cities and corporations have done a good job of appropriating the image and culture of marginalized groups and using this further exploitation through commodification of ethnic cultures as proof of substantial political change when none has taken place.

The creative-class thesis described me to a tee. And to some degree it always was going to. Countless cities had rebuilt themselves to attract people like me: a white, overeducated guy who wants to try the new slider place with a great tap selection.