we can never be truly authentic online
Taylor called this authenticity, and it became the unreachable horizon of modern life. It’s a concept that makes sense only in its absence; we recognize inauthenticity, phoniness, when someone’s clearly being a poseur. Yet the struggle to feel authentic—this is very real, even if we know better. In Taylor’s telling, everyone becomes a kind of
... See moreHua Hsu • Stay True: A Memoir (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
I will never understand the amount of comments saying couple goals and how do I find this! to the most staged, rehearsed, insincere moments I’ve ever seen. I can’t get my head around applauding people who set up a camera in the corner to record themselves being romantic.
Substack • You Don't Need To Document Everything
There is something freeing about removing your face from your online persona. It paradoxically makes you feel like you can be more authentic. This is a stretch of an analogy but just as psychedelics that facilitate ego death allow for a truer glimpse at your underlying psychology, untying your digital persona from your smiling LinkedIn photo allows... See more
Nat Eliason • From PFPs to VIDs
Walter posits that because a regular mirror reverses our image, we never get to see our real selves or make real eye contact – “right eye to right eye, left eye to left eye” – which subsequently feeds our brain “faulty information
Dazed • What Do You Really Look Like to Other People?
But who are we — am I — trying to be original for? Myself, a client, a boss, a professor, Instagram, my mom, nobody at all? I think that it’s time to really think about who we’re creating for, so that we can strategize who deserves our originality, who deserves our efficiency, who deserves both, and who deserves neither. If there’s one thing I’m... See more
libbymarrs.net • Post-Authentic Sincerity a Premium Generic Essay
So put the camera down. Don’t document everything. Stop selling your life off so cheaply to strangers. Keep some things sacred. Let some memories fade and look back at them through fuzzy nostalgia instead of the cheap glare of an iPhone camera roll. Enjoy the fireworks.
Substack • You Don't Need To Document Everything
Identity is contextual and, if we are to live, breathe, and grow, it has to remain contextual. The Internet of the “authentic self” — a loathsome, aberrant idea if there ever was one — is an exercise in slowly getting strangled by your past selves.
Robin Berjon • Retrofuturism
Another corollary of blocking users’ feeds is that posting can start to feel like mere housekeeping – an obstacle to be cleared rather than a valuable form of self-expression in itself. This results in non-committal content – half-captured faces, blank computer screens, random window frames, empty dinner plates – which quickly gets boring. The... See more