we can never be truly authentic online

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Authenticity brings us to avatars. This might seem a strange connection: aren’t avatars, by nature, inauthentic? After all, avatars entail being someone other than yourself. But for many people, avatars are a vessel for more authentic self-expression.