Authenticity has left the chat
Flawed, but make it marketable. Everyone’s performing. How the algorithm ate authenticity.
Once, being real was easy.
You just were.
Coke was Coke.
Levi’s were Levi’s.
Nike said just do it - and did.
No lowercase captions.
No crying on camera.
No performance required.
Now?
Authenticity has a ring light.
A discount code.
A content strategy.
Everyone’s a brand.
Your ex.
Your boss.
Your neighbour’s dog.
Everyone has a vibe.
A core.
A carousel of curated chaos.
The internet is loud.
Endlessly loud.
Hot takes.
Breakdowns.
Aesthetics.
Soft launches.
Call-outs.
Drops.
All screaming.
All at once.
So we adapt.
We pick a lane.
We settle into an aesthetic and call it “us.”
Somewhere along the way, realness became a performance.
A trend.
A format.
We tried messy.
Tried raw.
Photo dumps.
Finstas.
Bedrotting.
For a moment, it felt real.
Then brands joined in.
Then the algorithm joined in.
Now mess is the new polish.
Crying is content.
Flaws are a feature.
Vulnerability, but marketable.
Authenticity, but aesthetic.
Feelings, but filtered.
Even brands are in character.
Pretending to be tired teens.
Self-aware.
Fourth-wall-breaking.
Chronically online.
And us?
We’ve become profiles.
Pitch decks with pulse.
Everything is public.
Everything is content.
We watch ourselves.
Third-person.
Always performing.
Always tweaking.
Being yourself - truly yourself - feels almost impossible.
So maybe we stop trying.
Stop curating.
Stop posting.
Stop performing.
Maybe the real flex is being boring.
Being quiet.
Being inconsistent.
Maybe we let ourselves be.
No ring light.
No punchline.
Because authenticity didn’t die.
It got repackaged.
Sold back to us.
And maybe the only honest thing left…
is admitting that.
That I miss when being real wasn’t a trend.