The Authenticity Delusion - by Eugene Healey

Hello, been a minute. I’ve been sharing my longer-form thinking in The Guardian lately, will be sharing it here as well from here on out. Authenticity is the great mirage of the modern age. Its promise – to live unmediated, in full accordance with our values and beliefs – feels like the ideal we’re always reaching for before it vanishes beyond the horizon. And ironically, the more we try to prove we’re authentic online, the more we seem to accelerate its disappearance. As Gen Z and Alpha joined social media, they responded to the cultural demand for perfection with chaos – raw, unfiltered, deliberately messy content. The curated feed of flatlays gave way to the sloppy photo dump; the finstas; the bedrotting. Finally, our real lives represented on screen. Finally, something real. Except that this quickly became another role to be performed, a generation-defining content genre that has itself become subject to more and more extreme performances – filming oneself bawling into the camera,

Hello, been a minute. I’ve been sharing my longer-form thinking in The Guardian lately, will be sharing it here as well from here on out. Authenticity is the great mirage of the modern age. Its promise – to live unmediated, in full accordance with our values and beliefs – feels like the ideal we’re always reaching for before it vanishes beyond the horizon. And ironically, the more we try to prove we’re authentic online, the more we seem to accelerate its disappearance. As Gen Z and Alpha joined social media, they responded to the cultural demand for perfection with chaos – raw, unfiltered, del