Hey!
First off — a warm welcome to all the new subscribers here! Thank you for joining along.
Second, some exciting news! I had my first official byline published in Fortune magazine a few weeks ago. It’s a piece about how the chaotic social and economic environment from the past few years has resulted in some self-indulgent financial behaviors. I talk about some of my favorite TikTok trends like radical rest and soft life — which I love from a personal POV but also what they say about the cultural moment we are in. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.
In today’s piece I want to discuss a cultural tension that I’ve been thinking about for a while. There’s a desperate craving for authenticity in culture — from the brands we consume, to the creators we follow, to how we express ourselves online. If true authenticity is spilling your guts on TikTok while you eat Wendy’s in your car, then the opposite is…Colleen Ballinger’s apology video.
But when it comes down to it, is authenticity what we really want online? BeReal’s meteoric rise followed by its rapid implosion indicates that maybe we don’t really want to “be real.”
Oliver Haimson, professor at the University of Michigan, describes this concept I’ve been reckoning with — calling the phenomenon an “online authenticity paradox.”
Let’s dive in!
Authenticity has become overhyped
Merriam Webster defines authenticity as “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.”
Easier said than done. Authenticity has proven to be an elusive concept that social media users are constantly on the lookout for, while brands + creators trip over themselves to provide it. It has become something of a modern cultural commodity. But the more that brands, marketers and creators spew terms like “transparency”, “authenticity” and “realness”, the more meaningless they seem to become.
Amidst widespread “influencer fatigue” more brands are dropping their big name, mega, reality star influencers to work with micro creators who’ve been judged as more “authentic” online. Nearly 90% of consumers no longer trust influencers, declared the Drum with regards to a recent study by UGC agency EnTribe. The study revealed that 86% of consumers stated that they are more likely to trust a brand that publishes user-generated content, compared to just 12%, who are inclined to purchase a product promoted by an influencer. “Consumers today are very aware, especially Gen Z, about influencers. They know they’re getting paid. Once they know they’re getting paid to promote a product, they lose authenticity,” says Adam Dornbusch, founder of EnTribe.
An antidote to millennial aesthetics and filters, cultural energy around authentic and even “cringe” content has soared — with Reddit communities like r/cringe and r/cringepurgatory, and #cringe videos on TikTok that have amassed over 45B views.
Today’s online culture is less about avoiding the cringe than it is about really leaning into it. Like really…leaning into it. Posting videos of yourself crying has become uncomfortably common on TikTok — whether it’s about a bad breakup, or getting laid off. The girlies are “girlrotting” in bed. Tutorials for “crying makeup” have even popped up on the platform. We’re letting it all hang out. No longer competing to show off lavish lifestyles or successes, people are instead striving to be the most relatable — no matter how cringe it may be. Plus, amidst a challenging few years, the facade of looking put together can be just too exhausting to keep up.
This all comes to a quite complicated head with the radical transparency many Gen Zers are adopting around discussing their plastic surgery decisions online. Their lips may be fake, but their candor is not. “Transparency, then, serves as a loophole of sorts: a way to comply with cultural beauty standards while at the same time undermining them,” writes Madeleine Aggeler for the Washington Post.
It’s a complex paradox that seems to pop up around authenticity online no matter the context.
“It’s empowering to do what you want with your body, but it’s not empowering to feel the need to conform to conventional beauty standards; no one owes anyone information about their body and medical history, but don’t lie about what you’ve had done; and you should love yourself just as you are, unless you don’t, then you should change it,” muses Aggeler in the piece.
I’ve got whiplash.
Some — caught in the old guard of aesthetic and aura — are struggling to stay relevant
In response, there has been a new format of carefully manufactured authenticity from the likes of brands and celebrities who, let's face it, aren’t all that relatable.
Celebrities are ironically working very hard to fabricate candid moments, which has become imminently apparent in street fashion. Your favorite celebrity street style photo is probably an #ad details this Fashionista article, describing how today’s “It” girls, publicists and paparazzi are conspiring to create seemingly candid fashion moments. “By utilizing this strategy of IRL unmarked ads that are then sold back to the press as authentic, fashion labels have found a way to boost their bottom lines and digital footprints while creating seemingly organic street-style moments,” writes Emily Kirkpatrick. “In reality, that moment was pre-planned and, in many cases, completely bought and paid for.”
Overall, there seems to be a general distaste towards the fakeness of influencers from yester-year. “I think people were getting sick and tired of the Instagram influencer as we know her,” says Eli Rallo, a content creator, author and podcast host. “The most beautiful, the most wealthy, the most aspirational: We’re looking at these people; they’re not even real.”
The reality TV to influencer pipeline is dead, declared the Independent earlier this year. The viral Colleen Ballinger apology video provides perhaps a final punctuation marking the death of early Millennial influencer culture.
Ryan Broderick writes in Garbage Day:
“Everything about Ballinger’s video, from the ukulele, to her bangs, to the dismissive faux-relatable gee-whiz tone, to the title, ‘hi.,’ complete with punctuation and no capitalization, is so painfully twee 2010s millennial cringe that watching it for more than few seconds felt like staring directly at the sun.”
Nowhere has this shift in influencer culture been more clear than the seeming decline of the Kardashians. Kim Kardashian was dragged on St. Paddy’s Day this year for posing in a London pub clutching a baby Guinness shot, attempting to look casual and relatable when in reality it came off incredibly manufactured.
This tweet sums it up pretty well:
Alongside her sister, it has been theorized that Kylie Jenner has been desperately attempting to rebrand herself as a relatable mom who is just like every other 20-something on social media. Her “controversial” lip gloss try on in her car was accused by many for being inauthentic and trying to copy other TikTok users who regularly film videos in the car — often during their lunch breaks, or while out running errands. You know, regular people things.
“The queens of reality TV and millennial influence can see their grip is slipping, so what do they do? They attempt to seem “relatable”, “genuine”, and “authentic” by going to the football, popping up in cheeky boozers, and posting “get ready with me” videos,” writes Eloise Hendy for the Independent.
But platforms that tout authenticity are not thriving, so is it actually authenticity that we want?
The past decade has seen waves of social platforms, each new one trying to be more “authentic” than its predecessor. Even Facebook began as a simple platform to stay in touch with your inner circle through quirky status updates and wall posts.
Fast forward to 2020, TikTok became the more “authentic” social platform after Instagram became crowded with over-aestheticized and performative content. Then last year, BeReal spiked in popularity after TikTok became inundated with product placement and spammy clickbait videos. But now BeReal is desperately trying to claw back its users who have dropped off in droves — from 20 million in October 2022 to 10.4 million in February 2023. “Gen Z hops on trains really fast, but they hop off even faster,” Night Noroña, 17, told The New York Times in April, after saying he deleted the app after only a few months.
BeReal has been doubling down in its promise of authenticity, promoting new features like “RealPeople” which "isn't about influencing, amassing likes and comments, or promoting brands. You won't see perfect photoshopped pictures, product recommendations, or ads disguised as posts."
Why have so many people stopped using BeReal?
For some, it became too performative. "BeReals became the new version of the selfie, with people clamoring to get memorable BeReals at concerts and with celebrities," writes Elena Cavender for Mashable. "It became a new way to go viral on other, more monetizable platforms." BeReals started popping up in Instagram Stories, photo dumps and TikToks, serving as yet another way to commodify and highlight your life. Users also came to realize that others weren’t necessarily “playing by the rules” — choosing to wait for a moment when something more exciting was occurring rather than post within the two-minute window set by BeReal.
For those who resisted the urge to wait for a more exciting moment or cross-post on other platforms, the monotony of BeReal and by extension their own lives reflected back at them lost its appeal pretty quickly. “BeReal was pitched as Gen Z’s safe haven from the artifice of social media. For some, authenticity only proved interesting for so long,” a recent Times article reports.
In general, it seems that authenticity is at odds with the type of environment we’ve cultivated online. “BeReal promised authenticity online. That doesn't exist” points out Mashable. When it comes down to it, while we may consider authenticity to be important, we are still human. We still care about what other people think about us (at least in our teens and twenties; I’ve heard it gets better as you age). We want to share exciting moments of our lives with others, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Maybe what BeReal revealed is that authenticity is kind of…boring? How many photos can I take of myself watching TV with my cat, or working at my laptop?
There may never be a truly authentic social media app. “Snapchat, TikTok and now BeReal… every app is positioning itself as authentic social media,” says Timothy Armoo, co-founder of FanBytes. “The truth is… this will never happen. As long as people are watching there will never be an authentic self on social media… it’s all performative.”
Maybe we need a little of both
We said we wanted more authenticity and realness — from the type of social content we consume, to the people we follow — but maybe that’s not what digital content is for.
No matter how many times we may remind ourselves that real life isn’t as aesthetic as it seems online, we still fall into that trap of believing it. And while we may try to convince ourselves otherwise, we still care what other people think about us. Who can blame us — younger Millennials and Gen Z alike came of age during a time where curating an online persona holds immense value.
Maybe we need a bit of both — a little authenticity and a little sparkle & shine. It gives us something achievable to aspire to. Maybe we need to sell ourselves on the shiny rosy lives we see online, to convince ourselves that better days are seemingly within reach. To acknowledge the true banality and mundanity of our existence might get a bit too…existential.