Written by Paavani Lal Das
I saw this Instagram reel with this guy who was cooking a meal for his family. He dropped the sauce and cleaned up the house and aw-shucksed his way through the whole thing. It was so endearing it dripped with it, all the way down from the glass ceiling through the itsy bitsy water spout. And I speak with this much derision for no real reason that I can ascertain myself, because in truth the plain authenticity of it was charming. The uncut takes, the humility, and the image of a man doing the housework and knowing it’s not a special occasion, it did hit me right where it meant to.
But once you drop that veil and are able to count all these things on one hand – the takes, the humility, the man – the core of the apple rots away, the marketability pops up where the aw-shucks everyman had once been.
I didn’t want him to go. I really liked him, like anyone else. We all chase authenticity. That’s not what is in question. Authenticity makes us feel superior, like we have true vision, like we see the ‘real’ where other people or markets or systems do not. It’s an earned superiority, too, a connection to life and reality that feels normal. Authenticity makes us feel close to other people, like seeing another’s flaws means yours are already accepted.
We have never-ending faith in authenticity. With every door to the face, there is a window left cracked open; with every window slammed shut, there is a proffered hand; with every punch to the gut, there is a nostril to climb into and continue our search. Authenticity must be real. It must be out there. So we chase it, incessantly.
It’s not the question. The unknown here isn’t the why, who, or what. It is essentially a question of reincarnation; the new beast that has taken the place of the natural, intrinsically motivated chase. The case I am making here is that this chase for authenticity, the throughline of human life, has become a race.
It’s easy to blame consumerism. We listen to podcasts and watch videos of people cooking things badly. We watch movies about ordinary people doing ordinary things, or extraordinary people with ordinary motives. Western, action, and superhero flicks feature the cowboy Batman spy speaking from his soul. Romcoms are two souls seeing each other, intertwining, and then seeing the world through the same rose-colored goggles. Every genre ultimately espouses the authentic because it is the key to marketability, to the world’s attention, to the value an individual finds in something made for the masses.
Because if authenticity isn’t real, then the world isn’t the world. The whole idea of human reality is tilted off its axis when you suppose that the very substance of life, the concept that other people are as real as you, is denied. Then you aren’t real, either. Your life isn’t real. This, needless to say, is unacceptable. So there must be some biological imperative to believe in authenticity, to sustain our species, to dangle that carrot of being, a real and definable orange answer with a spot waiting in your stomach.
Before TikTok there were movies, before movies were books and plays and theater, and before that was humanity’s first job, the wizened old bat in the corner of the cave, the storyteller. Forever we’ve searched for authenticity in our media consumption. So where is the turning point? What marks the departure from the natural course of human intrigue into this racetrack?
The key doesn’t lie in the content, but in the environment. To what level does this natural chase evolve when you introduce a new factor? An Instagram reel. A thinkpiece on a microtrend. Humanity’s sixth sense, superpowered and mutated – competition.
We remember what social media was supposed to be, what makes sense if you think about the bare function of it in the most optimistic way. Post a picture for your friends to see. A digital handshake, a hug. Reaffirming to your chosen loved ones that you’re there, and they’re there, and mutually you’re reminded of your there-ness. Presence, interaction, communication. It is authentic. You are giving a piece of yourself.
Now it’s less like you are handing parts of yourself away and more like you are standing back, thick coat over you, waiting to be seen. Now, authenticity seems to hide away in this crowd of coated people, a big, marketable game of Where’s Waldo. Or maybe more like Whack-A-Mole . This guy has it! No–but she does! Or, no, actually…
Because we’re all chasing it, we all have our own litmus tests for authenticity. Can I recognize brand placement when I see it? Can I tell a rehearsed line from an improvised one? Can I figure out why this content is being made? Most of all, can I see it where other people do not? Am I capable of dropping the mystical veil, pushing through the crowd?
But the truth is that as we consume media, we consume the crowd, all without believing that any of it is real. Our consumption grows larger as we simultaneously lose faith in human media. The pace is astonishing. In order to catch the authentic, we have to consume media as it comes out; basically constantly, with TikTok having 1.88 billion users posting an average of 16,000 times per minute. Trends cycle impossibly fast and no longer have widespread penetration. Cultural knowledge no longer disseminates down real pathways, pathways through which you can interact and expect interaction back.
You’re not hearing a story from an elder, or going to the ballet, or watching a movie in a theater. Time and interaction count for something. Whether it be buying a ticket, drinking a beer at a sports bar or even smelling fresh air as you walk down the street and see people your own age. Now you are told about culture instead of experiencing it. Stories and anecdotes are lifted from fifteen second short videos instead of our own experiences.
Everyone used to trot their own path, road less taken or the highway, whatever it be, with the horizon in view. There was always a natural level of competition to this. You need to feel like you are winning against your environment, within your own world. It’s important to know your friends, to be able to see them truly; that’s the taste of authenticity, the human element you can grasp onto. It’s reality, grounded. The things you can see and reach that you have an actual effect on. It was a constant chase in the truest sense, following no route, just faith.
But now the racetrack has been laid out. We are all Usain Bolt at the 100-meter line-up. The horizon is waiting for us in just 100 meters, every step accounted for. Every step, you must know where you’re going and who you’re ahead of. And the worst part is we can see each other. You look right, then left, and there is Usain Bolt waiting to spring off the block and overtake you.
This thoroughbred mentality leaks out of cutesy stay-at-home dad Instagram reels and into the way we as individuals interact with the world. Our trust in each other has eroded, and where we used to connect we now only see a carrot on a stick.