My main sources for this post are Toby Shorin on the blog subpixel.space and Professor Hans-Georg Moeller of the University of Macau, who talks about the concept on his Youtube Channel.
To comprehend how societal shifts work, we can look back at the history of the last 100 years. We started with dominantly Sincerity Based Societies in western countries. These societies are regulated by social roles. Each individual is assigned a role and is expected to act accordingly. Your role is defined by your gender, class, race, religion, etc. This concept is still present in our society but is fading away one death at a time.
In the second half of the 20th century, a new generation started a cultural shift. They tried to detach from the social roles and develop their own individual selfhood. The movement towards authenticity started. Authenticity not only helped women to emancipate from their strict gender roles, but can also be seen as a countermovement to capitalism. Authentic items are not manufactured for the market or to be sold - they are not commodities. In the arts, it was very desired to know the artist before or because he doesn’t want to be famous. Once an artist choose to commercialize their work, they were categorized as “sellout” and were no longer be supported by e.g. the hippy community.
The main goal of authenticity is to find the authentic self. It is helpful, to avoid a similarity to others, since this supports your individuality. One has to note that the search for the true version of you, the ideal self, that only needs to be discovered or achieved, has a deep entitlement to itself and is not far from a theological theory of a destiny.
In today’s society, we can also see to which extreme identity movements the authenticity has led us. We have various subclasses of identities that push into an extreme focus of your individuality within this societal subculture. Wantrepreneurs, identity politics or fitness-extremism pose lots of prospects into your individuality - similar to a sincerity based society, but more fragmented.
As we can see, the concept of authenticity is not perfect. In commercial applications, it has been found out that the authenticity and their adversity against capitalism can be “hacked”. The popular, generic and standardized product can become authentic as long as it is signalling that it is authentic! That’s why your burger chain is portraying to work with local farmers and grill on the open fire.
We also know the career politician that tries to show their involvement in the society, the comedian that does the same joke every time and the musician that is just a copy of the last hit.
This works to some extent, but if you are embedded in the age of authenticity, it is easy to perceive people and brands that don’t follow your ideals as inauthentic/ narcissistic/ fake.
But as the world moves on and the rules change, we are more and more aware of the inauthenticity of authenticity.
As a theoretical concept to describe the causes of schizophrenia, Gregory Bateson developed the double bind theory. The theory is based on the idea that a double bind is a self-contradictory demand. Children that are confronted with a double bind are often confused in their personal development and can develop schizophrenia.
This theory gives us a good insights into the incoherence of authenticity. A good example: Be spontaneous! (If you follow the command, you are not spontaneous.) Do this because you want to, and not because I tell you so! (Same contradiction. Autonomy is prescribed) Be original - like everyone else.
You need to display that you conform to non-conformity! A double bind becomes more obvious, the harder one tries to fulfil it.
For Gen-Z the concept of authenticity is increasingly deemed inauthentic. By distancing themselves from the double bind of authenticity, their need for the authentic self is diminishing. Even in fashion, we now have the popular category “Norm core”. The new generation openly adopts and creates profiles. Especially on social media. It is no longer a scandal to be commercial, but just the new normality. We show ourselves as being seen as something. We now portray ourselves openly with different profiles for different social contexts. Like the profile on LinkedIn and Instagram etc. We learn to see and show ourselves and other in profiles. These don’t insist on authenticity. We can distance ourselves from our profiles.
The arbitrary nature of profiles can lead to very stressful profile optimization journeys. The profilicity might lead us into a toxic path to optimize our profile extremely with social validation. I would also guess that the adaption of new trends will be quicker since you don’t need to be convinced, that your authentic self aligns with the new development. Furthermore, the search for the optimal profile might lead to out of control celebrity culture or narcissism.
Professor Moeller gives us 7 rules for life in profilicity: