The Tao of Authenticity: Finding Honesty in a Digital World
Sometimes I really miss the old internet. No, not the strange message boards or user groups of the early 90’s. I was just a kid playing Oregon Trail and typing fake newspapers on my dad’s old IBM setup back then. But after the green and black of those screens came the 2000’s. Livejournal, AIM, and Geocities were my internet. I learned to code so I could create fan websites for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I learned Photoshop so I could create nicer Livejournal icons for myself. It was anonymous, unconnected to my daily world, and honest.
There were still social mores within those communities and those nuances would later inspire my work in graduate school. I was fascinated by the performance of the self in the digital space and how that performance shifted depending on the connection to the real world. And it’s so much more intense today.
Digital Expression Today
The you of LinkedIn isn’t the you of Facebook and it’s certainly not the you of Instagram. We tend to call it best practices in strategy meetings, but what we’re really talking about are the unspoken rules of each platform. Optimization is really just learning to speak the language of the community, and branding is creating a performance of a brand that encourages community connection.
The truth is, we’re in a new age of marketing and digital expression. With the increasing power of influencers, we’re creating a conversation between a brand, our self expression, and our wallet. And we’re doing it in carefully edited images, videos, and blog posts.
One of the most remarkable things I’ve learned about is the rise of Finsta accounts, or fake Instagram accounts that are created specifically for an inner circle audience. Real accounts are carefully curated digital experiences of self expression, and Finsta accounts are for the uncurated, more authentic self.
If Goffman were still alive, he’d be having a field day. He would also probably be fascinated by the rise of screw it authenticity. Or maybe I’m just projecting.
Authentic Content
If you’re an elder Millennial like me, you probably first watched Jenna Marbles in college. She was brash and she was hilarious. And then she faded out of view, at least for me. After a stress-induced YouTube addiction took hold a few years ago, I found her again. Amidst a sea of produced makeup tutorials, edited vlogs, and carefully lighted backdrops, Jenna often films in her kitchen. And she’s deadly hilarious about her shenanigans, and deadly honest about her bad days. As Goffman would say, it’s a little more backstage and a little less performance. Jenna geniunely seems amused by her efforts, whether she’s dying her hair or teaching her dogs to swim.
Recently, another hallmark YouTube brand reappeared and it’s seen stratospheric success. I’m talking about The Try Guys, ne Buzzfeed, and now swathed in authenticity and a kind of gleeful joy that comes with owning your creativity. (For the record, I’m not too highbrow to admit that I don’t consume content from Buzzfeed. It keeps me young. Sort of.) The friendships rings true, and the personalities drive the content. Like Jenna, Keith, Ned, Zach, and Eugene have found success through an honest, imperfect kind of content. And it’s a joy to watch.
Empathetic Representation
The other aspect of this new internet is the rise of community-focused content that harks back to the original promise of the early internet. Jessica Kellgren-Fozard is a perfect example of this. As a content producer, Jessica shares her experiences as a woman living with disabilities and chronic illnesses. I was originally drawn to her because she’s deaf and signs in BSL sometimes during her videos, but also because she has a beautiful speaking voice. Jessica is open about her bad days, even her really bad days, and articulates her experiences in a way that creates empathy. Her content on spoon theory and spoonie pride resonated with me as someone who gets migraines. (If this is your first time learning about spoon theory, look it up. I can’t do it justice here, but it’s a lovely paradigm to describe chronic illness.)
The honesty is refreshing against a backdrop of edited social posts, complicated expressions of self, and a metric ton of social mores. While this content resonates with me in a limited way because of my personal experiences, imagine the impact it has on someone who has chronic illness or disabilities. There is power in this kind of empathic representation and the way that it can normalize experiences. Before the memes and the sponsorships, this was the promise of the early internet.
There’s a rabbit hole we could dive into about how much honestly we’re owned as content consumers, but that’s for another day. Right now, freeing ourselves to reveal a bit more of that backstage self is a good first step.
Humanizing Content
The smart brands are starting to realize the power of this authenticity. Bon Appetit, a food-culture focused magazine that I could have sworn was exclusively for people who eat expensive, complicated food in dark restaurants, has a YouTube channel that is brilliant in how it explores our relationship with food, shares the joy of cooking in a friendly, accessible way, and offers genuinely hilarious content.
The series Gourmet Makes features Senior Food Editor and pastry chef Claire Saffitz attempting to make high-brow versions of highly-processed favorites and it’s brilliant in how it balances its educational but accessible messaging. Watch Claire struggle to make gourmet Twinkies, and you suddenly wonder if maybe Bon Appetit might be a brand for you. The It’s Alive series with test kitchen manager Brad Leone is one of the funniest things on YouTube right now. As Brad digs into sauerkraut and mustard, you’re suddenly convinced that you too could achieve kombucha nirvana if you followed his tutorial.
The content humanizes the team and destroys the perception of a snooty food magazine. Instead we’re left with people who just really adore food and a brand that seems to embrace the hilarious, flawed process of cooking.
Finding Joy
In our world, we talk a lot about digital noise. We produce a lot of content and we watch our metrics, and buy beer every time a platform updates their algorithm because platforms that aren’t owned are Satan’s paradise. But sometimes we need to stop and remember the early internet. The one with the joy and the authenticity. The one that felt less like a chore and more like a place to find your community.
It’s up to us to bring that back. To double down on exploration and creating experiences not because best practices dictate them, but because they’re actually awesome. To have fun with our work, and to be unafraid to be honest.