An easy life hack on how to be authentic
Andrea Chiang (they/them) // Community Editor
Tricia Tang (she/her) // Contributing Visuals
In the digital era, saturated by Artificial Intelligence and content farms, the line between what is and isn’t real has become increasingly blurrier over the years. According to data published by Reuters Institute in the Digital News Report, trust in news continues to fall as audiences gravitate towards using social media. As a result, so does the continuous decline in using traditional media for the news.
With platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, anyone from anywhere can voice their opinion and share their story. It is seemingly unfiltered and unrestricted by executives and producers hiding behind the camera. However, social media presents an old, but repackaged issue of the illusion of authenticity. Although the average person sharing a video of their morning routine isn’t generally created with the intent of pushing a hidden corporate agenda, social media platforms and algorithms have their own priorities—retention.
An article published by Fast Company: “Inside the good, bad, and very ugly of social media algorithms” by FC Ifeanyi, details how social media algorithms curate feeds and recommend content with the intent of keeping as many people on their platform for as long as possible to increase the company’s advertising revenue. Companies aren’t exactly vying to reveal the secrets behind their algorithms, but TikTok’s acclaimed algorithmic success can be attributed to “massive volumes of data and a format structured for recommended content.”
There is enough content to track consumer habits across a variety of factors: age, gender, ethnicity and lifestyle. This allows TikTok to accurately predict the type of content that will keep you watching and scrolling. Users may benefit from this type of algorithm as they are exposed to various ideas, cultures and people that they may not otherwise experience in their day-to-day life. But with the way these algorithms are built, it creates cultural hegemony through a format that incentivizes spectacle and flattens the depth of human experiences into a 60 second portrait video.
Subcultures such as goth culture—which evolved from post-punk culture and is rooted in music that is unabashedly political—have resurfaced in the mainstream as a commodified aesthetic. Social media has stripped goth of its music and political roots and sold it as another cosplay in an endless carousel of sexual male fantasies. This doesn’t just happen to subcultures, but ethnic groups as well.
Ever since hip-hop hit the mainstream in the 2000s and surpassed rock as America’s most popular music genre in 2017, Black music and Black culture as a whole has been trending. Non-Black celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, who is of mixed Armenian and European descent, have capitalized on this trend. By using Black culture as an aesthetic, they try to sell products with the promise of achieving a “natural” image like hers. The issue doesn’t stop at cultural appropriation, but expands into race fishing, where people pretend to be a race that is different from their own.
Ariana Grande, an Italian-American singer, has been accused of both Blackfishing and Asianfishing. She has evidently flaunted an artificially bronzed visage and “blaccent,” as well as a pale face with carefully contoured monolid fox eyes. Once East Asian culture hit the mainstream in the 2010s with the rising popularity of K-Pop and anime, there has been no shortage of people commodifying East Asian culture. Most recently, there’s been a wave of people entering their “Chinese era” online as people adopt Chinese wellness practices in their everyday routines.
Although a trend like the Chinese era can be seen as cultural appreciation and arguably the least harmful in comparison to previous examples, it perpetuates the same social media aesthetic trap. Cultures are reduced to glamourized aesthetic othering and caricatures that perpetuate harmful stereotypes of marginalized groups. Meanwhile, people outside of those groups profit off these cultures without having to face the real lived experiences of these marginalized groups. And all while marketing themselves as authentic and natural.
Kim Kardashian is notorious for her “natural” voluptuous figure. This is a body type that Black women have long been exploited for having and discriminated against. She sells shapewear with the idea being you can have a body that mimics hers. This is despite the overwhelming evidence of her cosmetic procedures and numerous analyses by professional surgeons. She’s not the only public figure to falsely market an organic body.
Mike O’Hearn and other bodybuilding influencers market their “naturally-achieved” bodies to sell their training programs or protein powder while denying their use of steroids to achieve their musculature. With the widespread use of AI-generated content, which can modify a person’s image, it’s even more difficult to distinguish between a computer-generated image of a person and a real person who is digitally enhanced with layers of digital filters and modifications. It’s why there’s been a resurgence in authenticity on social media.
The irony is that social media consumes and regurgitates people’s culture, lived experiences and authenticity into a relatable cookie-cutter aesthetic that anyone can replicate. Any semblance of a unique, true self has already been meticulously crafted by your social media feed that hundreds if not thousands of other people have as well.
TikTok aesthetics like the “clean girl,” have specified parameters of showcasing individuality. For instance, through unique bag charms, to allow some variance in the uniform without fully deviating from the label. Whether you follow the American high school archetype of the jock or the mould of the mysterious one in K-Pop idol groups, there’s a vague understanding that these labels are manufactured by institutions and yet as a society we continue to reinforce them.
We put celebrities like Billie Eilish on a pedestal for being different, edgy and true to herself through her unconventional baggytee fashion and sad girl music. But when she tries a new look and steps out of the arbitrary box that marketing and the fans have put her in, she faces backlash. When we ostracize people for not following the rules of their assigned role or aesthetic, it only limits our own understanding of ourselves and keeps us scrolling online and shopping for a new, unique identity.
People are more than just cottagecore girlies or edge lords. So why are we letting these corporate algorithms dictate what a human being can or can’t be? Maybe it’s time to stop looking for who we can be online and start living authentically as ourselves in real life.