an uncanny valley between me + myself: on aesthetic and authenticity

Why authenticity is dead, reality is vanishing, and what that has to do with the conscious crafting of aesthetic.

Esse quam videri.¹

Are we like quantum particles — changing when we’re observed? But are we not always observed? And are we not always observing ourselves?

Authenticity is dead. In fact, it never existed.

Here’s a given: Aesthetic doesn’t just happen. It is, as English painter John Sell Cotman said of art, “a game, a passion, a madness.” It is also a pursuit, an effortful task. And if that’s the case, any conversation about aesthetic is inherently a conversation about performance—it is a conscious crafting, and we have “countless editing tools”² at our disposal. Is the result performance or reality? Is it authentic?

the age of authenticity

“To say that something is authentic is to say that it is what it professes to be, or what it is reputed to be, in origin or authorship.”³ The word itself comes from the translation of a term invented by German philosopher Martin Heidegger meaning really or truly, and is rooted in a word denoting ownness, or the state of “being one’s own.” To turn a recently parlanced term on its head, to be authentic is literally to self-own.

We live in an age of authenticity and are obsessed with being real, current, and ourselves. An individualistic social moralism, the lingering effects of the Enlightenment, and the overarching dictates of post-modernism have given us the collective mental freedom for this obsession. And the internet and social media are the instruments by which we broadcast this obsession to the world.

The paradox of authenticity, however, is that the more we pursue it—the more we try to be our true, real selves—the less true and real we tend to be. It is almost like what C.S. Lewis said about humility: the minute you think you have it, you’ve lost it.

We can only reason about authenticity by thinking relationally. Our pursuit of authenticity and our desire to craft an authentic aesthetic exists only in relation to the world around us. The man who has no audience has no concern about authenticity. (Hold that thought.)

Back in the old days (say the mid-1800s and before), a person was considered (what we would call) authentic if she fulfilled the roles and responsibilities pertaining to society’s expectations of her. It didn’t matter if little Emily wanted to be a poet because her society expected her to be a wife, a mother, and a house-tender.

Georg Hegel, another German philosopher, disliked this concept, thinking the “sincere” pursuit of social role-fulfillment was a bunch of crock and the only way for Emily to be her true self would be to disintegrate entirely from such a social structure. Hegel’s thinking was in line with Rousseau, who argued that “the orientation toward life that should guide the conduct one chooses should come from a source within.”⁴ That idea won out, and that’s how we get to today’s individualistic moralism, you do you, it’s my truth, believe in yourself, yada-yada philosophy.

The irony is: despite our present cultural-philosophical leanings, we⁵ are more in service to the relational aspect of authenticity than ever before. We operate (primarily) not from a core, interior source but from a peripheral, social source. It doesn’t look the same as when the aforementioned Emily was alive, but viewed from a different angle, we are still bound to social role-playing and the constant, harrowing necessity of upholding appearances or aesthetic—the way things seem rather than the way they are.

Enter my favorite philosopher. Søren Kierkegaard said, “The self is a relation that relates itself to itself.” He’s closing in on the root of the issue: authenticity is about the self and the observation of the self being one and the same.

the disappearance of reality

Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist, philosopher, and poet, was obsessed with the idea that we’ve lost contact with reality. He believed we no longer live in a society operating on the plane of existence (or what’s really real). Instead, we live in a world of signs and symbols that have subsumed reality. Symbols today don’t point to the truth—they are the truth.

In his treatise, Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard writes:

…the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials… It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.

The territory [the real] no longer precedes the map [the symbol], nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory…

[The Symbol today is] never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference…

Baudrillard’s MCU-esque term for this terrifying new world is hyperreality. Hyperreality is what happens when what’s real and what’s made-up blends so seamlessly that distinguishing between the two is next to impossible. Is there any real difference between what happens in the life of a Kardashian and what happens on The Kardashians? Does the symbol (the TV show) change the nature of reality, or is the TV show and “real life” all of a piece?

We consistently fabricate reality. We declare what we want and—thanks to phones, cameras, the internet, and gullible observers—we make it so. We pretend—from the Latin meaning to “stretch forth”—we step out onto nothing and ground forms beneath our feet. Again, we pretend which, according to Oxford Languages⁶, means to “behave so as to make it appear that something is the case when in fact it is not.”

But if we behave in the manner in which we pretend, does that not make it real?

We exist in a hyperreal state of mind. Baudrillard’s thinking is ontological, not epistemological. We do not think or learn about reality this way; this is how we touch, taste, and handle reality.

The serpent, what does it symbolize -- to you, to the artist, to me (taking the picture), to the observer passing on the street?

grasping authenticity, acknowledging artifice

In a recent essay, Katherine Hu wrestles with her eight-year-long “parasocial relationship” with a beauty influencer whose videos, she says, “have become a salve for my brain, allowing me to relax by watching someone else’s productive, aesthetic life.” However, as influencers and social media gurus awaken to the sway technology and the internet have had on their lives and the lives of their adherents, they have begun creating a new kind of content: meta-content, in which “content creators” are “exposing the foundations of their content within the content itself.” It’s like a reverse Fight Club rule: they’re definitely talking about Fight Club.

Hu says:

…the rise of meta-content promises a way to grasp authenticity by acknowledging artifice; especially in a moment when artifice is easier to create than ever before, audiences want to know what’s “real” and what isn’t.

This is the everlasting question. What is real? It used to be asked by philosophers; now it’s asked by TikTok stars. We have this notion in our heads that some things are real and some aren’t, and our obsession with figuring out which is which persists. When I was a kid, people spoke of what happened on the internet as if it wasn’t real life—there was the digital world and the real world. And it was easy to say, “don’t trust everything you see on the internet” or “that’s not real life.” But now, you should definitely trust everything you see on the internet, no matter how outlandish, inauthentic, or insincere. Because one man’s artifice is another man’s authenticity. (An alternate and also-accurate way of saying this is: a man’s artifice is his authenticity. Or at least this is what I’ll get around to arguing.)

Everything is real. Rather, nothing is unreal. “Meta-content reminds us that a performance of authenticity is still a performance,” Hu writes. And I would argue that the performance is interiorly authentic: no matter how artificed, it expresses something true. Yet, “the artifice of the internet stays, even when we fold it in upon itself.”

Can we escape artifice? Can we escape the aesthetic pursuit? Have we, as Baudrillard thought, really “lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between nature and artifice”?⁷ What’s the difference between me interior monologuing and listening to Fox Sailor as I shop or brush my teeth and influencers “grocery shopping and brushing their teeth, but aesthetically, with soothing background music and voice-overs”⁸? Does it become less-real because it is intentionally observed by strangers via a screen?

The difference between our society and that of the ancient Greeks is that nearly everyone has the luxury of meta-gaming reality. We all get to talk about Fight Club while being in Fight Club, which is exactly what Plato and Aristotle and all the rest of the philosopher class were doing—being in reality while wondering about reality. Were they pursuing authenticity or simply being authentic?

“We view ourselves as machines that can be tinkered with and made better, rather than accepting the raw humanity of us,” beauty culture critic Jessica DeFino says. Her words apply to beauty culture, sure, but they apply to everything else too. When we talk about being authentic—and we talk about it more as we become aware of our ability to be inauthentic—we are assuming that there is some tinkering we can do which will make us so.

Perhaps we’re discovering that the question of authenticity—am I being real?—and the desire to be authentic—I want to be real—is evidence of authenticity itself. Hu says social media makes her aware of the “uncanny valley between me and myself.” Authenticity is found only in this valley because it’s the place of truth, the place where, to use Kierkegaard’s words, we realize “the self is a relation that relates itself to itself.” And aesthetic pursuits are the only way we reconcile our selves, the only way we build a bridge across the valley.

A magician with her tricks — no critical caption here. I just really liked this shot.

aesthetic potential

Hu’s observation of the uncanny valley aligns with DeFino’s definition of those invested in beauty culture developing a “disconnect between ourselves and our ideals.” It is easy to state how we want to exist; we struggle to state how we actually exist.

Let’s go back to Heidegger who invented the word we’ve come to translate as authentic. He, like Kierkegaard, acknowledged that human existence is a “relation of being.” I’ll illustrate this relation as light dispersed by a prism connecting “what one is at any moment (the immediacy of the concrete present…) and what one can and will be as the temporally extended unfolding or happening of life into an open realm of possibilities.”⁹

Authenticity is the steady beam of white light while aesthetic is the prismed rainbow of color. We are always at a point of authenticity; we cannot be anything other than ourselves. (I acknowledge that the question of authenticity is often a question of presentation. Is my presentation of myself authentic or honest? Am I faking it for the camera? Is my presentation intended to be manipulatory? But that is a separate matter because it also involves perception by parties that the originator of the presentation cannot fully control.) However, at the point of authenticity, we can conceive of near-infinite possibilities for our own existence. These possibilities are our ideals, or what we’ll call aesthetic potential.

And our ideal—the potential of our existence—is always the issue. Heidegger called this “being at stake” or “being in question for oneself.” When we question the way we exist, we automatically begin moving away from the point of authenticity because we are conceiving of being in a manner other than what we are. We begin moving toward an aesthetic that “is made concrete in the specific stands we take—that is, in the roles we enact—over the course of our lives. It is because our being (our identity) is in question for us that we are always taking a stand on who we are.”¹⁰

In a society that tells us that truth is within (as Foucault summarized) and that, “lodged in our most secret nature, [it] ‘demands’ only to surface,” it’s weird that we obsess over authenticity and artifice. Insert exasperated sigh. This should be easy. But “the radicalization of the distinction between true and false interiority has led to new possibilities; inner states, motivations, and feelings are now increasingly thought of as objectifiable and malleable in different contexts.”¹¹

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, but I think Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality is short-circuited, at least when viewed from the position of being in reality (and not simply comprehending it). Hyperreality is not mere permeation of signs without referent. Instead, hyperreality is a state in which humanity has always existed—we interact with signs ad infinitum—it’s only now that we have the luxury of standing apart from and observing them en masse. And in this hyperreality, signs have superior and super-social referents.¹² The signs are themselves aesthetic potential; they have infinite use-value.

Remember how I said the man with no audience need not be concerned about authenticity? That was a lie. Even when we have no audience, we exist in the uncanny valley of aesthetic potential. It is only at the point of authenticity that we realize this and can perceive the mountain peaks and say there is where I want to (or ought to) be. There, I and myself will meet.

Just as nothing is unreal, the inauthentic does not exist. We can be nothing other than authentic, aesthetic-pursuing souls.

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UPDATE: There must be something in the water, because these writings came thru my inbox after I finished this one. They really speak to the struggle of being real while trying to be real. Which are kind of the same things, but also aren’t. Give these a read if you want to think more about authentic pursuits.

Will the real Matty Healy please stand up

1% less asshole

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asides + signal boosts

Why do people like “bad” movies? Hannah sent me this video a few days ago, and if you’ve ever wondered why bad movies keep getting made and keep making money, it just might answer those questions, or at least frame them in a more conversational light. Trust me: it’s well worth the 20 minutes.

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Speaking of guilty streaming pleasures, I finally got around to watching Cunk On Earth, the Netflix mockumentary featuring British comedy personality Philomena Cunk. She covers (very, very broadly) the history of the planet while earnestly asking the important questions like: “Which was more culturally significant, the Renaissance or ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyonce?” And, “Was Beethoven good at music?” It’s modestly funny and more than a little odd and leaves me wondering if the professors and experts she interviews are in on the joke or just as blindsided and mystified as they often appear. If you want something light-hearted and light-minded, check it out: there are only five, 30-minute episodes.

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I haven’t listened to all of Fox Sailor’s new album Archmage, but what I have heard from it is really good! Can’t wait to listen to the rest of it. If you’re into epic fantasy music, you’ll love it.

1. Latin for: “To be, rather than to seem.” (The Bowen family motto in The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern)

2. Anna Haines, “Me, Myself and AI,” Best,

3. Somogy Varga and Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

4. Somogy Varga and Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

5. Heavy emphasis on the collective we. I’m sure some of you, dear readers, are doing just fine.

6. Technically, Google. But Oxford Languages sounds better.

7. As summarized by Dino Felluga, “Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation,” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory, Purdue University.

8. Katherine Hu, “‘Meta-Content’ Is Taking Over the Internet,” The Atlantic

9. Somogy Varga and Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

10. Somogy Varga and Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

11. Somogy Varga and Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

12. “Superior and super-social referents” with “infinite use-value.” We’re definitely returning to these concepts later in this series.