Authenticity™ in the Age of Performative Everything

Why Be Yourself When You Can Be a Brand?

digital collage, 2025

I used to think being an artist meant making things — paintings, music, bad poems you only show your friends. Turns out, that’s the easy part. The hard part is convincing the algorithm you exist. I spend more time formatting captions than I do actually making art. Because if a project launches in the forest and no one reposts it on Instagram Stories… did it ever really happen?

We live in a time where everything is curated — your breakfast, your heartbreak, your existential breakdown. Especially if you’re an artist, you’re expected to be some bizarre hybrid of a monk, a marketer, a lifestyle influencer, and a TED Talk in skinny jeans. You’re supposed to Be Authentic™ — but only if that authenticity looks good in 4:5 ratio with the contrast turned up.

Meanwhile, every square inch of the physical world is being watched — CCTV cameras, doorbells, someone's phone always filming “just in case.” And online? Every passing thought, half-deleted draft, and blurry selfie can and will be screenshot, misinterpreted, memed, or repackaged into a takedown thread. You used to need talent to get famous. Now you just need to trip in public while holding a controversial opinion.

So here's the question that's been gnawing at me: can anyone actually be real anymore? Or are we just method acting our way through life, one shareable moment at a time?

This post is my attempt to untangle that mess. It's about the warped performance of authenticity in a hyper-public world, the psychic toll of self-branding, and what’s left of the self when everything is content.

Authenticity vs. Performance: Definitions and Other Sad Things

I’m not here to define “authenticity”. But we probably need to at least try, so we’re all on the same blurry, morally ambiguous page.

Authenticity, noun /ˌɔː.θenˈtɪs.ə.ti/, is the act of being true to yourself — saying what you really feel, doing what you really believe, wearing what you really like, even if it makes you look like a confused time traveller. It’s about showing up without a mask.

But here’s the thing: we’re always performing. I perform when I talk to a neighbour. I perform when I meet someone for the first time. I definitely perform when I write posts like this and pretend I don’t care about external validation. (I do. Please like, share, comment, engage.)

Even sociologist Erving Goffman — who basically turned human interaction into one long improv show — said that life is performance. We’re all putting on little acts depending on who’s watching. Which was fine when “who’s watching” was your aunt at dinner or a barista who misheard your name. But now it’s literally everyone. All the time. Forever.

That cute little rant you tweeted about capitalism? That’s a performance. That blurry smudged lens photo you uploaded with the caption “lucky accident”? That’s a reverse performance. Even being authentically messy is a brand these days.

And the platforms we use encourage this. They hand you filters, presets, metrics. They gamify your personality. You don’t just be anymore. You present. You polish. You angle yourself toward the algorithm like a sunflower in a digital hellscape.

We’ve always had different faces for different places. But now those faces are monetized, flattened, and hyper-visible. There’s no backstage anymore — just infinite mirrors reflecting back curated versions of a self we barely recognize.

And somehow, I’m supposed to turn that into a compelling artist statement.

The Artist’s Dilemma: Creating in the Age of Algorithms

If you're an artist in 2025, you've now got a second job in addition to making art. You also have to keep the algorithm happy. It’s the literally soul-sucking task of turning your personal life into content, on-brand at all times. Your work isn’t just art anymore. It’s content that needs to be marketed like you’re selling bath towels on QVC.

You create something cool — a painting, a sculpture, a song. And then, instead of just feeling the pure joy of creation, you remember that the next 15 steps are… selling your soul in front of thousands of semi-interested strangers.

You post a photo. You write a caption that’s vulnerable but not too vulnerable. You slap on a hashtag like #artistlife or #deepthinking or #foodforthought. Then you wait. Will the algorithm approve of your offerings? Does it think you’re “engaging” enough? Are you relatable enough? And don’t forget to get tagged in a few dozen "inspo" accounts that promise you free exposure but only give you more followers who don’t actually care about your work.

It’s a paradox of existential proportions: Do I make art for my audience? Or do I make art for myself? In today’s landscape, it’s probably a mix of both. Because if you're not visible, you’re invisible. And that is a career killer.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The only reason your project, no matter how groundbreaking, gets any airtime is because you’ve mastered the art of #influencerhumility — you know, the “I’m just like you, struggling but thriving” vibe, wrapped up in a 30-second video. The personal touch you add to your art is now part of the product, which means your vulnerability (the one that’s “real” enough for a blog post but curated enough for your audience) is part of the transaction.

And you’re not just asking for likes — you’re asking for validation. You’re asking to be seen, even if it’s only in the digital space. And that often comes with the uncomfortable side effect of being consumed — chopped into bite-sized pieces that get shared, rewritten, reshared, and eventually misinterpreted.

Surveillance and the Public Self: Big Brother, But Make It Personal

Remember when the only thing you had to worry about being “watched” for was your high school teachers catching you cheat? Now, every step you take could be captured, uploaded, analysed, and turned into a meme for the masses.

In the grand tradition of capitalism, we’re not users of technology anymore; we’re the product. You think you’re using Instagram to share your art? Instagram’s using you to sell ads. And let’s not forget the next layer of fun: surveillance. CCTV cameras are lurking in every corner, and your phone knows more about your emotional state than you.

You’re being watched. All the time. And you don’t know it. Or maybe you do, but it’s become so normal that it doesn’t matter anymore. This is the digital age, where your every move could be recorded by a camera you never even noticed.

The truth is, surveillance isn’t just about cameras anymore. It’s about how we’ve internalized the idea of being constantly watched. You start performing for the audience that might be there, even when they’re not. We’re constantly self-editing.

And let’s not forget that with everyone carrying a phone, there’s a pretty high chance of being caught mid-sentence, or mid-sneeze, and then your image is out of your control. What happens when someone screenshots that one thing you posted that seemed funny at the time but in retrospect is now a little too real?

Multiplicity of Self: Who Am I Today?

You’re not just one person. You’re a series of performances, each one tailored for a different context. A walking Venn diagram of contradictory selves, each one vying for attention from the right audience.

And that’s okay. Everyone does it. If anything, it’s the natural state of human existence. You’re always shifting, adapting, morphing, depending on who’s around. It’s basic psychology. It’s survival. It’s like when you meet someone and immediately change the way you talk — a little more formal, a little less “you.” You’re not lying; you’re editing.

But here’s the problem. Now, all these selves have to exist in public. It used to be that you had your work-self, your home-self, your “let’s get weird at 3am” self — and they each had their own space to breathe. But now? The whole thing’s collapsed into one big, sweaty mess.

The point is: We all wear masks. But these days, those masks are being forced to coexist in a world that requires them to always be on display. There’s no backstage, no off-hours. There’s no me who gets to just exist without the pressure of being seen, curated, reshared, reposted.

The Emotional and Creative Toll: Exhaustion, Burnout, and Self-Inflicted Crisis

All of this is exhausting. There’s only so much of your soul you can siphon off and package into digestible little bits for the internet before you start questioning if you’re actually an artist or just an unpaid intern to a faceless corporate algorithm.

You know the drill: You wake up, check your phone, and before you’ve even had your coffee, you’re already in performance mode. Maybe you post a picture of your half-empty cup with a caption like, “But first, coffee”. Maybe you drop a deep quote about creativity — something like, “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home” — and then immediately check the engagement, because you’ve spent the last 20 minutes constructing this very authentic moment for the benefit of strangers. Who are probably going to forget about it in under a minute.

But somewhere along the line, the cracks start showing. It’s hard to keep pretending that all this digital hustle isn’t slowly eating you alive. That constant balancing act between “being authentic” and “having a brand” begins to feel less like a personal expression and more like an emotional tax. Who are you really doing this for? And when does “authenticity” turn into a performance you’re just too tired to care about?

Let’s talk burnout — real burnout, the kind where you’re creatively paralyzed because the pressure of being seen, liked, and followed is literally draining you. You can’t even pick up a paintbrush or compose a song without wondering: “Will this be good enough to post?” Or worse: “Will anyone care?” The joy of creating starts to slip away, replaced with the nagging, empty desire to create something marketable.

At some point, your art stops being about the art and starts being about your marketability. And trust me, you don’t want to be the artist who can only paint by numbers to match the demand for “content.” So, what do you do? Do you scale back? Do you ghost the platforms for a while, only to feel the FOMO creep in as your peers continue to rise in likes and followers?

There’s always that creeping sense of alienation. You’re “connected” to hundreds, even thousands of people online — but it feels like no one actually sees you. You’re more like a commodity than a person. Your every post is a performance that’s supposed to be real, but in reality, it’s just another scrollable asset for someone else’s timeline. How many times have you stared at your own feed and thought, "Who is this person? Who am I even pretending to be?"

The more we “perform,” the more disconnected we become from our true selves. We present ourselves, but we’re not really present anymore.

Is There a Way Forward?

It’s exhausting. And you’re questioning whether you should just delete your entire social media presence. But then you might as well go and live in a cabin in the woods. So let’s talk about what can be done — though, let’s be clear, the path forward isn’t a clean-cut, #selfcare, “everything’s going to be fine” kind of deal. There is no survival guide for how to not completely lose your mind while still being a functioning, semi-creative human.

Is it possible to be authentic in a world that demands you to perform every minute of every day? I think it is complicated — and it’s not about living some kind of perfect, isolated life where you don’t engage with social media at all. Authenticity isn’t a one-time achievement. It’s a process. It’s the tiny decisions you make every day, balancing your internal truth with the pressure to be seen.

Maybe the future is not about having one clear, unified identity that everyone “gets.” Maybe it’s about accepting that we’re all many things at once, and that’s okay. Maybe it’s about reclaiming control over our online personas, learning to step back, share less, and live more in the moments that don’t need to be witnessed by millions.

I don’t have the answers — but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the more we try to be authentic for the approval of others, the further away we get from the real thing.

We’re all figuring it out. Together. In the weird, performative mess that is modern life.