The Right to Be Wrong: Authenticity™ in a Post-Apology, Post-Truth World

Living Honestly in a World That Won’t Forget

Someone once accused me of encouraging child abuse.

It’s not the sort of sentence I ever thought I’d write, but here we are. The reason? I used a vintage photo of a child as a prompt for a weekly creative challenge. That’s it. A black-and-white image from the early 1900s — grainy, innocent, no darker agenda beyond inspiring a few scissors and glue sticks. I picked it because the kid had a weirdly intense expression and I liked the texture of the photo. Someone else picked it as a reason to publicly shame me.

I’d love to say it was an isolated incident. That it didn’t mess with my head. But things like this happen more often than I ever expected when I started Paris Collage Collective — a project that was supposed to be about creativity, community, and giving people interesting images to work with.

Another time, I tried to post something tongue-in-cheek for International Women’s Day — a note that, yes, men were welcome to join the open call too. I thought it was obvious, and slightly ridiculous, and would make people smile. Instead, I got accused of sexism.

It’s all small stuff, I know. I haven’t been canceled. I haven’t lost my platform. But every time it happens, a little part of me pulls back. I start second-guessing what I post, how I word things, what image I choose. Not because I think I’m doing anything wrong, but because it’s easier — safer — to avoid any possibility of offense, even unintentional.

And that’s what’s been sitting with me lately. The slow, creeping self-censorship. Not imposed by any government or corporation. Just by me, anticipating how something might be misunderstood. Wondering if I can still afford to take risks. If I can still afford to be wrong.

Because making mistakes used to be part of being human. Now, it feels like a liability.

In one of my last posts, I asked whether it’s even possible to be real anymore — to be authentic™ — in a world where everything is performance. Where your personality is curated, your opinions are monetized, and your quirks are just more content for the algorithm to chew through.

The short version: it’s complicated. Being “yourself” has become a kind of brand strategy. Authenticity™, like everything else, has been optimized, filtered, formatted to fit.

But I’ve realized the problem goes deeper than performance. It’s not just that we feel pressure to look good or seem real. It’s that we’re no longer allowed to be wrong. Or rather — we can be wrong, but only once, and only in private, and only if no one screenshots it.

The internet, for all its noise and speed, has a perfect memory. You can’t unpublish. You can’t un-post. You can’t say “I’ve changed” without someone digging up proof that, in fact, ten years ago, you hadn’t. Mistakes follow you. Misunderstandings harden into narratives. And once people have decided who you are — or who they think you are — it’s nearly impossible to steer the story in a different direction.

It’s not just public figures who deal with this anymore. It trickles down. Artists. Creators. Anyone who shows up online with an idea, a project, a weird collage of a horse with three heads. Anyone who speaks, or shares, or — god forbid — jokes.

And so the question I’m stuck on now is: do we still have the right to be wrong?

Not wrong in the big, damaging, truly awful ways. I’m not talking about hate speech or harassment or platforming conspiracy theories. I’m talking about the normal kind of wrong. The kind that comes with learning, with growing, with saying something and realizing later that maybe it wasn’t quite right — or wasn’t said quite right.

Do we still have space for that? Or has “being wrong” become too dangerous?

The Evolution of Mistake-Phobia

Being wrong used to be part of life. A natural, mildly humiliating side effect of being a person with thoughts. You’d say something dumb, get corrected, maybe feel weird about it for a few days, maybe argue about it with a friend over drinks, and move on. Maybe even learn something.

Now, being wrong is a threat. Or at least, it feels like one.

There’s a quiet concern that hums under many things I post. Did I phrase that weirdly? Is there a word in that caption someone might take the wrong way? Is this vintage image actually a problematic relic from a colonial context I wasn’t aware of? (Even though I found it in a flea market bin next to a rusted corkscrew and an ashtray shaped like a goat.)

It’s exhausting. And it’s not just about people calling you out — it’s about never knowing what version of you might get frozen in amber and held up later as proof of your moral failure.

Because it’s all permanent now. That one offhand post you made five years ago? That sentence that made perfect sense in context but gets ripped out and passed around with zero explanation? That joke that wasn’t even a joke but got read as one, and now you’re defending yourself in the comments against people who genuinely believe you’re advocating for something deranged?

There’s no delete button for perception. And there’s no graceful way to grow when you’re not allowed to show the version of yourself who didn’t know better yet.

I’m not saying I want a free pass to be an idiot in public. I’ve been an idiot in public plenty of times — it’s not that fun. But if mistakes are how we evolve, how are we supposed to evolve when being wrong has become reputational quicksand?

The result is a kind of self-editing that’s less about reflection and more about paranoia. You don’t ask questions. You don’t post half-formed thoughts. You don’t explore anything messy or complex or contradictory. You sanitize. You pre-apologize. You play it safe.

You become — if you’re not careful — very, very boring.

The Uneven Landscape of Accountability

Here’s what really scrambles my brain: while artists, creators, and regular people are getting shamed, canceled, or quietly edged out of conversations for being slightly off — politicians are out here lying with the enthusiasm of toddlers covered in chocolate denying they touched the cake.

We get roasted for nuance. They get reelected for nonsense.

There’s a bizarre asymmetry at play. On one end, someone like me posts a poorly timed caption and ends up on the receiving end of a 47-comment thread about why I'm complicit in some larger systemic horror I genuinely hadn’t considered. On the other, some public figure blatantly distorts facts, shrugs, and moves on with the support of millions.

How did we get here? How is it that the people with the least power are held to the highest standards, while the ones with the actual power are treated like chaotic weather systems — unpredictable, destructive, and somehow no one’s fault?

It’s tempting to say this is just how the internet works. But that feels too easy. There’s something more human here, something we probably don’t want to admit: we like tearing people down — especially if they’re close enough to touch. Politicians are out of reach. You can’t ratio a senator into resignation. But you can take down an illustrator with a few thousand followers for using a symbol you don’t like.

There’s also the illusion of control. When we go after someone “smaller,” someone accessible, we feel like we’re doing something. Fixing something. Holding someone accountable. But what we’re actually doing, a lot of the time, is punishing the few people still trying to engage in good faith.

So now we have two systems running side by side: one where minor social infractions are treated like capital crimes, and one where major lies are treated like wallpaper. One where intention is irrelevant, and another where truth is irrelevant. One where you can’t be wrong even when you’re trying, and another where you can’t be right even when you’re lying.

It’s surreal. And it’s hard to know how to exist — let alone be real — inside of it.

The Risk-Averse Artist

So here I am. An artist. A collage artist, to be specific. I cut things out and put them back together in unexpected ways — that’s my rebellion. I run a community that exists purely to encourage creativity and visual experimentation, which, on paper, should be the least threatening activity imaginable. It’s not like I’m running a weapons lab. I run a collage collective.

And still, I’ve found myself becoming cautious. Hesitant. Risk-averse. Not in the bold, principled “I’ve decided to be careful” way — but in the low-key, creeping, reluctant way that makes you realize you’ve started flinching before anyone even raises a hand.

It didn’t happen all at once. It’s been slow. A kind of erosion. One weird accusation here, one angry DM there. None of them felt huge at the time. Just strange enough to make me pause. Just frustrating enough to linger.

And the worst part is: the “risks” I’ve become afraid of aren’t even real risks. They’re not edgy, boundary-pushing, avant-garde statements. They’re completely ordinary things that, five years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about. A child in a vintage photo. A tongue-in-cheek post about gender. A caption that assumes some shared sense of humor.

Now I think twice. Then I think a third time. Then I wonder if I should post it at all.

There’s this little voice in my head that says, “Okay, but what if this one turns into that kind of conversation?” And by that, I mean the kind that spirals out of your control in an afternoon. The kind where suddenly people aren’t responding to what you said — they’re responding to what someone said you said, and you’re watching a completely fictional version of yourself get built in real time by people who don’t know you and don’t want to.

So instead of making bold, strange, interesting choices — I start making safe ones. Generic ones. The kind that blend in, that don’t rattle anyone, that keep the peace.

It’s not censorship. No one’s making me do it. It’s self-preservation. But it feels like losing something important.

Because art is supposed to have risk baked into it. Not because it’s supposed to offend or provoke or shock, necessarily, but because it’s supposed to explore. It’s supposed to wander. It’s supposed to ask questions and not always know the answers.

But when you’re afraid to make a wrong move — even a harmless, unintentional one — the temptation is to just stop moving.

And that, more than anything else, feels like the real danger.

The Myth of Context

Here’s a wild idea: context used to matter.

You could say something questionable, and people might ask, “What did they mean by that?” Or better yet, they might assume you didn’t mean it like that. There was room for clarification, for tone, for intent. For the subtle art of talking it out like adults.

That room? Gone. Bulldozed to make space for speed, certainty, and whatever hits hardest.

We like to pretend we’re deep thinkers online, but what we actually are — most of the time — is hall monitor meets tabloid editor. We scan for infractions, we strip out nuance, and we package people into headlines. Often based on a single sentence, ripped out of a paragraph, ripped out of a post, ripped out of a situation that no longer exists.

Context isn’t dead — it’s just irrelevant.

Once something hits the feed, it’s not about what you meant anymore. It’s about what someone else decides it means. And once they decide, it’s out of your hands. And if it goes viral? Congratulations, your intentions have been legally declared inadmissible in the court of Public Opinion.

There are plenty of situations where context is used as a get-out-of-jail-free card. “I didn’t mean to offend you” is not a defense when you’ve repeatedly said offensive things. But I’m not talking about repeat offenders or people platforming hate. I’m talking about regular people — artists, creators, weirdos, and yes, me — who stumble into misunderstanding without malice.

We need to be able to say, “That’s not what I meant.” Or “I didn’t think that through.” Or even, “Yeah, I screwed up — but here’s where I’m coming from.”

We need a world where people can clarify, apologize, evolve — and not be permanently stapled to the worst possible interpretation of their words. Because without that, every conversation is a trap. Every expression a risk. Every sentence a potential exhibit in your future trial.

And when context doesn’t matter, intention doesn’t matter.

And when intention doesn’t matter, authenticity™ becomes performance again. A defensive act. A carefully controlled illusion of transparency, rather than a real, messy, human presence.

Which — if you’re keeping score — brings us right back to where we started.

Why This Matters (To Me, To Us, To Art)

I’m not trying to stage a dramatic defense of my right to post weird collage prompts without a 17-paragraph disclaimer. I’m not asking for a world where no one is ever offended. I’m not even asking for “forgiveness,” necessarily — because that implies guilt, and most of the time, the thing I’m being accused of isn’t even a thing I actually did.

What I am asking for — what I think we all need — is space.

Space to think. Space to try. Space to change our minds without being crucified for what we thought before. Space to get something wrong, and to grow from it, and not be branded forever by the screenshot someone took at the worst possible moment.

And honestly, this isn’t just about art. It’s about being human.

Because humans are messy. We evolve. We contradict ourselves. We have off days and weird takes and clumsy metaphors. We use the wrong words. We learn. It’s kind of the point. And we’ve built this world — this internet world — where the messiness of being human is treated as a threat. Or worse, as evidence against us.

So we start to self-police. We sand down the edges. We keep our opinions vague and our jokes inoffensive and our art clean. We present the version of ourselves that’s least likely to cause friction — which is also, surprise, the version that’s least likely to connect with anyone on a real level.

And that’s a loss. Not just for me. Not just for artists. For everyone.

Because the more we turn real people into brands, the more we punish complexity, the more we reward curated sameness and punish flawed sincerity — the less space there is for anything true to happen.

And when that happens, creativity suffers. Conversation suffers. Art suffers.

And maybe even worse than all of that: we stop trusting each other. We stop imagining that other people are acting in good faith. We stop giving the benefit of the doubt. And when we stop trusting — we stop risking.

And when we stop risking?

We get exactly what we say we hate: a world that’s fake. Safe. Empty. Polished to death.

So Now What? (A Possibly Useless, Possibly Hopeful Conclusion)

So what do we do with all this? I’ve basically just talked myself into a spiral of despair and artistic paralysis — and now I’m supposed to end with something hopeful?

Okay, let’s try.

Here’s where I land, at least today: I don’t think we can go back to a time before all this. Before the branding, the surveillance, the canceling, the permanent record of everything you’ve ever said being searchable by a stranger with a grudge and too much time.

But maybe we can go forward differently.

Maybe the answer — or at least an answer — is not to pretend the dangers aren’t real, but to keep creating anyway. To risk small misunderstandings in service of bigger truths. To let people see the rough edges, the questions we’re still asking, the things we’re still figuring out.

Maybe we practice assuming good faith again — even when the algorithm doesn’t reward it. Maybe we stop pretending there’s a moral scorecard that ranks everyone’s worth, and start acknowledging that everyone — even the most well-intentioned — will eventually fuck up.

Especially if they’re doing anything that matters.

I’m trying to remind myself that being real is not the same as being right. That you don’t grow by being perfect — you grow by being present. You show up. You make something. You try. You get it a bit wrong. You learn. You try again.

And sometimes, people will misunderstand you. Sometimes they’ll be mad. Sometimes you’ll have to clarify, or apologize, or let go. That’s part of it. That’s part of being public, part of being vulnerable, part of being alive.

I’m not great at that yet. I still flinch. I still overthink. I still hesitate before posting a collage with a vintage photo of a kid, because someone once told me it was “encouraging child abuse.”

But I don’t want fear to be the editor-in-chief of my creative process. I don’t want the most interesting parts of myself — the risky, weird, evolving parts — to get buried under layers of self-protection.

So this is me, trying not to do that.