- “Even if we discard as false a simple opposition between the authentic and the inauthentic, we still must reckon with the power of authenticity—of the self, of experience, of relationships. It is a symbolic construct that, even in a cynical age, continues to have cultural value in how we understand our moral frameworks and ourselves, and more generally how we make decisions about how to live our lives. We want to believe—indeed, I argue we need to believe—that there are spaces in our lives driven by genuine affect and emotions, something outside of mere consumer culture, something above the reductiveness of profit margins, the crassness of capital exchange.”
I'm in the same boat as oyster. The topic I find interesting but this guy seems to oscillate between 'marketing babble' and 'pseudo philosophical babble', neither very convincingly. I mean, I read through most of it but gave up here: Setting aside what he thinks, what do you think makes something authentic, if that word is even meaningful? For starters, I'd argue that authentic actions and things stem from real desires at a human scale. I think a guy who wants to make amazing watches has made an authentic product, even if there are hundreds of them around. A money-grabbing large corporation is the antithesis to that.On social media we are not on a hopeless quest to integrate our identity but are instead dividing by it into a self that can watch over itself, seeing its authenticity unfold in how social-media interfaces change to accommodate us.
It's a deeply self-involved essay that casts about a dozen different straw-man arguments for the definition before striking them down one by one to declare an unsolvable conundrum. From a sales perspective, "authentic" means "you're doing it for the reason you say you're doing it" or "you're making it for the reason you say you're making it." I had no question that coffee shop I ragged on in "hipster hate" fully believed in the mission they professed. That was one of the most annoying things about them (to me). They were fully and completely engaged in the magical wondrousness of their process. They were an "authentic" company that pisses me off. On the other hand, Elysian Brewing has gotten into a shitload of bad press in Seattle because the company that makes this beer: sold out to AB Inbev. that is inauthentic.
Maybe I'm actually underthinking but I feel like articles like this one and really the culture dissecting the idea of authenticity are overthinking everything. Of course there are parts of our lives driven by emotion, otherwise why would we even have emotion ? I would argue that outside of the " authenticity culture " there are people doing the opposite and claiming their emotions have no affect on their lives or only affect woman. Maybe this search for authentic is a push back against that culture. I know personally I like to support local businesses as well as woman around the world, really that's been marketed to me all over so somebody could claim that the emotion isn't genuine and I'm only doing it because of clever marketing. The thing is though supporting those locals and women does create a genuine feeling within me while plenty of things that are marketed just as well don't. I think marketing may play on and amplify emotions I already have but it don't think it can completely build a connection to something from the ground up. Apparently gardening is coming back with hipsters which is great but marketing will never change how I feel about it. My freakish love for the smell of dirt runs back to my childhood and the euphoria I feel after a day of working hard outside runs deep. Although a rise in marketing may play on these emotions it can't build the connection by itself.
Kind of related I think it's perfectly acceptable to start doing something because it's trendy, as long as you keep doing it because it appeals to you after it is no longer trendy. In my mind, the reasons you keep doing something are more important than the reason you started doing it. With the example of gardening, you do it because you feel a deep joy and connection to your childhood, that's both the origin of the hobby and the reason to continue it. If someone picks up gardening because it's trendy and continues to do it because of a deep appreciation for that smell of earth and such, that's fine, right?marketing will never change how I feel about it
I think what happens with this stuff is enough people do it while it's trendy then quit that the lifers so to speak get tired of engaging new "trendy" people on their passions. So even though somebody may stick with the passion they may also feel like an outcast since the lifers don't want to engage somebody just to have them leave.