Fake Authenticity
Everyone’s talking about authenticity.
How important it is. How much people need it. How it builds trust. How we all have to be authentic…
And yet… most of what we see out there isn’t real.
What we see is just strategic vulnerability.
Performative honesty.
Curated mess that somehow still fits the brand.
That’s not authenticity. That’s just another deceptive layer of the act.
I’ve called it fake authenticity many years ago. Don’t think much has changed since then.
Many have gotten really good at looking real.
At posting “staged” behind-the-scenes photos.
At sharing “failures” that never even happened.
At sharing “raw” thoughts into posts that just happen to perform well.
And now?
Now we’re teaching AI how to do that too.
Faster and at scale…
Maybe even better… ?
AI isn’t just writing like us. Sometimes it’s starting to feel like us too.
Or at least, it sounds close enough to trick some.
The language is warm. Conversational. Vulnerable in all the right places.
It mimics emotion well enough that you might think it came from a human.
Yuval Harari said it best:
AI doesn’t need consciousness to manipulate us.
It just needs to create the illusion of intimacy.
And that’s exactly what it’s doing.
We’re not being sold products anymore.
We’re being sold closeness.
Manufactured connections. Synthetic emotions.
And it seems like some people don’t care.
As long as it feels real, that’s good enough for them.
But I think we should care.
Because when the fake starts to look more convincing than the real,
people start questioning everything.
Even the voices that are genuine.
What worries me most isn’t that AI is getting good at pretending.
It’s that we’re starting to forget what real even sounds like.
When every founder sounds like a motivational quote machine.
When every brand tweets as if it’s your best friend.
When every influencer starts crying in high resolution…
At some point, you stop believing anything.
Look…I get it.
It’s hard to be real online.
Hard to speak your truth without wondering how it will land — or if it will “convert.”
But that’s the trade-off.
The more we optimize for perception, the further we get from being authentic.
And the further we get from authenticity, the more we lose the actual connection we were trying to build in the first place.
I’m not here to moralize.
You do what works for you.
But for me?
I’ll keep writing in my own voice.
Even if it’s not perfect.
Even if it doesn’t scale.
Even if only one person cares…
Maybe it doesn’t convert. Doesn’t trend. Doesn’t scale.
But it’s still how I’ll do it.
P.S.
I didn’t write this.
AI did — trained on my tone of voice, shaped by my thoughts, built from my words.
It’s getting close.
Close enough to almost pass.
But ALMOST real still isn’t REAL.
And that’s EXACTLY what this was about.
Alright, that was all for now Rebel.
By the way… only a few know where the Rebel Speakeasy is. And now you’re one of them—grab a drink and let’s talk. We meet every Wednesday in live audio spaces on X.
Hope to see you there!
- Ani & Rick
RebelSpeakeasy.com by Ani • Rick
Find us on X @NFTrebels & @unl0c7