FAQ 3: is it possible to be authentic on social media?
And why curation is not the enemy of authenticity
This post is part of series where I answer some of the questions I am most frequently asked about social media. To browse or read the rest of the series click here.
When I talk to writers about keeping boundaries around what they share on their social media accounts, they often follow up with a question about authenticity.
But where does this notion authenticity on the internet is incompatible with boundaries come from?
Since its conception, social media - and arguably Instagram in particular - has platformed and rewarded people who’re prepared to blur - in some cases, remove completely - the lines between their public and private lives, sharing relationship updates, successes, failures, tears, fears and traumas. Their ‘imperfections’ are their currency, and their relevancy is rooted in their ‘relatability’. We gratefully accept the reassurance of (usually attractive) people telling us their lives are a mess too - we are not alone.
Meanwhile, other (also attractive) people have built followings based on ‘aspirational’ lifestyles, projecting an image of a perfect life into the world via their phone screens. Their lives are devoid of the challenges average people face and the implication is that this Fairytale can be yours too if you wear the right clothes and travel to the right places.
Over time, influencers have mostly settled into two camps: those who openly curate and polish their online presence to a high shine, vs those who carefully construct the impression that they do not. Advocates of the ‘messier’ side of the internet declare their ‘neater’ counterparts as ‘fake’ and themselves as ‘real’, or, yes, ‘authentic’…
The misappropriation of ‘authentic’ to describe someone who is prepared to cry on the internet, in tension with the showreel ‘perfection’ of their ‘fake’ counterparts, has created a false binary in which curation has become the enemy of authenticity. Within this distortion is where writers’ fears about how to show up online are often located.
You think, I don’t want to share everything about my life online, but I do want to show up in a way that is authentic to me. This doesn’t feel possible in the online landscape you’ve been observing so you tie yourselves in knots trying to puzzle it out, and in doing so miss out on the opportunities social media presents.
Ironically, to reveal how distorted our understanding of authenticity has become online we only need to look at how we move through the real world.
There are few people who present ourselves in exactly the same way, wherever we are, and whoever we are mixing with. The workplace, social settings, and the home all witness different versions of our multifaceted selves. It is rare to find a person who farts as easily sat next to a colleague in the office as we would snuggled under a blanket at home, binge-watching the latest hit on Netflix.
There is nothing new about curating the version of ourself that the outside world gets to see - it’s a dance most of us do to some extent, most of the time. Some degree of self-curation is necessary lubrication for most of us if we are to move smoothly through the real world, and yet, absurdly, we think we’re not allowed this same grace on the internet.
Curation and authenticity are compatible.
Authenticity is nothing to do with how much of our private lives we share in a public domain. It is everything to do with how closely the way we behave in public is aligned to how we think in private.
Being authentic means saying things we believe, rather than what we think will keep others happy.
Being authentic means talking about the things we care about, rather than what we have seen ‘work’ for others. This alignment between our real-life passions and online presence is key to feeling less ‘icky’ on social media.
Boundaries and careful curation not only makes showing up online more sustainable, comfortable and enjoyable for most people; I’d go so far as to say the act of making individual, intentional, thoughtful decisions about what you will and won’t share is possibly the most authentic approach you can take online, just as you would in real life.
How do you show up authentically on social media? Is this something you’ve grappled with or has it come quite naturally to you? I’d love to chat with you in the comments.
I’m a writer in the sense that I started writing a personal substack back in August as a way of writing about many of the things constantly going through my head. But I have also been on social media and writing to a certain extent for years- I used to write Notes on Facebook, I write very lengthy posts on Instagram at times, and I am the type of person who writes lengthy comments. For the most part I think of myself as coming off as”genuine” on social media, but of course I edit myself. I find myself holding back at times because I think that there’s a likelihood that no one will really care. I don’t have a huge following, so it’s hard to gauge what people respond to or other than cute pics of my daughter or family pictures of me, my husband, and my daughter.