Nicholas Carr:

It’s revealing that, before the arrival of the net, people didn’t talk about “authenticity” as we do today. They didn’t have to. They understood, implicitly, that there was something solid behind whatever show they might put on for public consumption. The show was not everything. The anxiety of the deep fake had not yet taken hold of the subconscious. The reason we talk so much about authenticity now is because authenticity is no longer available to us. At best, we simulate authenticity: we imbue our deep fakeness with the qualities that people associate with the authentic. We assemble a self that fits the pattern of authenticity, and the ever-present audience applauds the pattern as “authentic.” The likes roll in, the views accumulate. Our production is validated. If we’re lucky, we rise to the level of influencer. What is an influencer but the perfection of the deep-fake self?

This is usefully provocative of reflection — Nick specializes in that — but I don’t think he’s right about authenticity. See Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity, based on lectures given in 1970. He already saw the shift from an ethos of sincerity to one rooted in an ever-elusive quest for authenticity. See also Charles’s Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity (1992), where the fourth chapter is a brilliant capsule history of the the various meanings of “authenticity.” It’s especially interesting that Taylor believes that the debased and trivial way that authenticity is defined today is not the only one — that there is a nobler understanding of authenticity as a “moral ideal” that is worth defending.

UPDATE: Also, see the recent Hedgehog Review issue on authenticity.