Authenticity – Another perspective

Vergil Iliescu says it’s ok for me to blog email he sent me yesterday:

Just a comment on the authenticity issue in your blog. I’ve just started reading “The Psychology of the Internet” by Patricia Wallace. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it, but it is quite interesting so far. Chapter 3 is called “Online Masks & Masquerades”, and includes the following comment : “When we alter the characteristics of ourselves on the Internet – even fundamental ones like age, race or gender – we might not think of ourselves as liars or con artists. … We might feel more like researchers, or experimenters. We are playing with our own identities and trying out different hats to see how they feel and how others will react to them. Though deception is a key ingredient, it may not seem quite the same as lying for personal gain.”

The Internet creates the opportunity to create a persona (mask), and this is generally acceptable. If you did that kind of thing in the office, you would likely be considered either a liar, not genuine or nuts. Yet we probably all are slightly different people at home to the person we are in the office. Too big a difference might be a problem. I think the Internet somehow creates a distance, a separation which allows you to be/play a different personality. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because you just don’t get the same visual and verbal clues, and it is easier to be consistent, since you are writing, for the most part. In Billy Connolly’s biography, written by his wife Pamela Stevenson, she notes that Billy doesn’t use the internet because the people who do are “the kind of people you wouldn’t talk to in a pub anyway” (or something like that, I’m quoting from memory). I don’t agree literally with that comment of course, but I think it illustrates that his perception is that the relationship, for him, would not be sufficiently authentic – can’t see the guy, can’t smell the guy, and worse, can’t share a drink.

As for corporations, I don’t know what to think –- authentic must basically mean consistency in behaviour, actions, and statements (more like the congruence you mentioned [And I was quoting Bill Seitz – dw]). If the Body Shop starts exploiting natives in South America, and testing only on unpleasant little animals like smelly sewer rats, then they would instantly lose their authenticity, since that is what they are on about. But there is no point in looking for a soul. Push past the vision statements and financial reports and you just find a bunch of people doing their job, or trying to.

Vergil pulls us back to the topic we started with: Can marketing be authentic? When the British Mini company creates an aw-shucks, witty site, should we trust it and them, or should we feel manipulated, or both, or neither? Yes, the Internet introduces (or exposes) a gap in our selves, a gap I think it’s useful to think of as like the gap between an author and her characters. Yes, “authenticity” seems not to apply to marketing campaigns and corporations, but congruence of statement and action seems helpful. Yes, the bodilessness of the Internet must have a deep effect on the nature of our self. Yes, Billy Connolly reminds us that one of parrhesia‘s greatest forms, at least in the modern world — from Lenny Bruce to mnftiu — is humor.

Thanks, Vergil.

Categories: Uncategorized dw