"How to be Authentic" and the Performance of the Parasocial Persona
Authenticity is hard to achieve. You not only have to recognize the personal qualities that build your sense of self without external intervention, but you also have to be honest with accepting them. It can be a difficult journey that requires work to uncover and practice your true values through the mess of external values imposed through your environment. As the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir once declared regarding not only recognizing your values, but fighting to practice them, “Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."
Do you know what doesn’t help this effort? Becoming famous.
“How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment” by Skye Cleary is a non-fiction philosophy book exploring how the existentialist philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir can help people live their most authentic lives. I very much enjoyed exploring existentialism philosophy through this feminist lens and receiving a better understanding of how remaining authentic to your values can improve your life. The modern lens that the book frames Simone de Beauvoir’s work in was really substantial as well and contributed to my better understanding of her writing.
One of the modern scenarios the book regularly explores is whether the use of social media and fame contributes to an authentic life. While Simone de Beauvoir didn’t live long enough to see the birth of the internet, she did write about narcissism and how narcissism can create an inauthentic life. According to the book, the philosopher “saw narcissism as a crisis of character” with the author Skye Cleary further elaborating “I fail to live authentically when I lose myself in the reflection, daydream about idealized versions of myself, and do whatever I can to become the center of attention” before directly comparing the need for attention to gathering followers on social media. (Page 190) The argument is that fame, innately, is a form of narcissism and performance that makes it impossible for those that seek it to live an authentic life.
Now I’m not a philosopher. That’s David over at Rambling Blog who does much better articulating the finer points of philosophy than I do. But I was an incredibly minor micro-influencer for a hot minute in my life and I can assure you that even in my very brief brushes with fame, the persona required to achieve success in the public spotlight is absolutely 100% a performance and a very poor way to live an authentic life. I mentioned this in a previous blog post about why I quit that lifestyle, but one of the primary reasons for me to abandon my chase for fame and attention was because it required me to live inauthentically. As a very basic example, I was regularly watching media that I never would’ve engaged with normally just to match the ongoing trends that would get views for my videos. Simone de Beauvoir would argue that even the small choice to engage with media that didn’t fully interest me for the sake of an audience was a betrayal to my values and would lead to an inauthentic life.
But the persona I developed to become famous required deeper betrayal to my values than just watching a TV show I didn’t really feel like watching. Given my age and lack of emotional maturity at the time when I decided to seek fame, I lacked a strong sense of self to hold independently against the external validation that affirmed the persona I presented for my audience. This made it impossible for me to live authentically while appeasing the masses engaging with my content because I had no idea who I was in the first place without an audience telling me who to be. Without much awareness, I found myself losing my values as the parts of my true self I did show weren’t received as well as the performing aspect of my persona. To live an authentic life is to live a life for yourself and if you live it for an audience, such as is the case with chasing fame or posting in excess to social media, then you’ll never be capable of living an authentic life regardless of how strong a sense of self you can hold against the external validation.
While my desire to be famous was true to my core desire to find friends who liked the same things I did, the public stage I chose to set that authentic desire on doesn’t allow that honesty to survive. To spread the widest net to the largest audience, you innately have to cut the more quirky values from your persona that reduce your likeability. You have to hide vulnerability so that the trolls who find your work don’t use it as a weakness against you in their hurtful comments. Both Cleary and Simone de Beauvoir argue that you cannot create authentic connection without vulnerability and I support this statement. While I enjoyed the connections I made through my mediocre fame, they were all mostly based on their parasocial idea of me through the persona I presented in my social media as my true self wasn’t allowed to survive.
This persona and performance prevented me from seeking my authenticity and discovering my true values for several years, further damaging my attempt to live an authentic life. It was only when I stepped back from the spotlight and looked away from the mirror of the external validation reflected back at me that I could recognize my own values and how I wanted to live my life outside of an audience’s control. It’s been a joy discovering who I am outside of what people tell me to be. While it’s still a terrifying concept for me, I’ve been working on sharing my vulnerability to others in more private spaces to practice more authentic relationships. Some of my friendships introduced through my chase for internet fame have even grown deeper as I express that vulnerability with them and achieve more emotional connection. But it’s a vulnerability I can never outwardly share to a public audience as that in itself will damage the authenticity of the vulnerability as it will be for the benefit of external validation rather than for the benefit of myself or the relationship I benefit from.
There are very few benefits to sharing on social media outside of external validation. With a smaller audience such as just with friends or family, I guess social media can be a benefit to grow in relationship with them as you share your life through vacation photos or celebrate your connection with someone with a post including them in it. Personally, I enjoy celebrating my relationship with my dog by posting cute pictures of how adorable she is at every opportunity. But even then, there’s still that need for external validation biting away at each post. When I post a picture of Mollie, I’m hoping that someone else will like it too to validate my belief that Mollie is one of the best dang dogs in the world. While my love for Mollie is authentic and so is my desire to show off how great she is to the world, it can be argued my need for someone else to also validate that love and desire creates a lack of authenticity to that love as it isn’t coming fully from myself. Thus, it doesn’t create true fulfillment when someone does “like” that post showing off how cute Mollie is because it’s not fulfilling my innate need to believe that Mollie is the best dog ever without another human telling me that it’s so.
Obligatory pet tax photo. Mollie is just the best!! I love my dog so much!!
This is even more exaggerated when you open your audience to the whole of the world and seek to grow in the attention your posts give you as it’s no longer for the benefit of a relationship or your authenticity. It is purely for the benefit of looking into a mirror and getting thousands of thumbs up for what you see, which you would be able to give yourself if you lived your life authentically rather than for the goal of external validation through fame and social media. There will never be fulfillment through fame, especially if you craft a parasocial persona to perform for the act of achieving fame. Fulfillment can only come from remaining true to your values. The requirement to perform for social media, to only put your best foot forward and never drop your mask, to always post from the perfect angle with the best lighting, can never create that authenticity.
I’m still not a fan of social media. I write about loathing my inability to fully quit these platforms and my personal efforts on how to make social media enjoyable again without the threat of falling back into my parasocial persona regularly. I’m especially writing about it more after realizing that setting my life in the public spotlight stunted my personal growth as it delayed my understanding of my true values and self and prevented me from living the authentic life that I desired. But returning to the Simone de Beauvoir quote “Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.", I’m happy to have the knowledge of how fame prevents someone from living an authentic life. I’m even happy for the experience that chasing fame gave me for my life and self-development.
That knowledge doesn’t guarantee happiness, but it does help me grow more in remaining authentic and honest to myself to lead me on a more fulfilling path for my life.