Authenticity

[this is generally a non-gamey post so you've been warned]

Who is the real you? Is it that gorgeous girl, whose killer wings coax a "you have beautiful eyes" from strangers and sisters alike? Is it that softspoken thinker, ever mulling the meanings of art and connection over his matcha? Is it that person with the name tag, the one with your name that a customer calls when they need your help? Is it that fragile wet naked thing who's just stepped out from the shower? That exhausted soggy face in the mirror, anxiously checking its hairline? I'm of the opinion that any given person is really a tapestry of people, of faces and masks and personas and etiquettes. They're a closet of clothes being swapped and washed and bought and sold and tailored and torn and stained and rediscovered somewhere in the back of a drawer. Every act and article is a signal, a different facet of the "real" you, impossible to express in its multiplicity, like trying to pick out a spark in a fireworks show. 

This archive can be exhausting enough to manage in day to day life; Actions seen as performative that are meant to express sincerity. Outfits meant to induce euphoria being derided for the attention they may garner. Jokes that don't land. Vulnerabilities betrayed. A bad hair day. Now put yourself into the wired. Connect yourself to the grand panopticon of the world wide web, subjecting yourself to limitless ideas, information, discussion, viewpoints, all under the watchful gaze of mega corporations and special interest groups. Would you still be you? You'd be changed for sure, as any new information would do. But could you hold onto yourself? Your principles? Your affect? Your authenticity...

What is this blog anymore? Elfgames? Marathon-Slop? Private Diary? Nikke Archive? Whatever it is, I've felt "compelled to testify" as the evangelicals and lawyers love to say. When you see the same pattern of pain happen to people you care about over and over, you get this idea that if you put something like this in the wild maybe you can help even one person out there. So this is that. A bit of a personal ramble, a bit of life advise, and just a dash tabletop tangentiality for any active "creators" in the space. "Creators" in quotations not because I doubt their creativity, but because I think many folks who are creators wouldn't consider themselves as such and the word (while accurate) ill articulates the breadth of its membership. OKOK enough of the opening sardonics, let's get into it:

What is Authenticity?

I think when people talk about being authentic, being honest, being true to their passions, their wants, their hobbies, their callings, it's something that's quite intuitive internally and (in my opinion) all but impossible to judge from the outside. What is authentic to your beliefs and taste is a constant internal negotiation to be had, not some external verdict waiting to drop after you've exposed your true self.

Art movements love doing this kind of ridiculous litigation to suss out if someone is a "poser" or "fake" or "trend chaser." As though one's authentic self is not authentically shaped by the world around them. As though being changed isn't the most human thing there is. Fans can be notoriously insufferable on this front, demanding their world, their idols, exactly conform to their rigid internal ideals, else they've been tainted by something inauthentic. I'm going to tell you a secret from the arts world: Everyone is making compromises, appeals, little tweaks. The only human making a vision all their own is stranded on a deserted island begging for the chance to get feedback. 

Ideally we don't like making compromises that affect the original vision too much - No, this game won't be 5e compatible. No, this game won't remove references to HRT. But sometimes you have to say "yes this book will be a borg-like so more people check it out" or "yes this game will be only 20 pages long so people can read through it quickly." What compromises to make and where is part of the daily struggle of being an artist; The fundamental tension of bringing creative works into the world. What is an authentic compromise to one artists may ring as inauthentic to another, but it's only for them to internally judge. There is no rubric for authentic creation or interaction, and anyone who tries to apply one is on a (frankly harmful) fool's errand.

Dealers in Dopamine

Gosh it feels so nice to be loved. To be appreciated. To have people say "you're such a good XYZ." I don't think I'm alone in being addicted to validation, affection and affirmation. It's a hit so good I try to share it to others as much as I can. A hit so fiendishly euphoric people on the net say that "people would do anything to get it." It's a bit of a Catch 22, an ouroboros of faux accountability to authenticity. If you say you're immune someone could say you're just hiding it, or even trying to chase clout by saying you're above it, encouraging you to shut up with all this performative crap. But the only way to not validate it then becomes to say nothing at all, and once again you fall silent.

Personally I cut that gordian knot a long time ago: I like when people like my stuff and enjoy sharing stuff that I think people will like. I also enjoy celebrating the works of others and letting them know I like it. Likers get liked, after all. Sometimes I like something so much that I just share it for me because I like it enough to self-fulfill that validation need. And that's it, it's just that simple. Now let go of any fear of rejection, of being cringe, of being what someone else dislikes[*1], and you'll be truly free.

I've been put through the ringer of Catholic guilt enough to know that it's OK to want things and enjoy things and pursue your interests and passions. When I released my review of The Isle, I remember how someone took tremendous offense to it, not because they thought The Isle needed defending (though that may have contributed), but because they claimed it was "an attempt at a hit piece" and that I went in with an "agenda" - And sure, by that logic everything I write and create is an attempt at a hit piece, I think my takes are pretty interesting and hope they land with a wide audience or at least spark some kind of discussion or thought because that's a good feel. But by the same token that appeal is no more manufactured than my own ideas - I try to edit and gloss up my pieces because it feels good to make something you feel good about, even if it's about a piece of art that you didn't care for. By existing in societal real-space and harboring a name you are participating in the "attention economy", you're robbing braincells of every barista who needs a series of letters to put on your order. Shame on us, I guess. There's this modern trend to measure how much attention space a person takes up, like it's some moral ill to exist and be opinionated and make both yourself and those opinions very publicly known.[*2]

We've somehow conflated coercion and manipulation, as though all acts of art and interaction aren't subtle manipulative dances where we are changed and change others. If we were all static units we'd probably all want to kill each other and I don't think it's a mistake that the internet is as hostile as it is. I like making people laugh. Making people think. Manipulating what few people I interact with on the internet to have what'll hopefully be a more fulfilled life, and I hope they like doing the same. This is not a bad thing nor does it make us all influencers selling a 2-for-1 deal on snake oil over Instagram. I've seen conmen, I've watched friends get scammed out of hundreds of dollars. The idea that everyone who seeks mass connection and attention is on the path to being the next televangilist is not just insulting, it frankly obfuscates the very real harm that people who prey on parasocial relationships cause. The Game Grumps are not a societal ill[*3], discouraging people from putting themselves out there because it's merely "clout farming" is (especially when it disproportionally affects those with neurodivergence and trauma who have trouble putting themselves out there to begin with). 

IDK who needs to hear this, but you are allowed to say your piece and want to be seen and interacted with. That's not "Clout Farming" or "Engagement Bait" - Back in the day they used to just call it "the human condition" and the very normal and healthy desire to feel like you are known, belong, remembered. You life is not measured in internet metrics, even if the internet is a method through which you find connection.

Social Engineering

Gosh I fucking hate the insidious, infectious concept of money. The great compulsive meritocracy that carves your fate and can demand any compromise in exchange for your life. The invisible number that supersedes any emotion for the cold hard reality in the absolute sum of your monthly survival cost. A life may not be measured by internet metrics, but many require money to be sustained. An unfortunate reality is that very virtual attention metrics can be converted into very real material survival under capitalism. In the immortal words of Wu-Tang: "Cash rules everything around me." Dollar, dollar bills y'all.

Like the VTubers or the Game Grumps or even the loathsome Televangilist, there are those of us who are making a living off of this. And your network really can convert into your networth. Having ins, getting promoted, appearing in your favorite text-to-speech YouTuber's videos can all have meaningful material impact on how well a product sells, your art sells, you sell. And to sell is to secure survival, to secure more tools to grow and blossom and enjoy the things in life barred by material costs.[*6]

I personally work full-time to support my creative endeavors and am lucky to work a job that doesn't completely drain me; And even for me a boost in sales or a distribution deal can be life changing. It can mean the difference between going to a con and getting to connect with more people in person, or doing a print run and getting my games physically in more hands. Yet those opportunities are highly dependent on commanding the attention and connection of many, while still seeming "authentic" enough that people feel good about supporting me.

A friend of mine in the video game industry was recently trying to figure out how to get the word out about the game she's making, specifically to the niche community around that game's genre (kept anonymous because she'd skin me alive if she knew I was writing this). Dwelling on how (from the outside) I seemed to know so many people and garner my own little following, she asked how I did it (and had assumed it'd mostly come from releasing blog posts... which is only a quarter true); I'd advised getting into discord communities, interacting with fellow fans over bsky, streaming her development process, letting one's ideas flow free and even reaching out directly to the big movers and shakers. Not just walking the walk of productivity, but talking the talk of connectivity. My theory goes that the more you get your face and name out there the more people are willing to engage with and support your work on a personal level, rather than on a purely reactionary one.

She had... mixed feelings on this. "Isn't that kind of disingenuous?" Manipulative? Fake? Inauthentic? This struck me as... odd? I'd never really considered these things. I engaged with these people because I thought they were cool and enjoyed their work and wanted to let them know! Because I saw them as real people I could learn from, not deific paragons to milk for profit. I interacted in discords and on bsky because it helped me see more viewpoints, get new ideas for my hobby, see what everyone else was up to. Yes there was a hope to fall into the fold, to connect with like minds, to be a part of a community. And indeed, part of that was hoping those communities would like the works I'd made. But these things are neither mutually exclusive nor meaningfully separate.

The tech bros call it networking, the conmen call it social engineering, the witch hunters call it infiltrating. I call it connecting. Engaging. Immersing. Engagement bait is only insufferable if you believe the poster couldn't care less about how everyone reacts; Meanwhile I take so much joy going through replies of new and old faces on a post that I treated like a prompt. Each comment doesn't just boost your SEO, it's also meaningfully exposing you to new ideas and making you better at what you do. On the wired these concepts are not oil and water, they're part and parcel. All relations are constructed, that doesn't make them hollow.

When I call you all "dear reader" or even refer to you all as the direct and personalized "you", I'm not attempting to fabricate a false connection or glibly riff off traditions (well OK maybe a bit of that second one). I assume that you, dear reader, are a human with thoughts and feelings and ideas and opinions all your own. That my work has impact on you and your life has impact on the world I live in. And I think that's beautiful, and is part of what makes you beautiful! Genuinely! I've met enough of you in person to be proven right more often than not. Maybe it stems from some misplaced sense of Catholic love for my comrades in mortal suffering, or perhaps a more Daoist sense of legitimate oneness with all people, but like... I just actually give a shit. I'm not saying I can save or fix any one of you or anything like that, just that I mean it when I type that I'm rooting for you all out there, and not only hope you have a good day but a good life. And I mean that pretty unconditionally.

Trapped Behind the Mirror

So all authenticity is constructed, yes? An internal reflection of the persons we are and want to be, a means of putting out looks and posts and works in an attempt to bear our soul. It's suffused in every action both public and private. So surely there's no way to do authenticity wrong, yes? If it's all manufactured, then it's all just as "real" ... well not quite.

On the one hand, we have the aforementioned conman: The one who uses the tools of manipulation we all use to communicate and connect, then warps it into highly controlling and incredibly destructive ends. No longer is the expression about the reflection of self but instead the negation of the other. These people use a false sense of authenticity and connection to sell you things or take something from you, much the same way as a genuine boutique artists would sell something "truly" authentically. Money may lather an ick on everything, but the conman has so thoroughly poisoned the well that people automatically assume you are one when you try to connect and have something you want to share. Maybe this is why bar culture died, who can say ~ Spotting a con is both an imperfect art and a cultivated skill, but the older I've gotten the more I've realized most conmen aren't actually trying that hard to come off as sincere or authentic, instead they're picking their targets carefully and preying on the weak and vulnerable: The elderly, the addict, the isolated, etc. I'd like to think none of my readers even approach this category of predation, so stop wondering if you are one; real conmen don't ask themselves that.

But there's another kind of inauthenticity that I think we're all at risk for, myself included. The kind born from good intentions and that all-too-human need to be accepted and appreciated; The construction of the false self, the "better off" self. Sure, each of us is a delicate messy tapestry of a hundred different faces and a hundred different feelings, but sometimes we find a script that simply works, that garners praise and affection and moral validation, and we stick to it for fear of becoming something worse than inauthentic: bad.

I often talk about my time "trapped behind the mirror" (a reference to the Old Tales saga) and even today I sometimes feel its cold glass pressing against the warmth of my true self. You hear the word "alienated" come up a lot when this starts to happen IMO. From one's hobby, one's community, one's self. Back in 2024 this was the dominant feeling crushing down on me as I fumbled through two relationships that felt varying forms of wrong, made me feel wrong. The script I was reading from, the person I was trying to be, the person that was wanted and celebrated and told they were oh-so attractive in oh-so many ways felt... fake. It was a learned behavior adapted from a variety of ideological programmes and self-help articles for being a more enticing partner. It wasn't me, it was the someone I thought people wanted - Scratch that, it was the someone people did in fact want over and over again. It's an important distinction because people love to lather on variations of "be yourself", but once you crack being someone who isn't you that works it becomes second nature, blurs the line of the real you.

I was so focused on the desire to be loved, or maybe just to prove to myself that I was loveable, that I had no foresight to think about how alienating it'd all feel once I was there. Once I was being smiled at that way that people who really truly appreciate you smile at you for a me that was functionally a lie... it felt gross, disingenuous, harmful not just to me but the other person. At a certain point I caught myself feeling pins of jealousy in most of my relationships, not in a possessive kind of way, rather I was jealous that my partner got to be the pretty one who was taken care of. That while I was dissociating under the weight of what it meant to be a "good partner" or a "good man" or even a man at all, they got to just be themselves. While I was stressing out of my mind making sure everything was organized, perfected, presentable, flirty, comfortable, confident, they just got to go to the ball. Midnight be damned, I wanted that to be me, even if just for a night.

Anyways, I always managed to get out of those relationships and I've figured a lot out about myself since, but only after I let go of the desire of being wanted by others and embraced the desire of being comfortable pursuing the me I really wanted to be. There's a pervading sense in circles I've traveled in that "you're beautiful no matter what" and frankly I think that's some bullshit that pushed me to settle on a version of me I had no love for. I think anyone can be beautiful and that with effort, self-care, self-reflection and a true understanding and pursuit of what feels authentic to you, the reflection in the mirror can ring far more true, but it's not always easy and the path is not always clear. When you chase the high of validation, or even just want to be someone who improves society, it can feel like being your true authentic self should take a backseat to the you you're supposed to be. In my experience, unless it affects your most base survival, it's never worth it.

Accepting the Witch Hunt

There is, I think, an unhealthy obsession with authenticity testing. Being authentic but imperfect? People will try to pick apart those weaknesses. Being earnestly inauthentic to protect yourself? Well now you're just faking it instead of being a truly good person. Just being yourself? Well, you seem happy and people like you so certainly this whole thing is just a vast calculated construction. And sure it is. That doesn't make it any less real than the unreality we all construct for ourselves. It's a closest approximation. That day's best guess. I Can't Believe It's Not Me(TM).

But for the witch hunter it is so delightful to bring people down. To digitally persistence hunt an internet id until they wear it down and spear it with a sick own. I've known a few people who delight in this and it's just cruel in my mind. It's the same mentality of people who enjoy "lol cows"; Authenticity is so cringe and lol worthy, but also being fake is so deceptive and manipulative. When you dig down the real punch line is "anyone who isn't me is my enemy, and aren't they all stupid" - Sometimes when I've dug even deeper with these people the authentic truth is "I'm so alone, there's no way this is my fault." A slightly crueler, but no less fixable variation of being trapped behind a mirror.

Don't mistake me for absolving the troll nor minimizing the damage the witch hunter can cause; One of the greatest sci-fi authors of our generation was systemically harassed off the internet (while herself being shoved back behind a mirror of sorts) with each venomous attack shaped from the same lead: Is this woman authentic? Claims that she doesn't write like a real woman. Claims that she doesn't really care about trans folks. All these wild claims about what it means to be authentically good, for a story to ring authentically true. The authentic truth is that real art and real people are messy and multifaceted, but to the witch hunter anything that breaks the totemic mold of capital G Goodness is proof that any claims to wanting the world to be a better place is inauthentic shill, that the artist is merely in it for the quick buck: Are you their safe queer paragon or the villain of the week? Either way there's no real person there. Are you the statue that they admire? Or do they need to rip you down to prove a point? It's gross and I do think more than a few "fans" and "consumers" need to get a life and check-in with who they authentically are.

When Digital Angel first released and was warmly received it felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to rip it apart for being misogynistic, or anti-sex worker or any number of reads. To this day I feel lucky that I was able to release such a messy, aggressive and nuanced work to relative fanfare and seemingly no backlash. To be in the public eye is to accept the Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's head, and releasing a work, especially one that feels authentic, is a deeply vulnerable practice that the cruelty of authenticity testing makes all the more taxing. And yet accepting that and pushing through anyways is what's necessary for you to thrive as the real you.

Do What Makes You Happy

This is all a very long winded way of saying something very simple, that I think is easy to lose touch with in the rush of the wired and the thrill of creation; The most authentic thing you can do is to do what makes you happy. Share your interests and learn from others, be the you that feels right in your skin, make the art you want to make. Just as no one can define your authenticity, so too can no one define your happiness.

And if something that you're doing feels wrong? Inauthentic? Too exhausting? Hit da bricks. If it doesn't affect your survival (eg your housing, employment or position with the law) it's all leisure time, and it should feel leisurely. Whatever you're doing, whoever you are, it should feel good or at least comfortable. 

Whenever I'm feeling stuck or stressed or cornered or fake, I look back and ask myself where it went wrong. Was I isolating myself from authentic connections for fear of being seen as a shill? Was I performing the fake self people wanted to see that was discordant with my true self? Was I subject to the digital persistence hunters and their ceaseless demands? Or maybe, at the end of the day, I just had something else that felt even better, and that's awesome too ~

Whatever your case dear reader, I hope you find happiness and keep being the authentic real you.

[*1 - Can't believe I need to add a footnote about this, but use common sense. People dislike getting hit in the head with a brick and IMO you should avoid doing that. What is "disliked" is rarely a true important moral failing. I disliked how Public Access framed its campaign, but I didn't think it was some kind ontological evil. You may dislike Nikke because of how much boob and butt is on screen at any given moment and its your right to do so. This is fundamentally different than disliking someone for harassing someone online, and perhaps it's some peoples inability to acknowledge that difference that causes such big aggressive reactions.]

[*2 - This is exacerbated by a pervading bifurcated sense of morality in what one represents and believes. That one is either a hate-criming skinhead or a paragon of perfect thought. A level of puritanicalism that would make any New Englander blush.]

[*3 - And I say this as someone with a LOT of complex feelings on parasocial relations.]

[*6 - I'm sure there's people reading this thinking "but there's a better way for society to operate and wealth to be distributed!!" and you're absolutely right, however I'm calling things as they are now.]

[**** BONUS ZONE - So there was originally a bit about the nature of friendship, means-testing, how we define our relationships with others etc. I do think it fits pretty well within the theme of what it means to be authentic, both to oneself and others, and in curating the people you hang out with without self selecting out of friendships for self-sabotaging reasons... But it definitely bloated the scope so eh, if you want to talk about it leave a comment or hmu on Discord~ Similarly I think there's a sister discussion to be had about "originality" but I don't feel like I have anything new to say on that matter ~~ (this is a meta joke iykyk) ]