The meanings of authenticity that concern the inner life are now fading away. They are being replaced by a new concept of authenticity - ‘performative authenticity’.
Each person is enjoined to stand out from the crowd, to achieve something special and extraordinary. Authenticity has become an obligation. Being merely average or without a cultivated portfolio of attractive qualities, is a mark of failure – a mark of inauthenticity – regardless of your inner life and relation to self.

The Authenticity Revolution

Performative authenticity is tied to economic success and social prestige, which means that your specialness has to be performed. In order for people to distinguish themselves, they must seek attention and visibility, and positively affect others with their self-representations.
In doing so, they have to take great care that their performance isn’t perceived as staged. To be ‘authentic’ they have to give the impression that they’re just being themselves. The effort has to appear effortless.

Performative Authenticity

We think of people as authentic when they’re being themselves, consistent with their own personality and without pretence or pretending. 
 And when they’re being reliable and trustworthy, generally resistant to the whims of the moment or the emotional approval of the crowd.

What Authenticity Is

In our world of selfies, social media branding, and managing your profile on LinkedIn and Facebook it is not about who you are but who you seem to be.
So much energy is now directed to making things appear ‘authentic’ – that is, particular and distinctive, standing apart from the typical, the ordinary, the mass-produced. Uniqueness has a social status and value of its own.

Authenticity As An Act

"Finding your true self means self-reflection, engaging in candid self-appraisal and seeking ‘genuine self-knowledge."

We can see how authenticity might be both in decline (in the inner mode) and in ascendance (in the performative mode) at the same time. The evidence for the decline of one might be a sign of the rise of the other.
Authenticity (in the inner mode) is being lost, as seemingly everyone has become their own unabashed publicist. People laid little stress on the need for introspection and faulted themselves, not for being too caught up in the superficialities of society, but for failing to meet its imperatives of success.

Inner Mode Authenticity Vs. Performative Authenticity

Authenticity has changed from an inward gaze to a social display. Can we reconcile the performance with the real thing?

What Authenticity Is

When your authenticity is an act, something’s gone wrong | Psyche Ideas

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