2. "Time To Get Serious About Workplace Authenticity" (Forbes): "Think of your favorite leaders, whether political icons, sports captains, or CEOs. How would you objectively measure their authenticity? There is no baseline. No benchmark. If you find Trump authentic you probably adhere with his values; same goes for Obama. By the same token, not many Trump fans would find Obama authentic, and vice-versa."
3. "The authenticity double standard is negatively impacting female leaders/We tell brands that humanity drives commercial success, so why do we still advise women leaders to suppress theirs?" (MarketingWeek): "We’d never advise a client to adopt a bland, corporate tone just because their competitors do. Yet that’s essentially what we tell women leaders when we hold up cool detachment as the gold standard. This isn’t just hypocritical. It’s strategically incoherent."
4. "Jasmine Crockett and the cost of authenticity/The 'Las Culturistas' dust-up shows the impossible standards Black women politicians must navigate" (Salon): "Authenticity — at least as it is currently understood and enforced — is not a liberating ideal for people of color. Instead it operates as a sorting mechanism that rewards those whose identities already align with power and penalizes those whose truth challenges it."
5. "A love letter to authenticity" (Cherwell, Oxford's oldest independent student newspaper): "Having spent the better half of my teenage years obsessively fixating on my appearance, I now feel a stranger to any semblance of authenticity in my twenties.... Now, when I glimpse the crinkle around my Dad’s eyes as he laughs, and the curve of my Mum’s smile, I suddenly cannot bear the thought of not looking just like them."
6. "'Missing The Authenticity': NRI Man Calls US 'Boring' After Bengaluru Vacation/An NRI man in Jersey City stated that life in India feels more vibrant and authentic compared to a dull and professional social atmosphere in the US" (NDTV): "In India, you meet friends and talk about real world over drinks and in a group. Here, it's usually people talking about work, money and immigration. Everyone talks very professionally without banter." (NRI = "non-resident Indian).
Posts
43 comments:
"...(NRI = "non-resident Indian)..."
Non-resident where? Not living in India, or from India, not living in Jersey City?
""I'm 36, M and living in Jersey City for eight years...."
So, is this a new euphemism for 'illegal alien'? I'm glad you spelled it out, since it remains code in the article. Or maybe he's here on a visa, for eight years, and keeps extending it? Or, is it a work visa, and he's here undercutting Americans? And he misses the 'authentic vibrancy' of life in Bengaluru, misses it so much that he's back in the old USA, so he can keep missing it.
"A third commented: "It's high time people accept that western society is not some utopia and a ladder of heaven that you cannot question..." Please: Feel free to question, and after questioning, take action instead of complaining.
"Non-resident where? Not living in India, or from India, not living in Jersey City?"
He is living in Jersey City. He's a non-resident Indian... that's from the perspective of India.
And as for our Jasmine, our poor, gerrymander-challenged underclass freshman, the only thing authentic about her gig is that she is a pure, authentic Grade-A phony, always hustling a grievance.
It's an Indian news source, NDTV. That's New Delhi TV.
I can promise you that I authenticallythink Jasmine Crockett is being pretty authentic to her true self. I also think that much of America does not agree with or like her authentic self. Therein lies the rub.
Authenticity...if you can fake that, you've got it made!
Isnt there a Yogi Berra-ism along the lines of "if you can fake that, you got it made?" CC, JSM
bagdadbob and I are on the Psychic Friends Network, it seems....CC, JSM
When Calvin was wondering what to draw, Hobbes told him to "Just draw what you feel." In reply, Calvin said "The last time I did that, they sent me to the school psychologist."
The Museum of Authenticity is closing? For real?
"The Museum of Authenticity is closing? For real?"
Ha ha. Just the annex. How much authenticity do you *really* need?
Most of what is presented as “authentic” is usually carefully crafted (or “curated”) with most of the rough edges sanded down and a heavy coat of varnish applied.
"Ha ha. Just the annex. How much authenticity do you *really* need?"
Doesn't the existence of a museum imply there isn't an abundance of it?
Somehow I sense that Holden Caulfield would find this "authenticity" resurgence to be "phony."
I'm reminded of the Lomaxes searching the South for musicians who play "authentic" music. They didn't want to hear Ledbetter playing jazz, pop or western, even though that's what the customers wanted to hear in bars and honkytonks on Saturday night. Later, black listeners would accuse him of being inauthentic because he played the bluesy stuff the Lomaxes had demanded.
I think the Cherwell article (A love letter to authenticity)is an AI construct. It is jammed and cluttered with comparisons like some horrible Hello Kitty room in Korea. And it doesn't know what the words it uses mean. Look at this:
" The liminal ambiguity lends itself well to folklore, legends, and myth; regaled tales of wandering eyes and flickering lights. " "regaled tales?"
"a siren-like hypnosis that sucks me in." The syrens in the Odyssey sang a song that enchanted with its promises, they did not hypnotize.
My favorite sentence is this:
"My face, as I see it now, is a tapestry of all those who love me. And if I pull at the threads, will the whole thing unravel? This uncertainty is enough to sate my curiosity."
I thought this young woman was uncertain of her attractions. But suddenly it turns out that she has been curious about whether her face will unravel and equally suddenly her curiosity is "sated" by fear.
I think that's the typical AI incoherence which appears whenever AI ventures out of Reportland or TechSupportland into Thoughtland.
Beautiful country. Salida is just east of Poncha Springs, at the intersection of US 50 and 285. US 285 runs from Santa Fe to Denver, and to the west, as you drive north, is the Collegiate range. Most over 14k’. Next city north is Bueno Vista (state reformatory). West on US 50 is Monarch Pass and Gunnison. This winter the N CO mountains have been relatively dry, so daughter+SIL have been skiing there a couple times this season. East on US 50 follows the Arkansas, through Canyon City (State prison), and federal SuperMax, to Pueblo. Stop there. Beyond that is what we call W Kansas.
Wait a minute! Obama has values? Like what? “3a : something that can be bought for a low or fair price.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Why judge people by an amorphous concept like "authenticity" when we have the perfectly fine attributes of measuring them by what results they produce? Do they seek truth and beauty or rumor and strife? Do their stated purposes for policies generally match the objective tactics used to get there and the tangible outcomes?
One could judge friend or foe by such standards, if one was honest enough to do so.
Jasmine Crockett
Have y'all heard her Senate commericals?
surprizingly (NOT surprizingly), the ivy league private schoolgirl speaks (now speaks) PERFECT ENGLISH (again).
It's ALMOST AS IF, her ghetto talk was just an affection.
hmmm tell me AGAIN, about branding?
"I think the Cherwell article (A love letter to authenticity)is an AI construct"
Here are the reasons Grok found that "it's almost certainly human-written":
• Cherwell maintains consistent editorial standards and bylines for student contributors. Fake/AI-generated spam articles don't typically appear embedded in their real, ongoing archive alongside verifiable investigations and campus reporting.
•No external discussion flags this piece as AI-generated (no Reddit threads, no X posts, no blog call-outs accusing it of being ChatGPT slop).
• Student op-eds like this frequently adopt a confessional, idealistic, or "letter to X" format — it's a very human, very Oxford-student thing to write.
I fed Grok the phrases that made you suspicious and got this:
"The liminal ambiguity lends itself well to folklore, legends, and myth; regaled tales of wandering eyes and flickering lights."
"Regaled tales" is indeed odd. "Regale" usually means to entertain or delight someone (often with stories or food/drink), so "regaled tales" sounds like tales that have been told in an entertaining way—but it's clunky and not idiomatic. A more natural phrasing might be " oft-regaled tales" or simply "tales regaled." This feels like a writer reaching for a fancy word without nailing the collocation, which can happen with enthusiastic undergraduates stretching their vocabulary (common in Oxford student papers) or with AI over-prompted to use elevated language.
"a siren-like hypnosis that sucks me in."
Fair critique on the mythology: the Sirens in the Odyssey enchant through song and promises of knowledge/glory, luring sailors to crash—not exactly "hypnosis" in the modern trance sense. But "siren-like" as a metaphor for seductive, dangerous allure is extremely common in contemporary writing (beauty ads, social media critiques, etc.), and pairing it with "hypnosis" is a loose but not unheard-of extension. It's imprecise, but not wildly incoherent—more like someone blending pop-culture associations (siren = alluring danger) without strict fidelity to Homer.
The tapestry sentence: "My face, as I see it now, is a tapestry of all those who love me. And if I pull at the threads, will the whole thing unravel? This uncertainty is enough to sate my curiosity."
This is the strongest example of potential incoherence. The piece builds toward embracing inherited/family features as authentic beauty (laugh lines from dad, smile from mum, etc.), so the "tapestry of all those who love me" metaphor makes thematic sense—your face is woven from loved ones' influences. The fear of "pulling threads" (i.e., altering your appearance via cosmetics/filters) risking unraveling that inherited identity is coherent on a symbolic level.
However, the jump to "this uncertainty is enough to sate my curiosity" is abrupt and tonally weird. Earlier the author describes obsessive teenage fixation and ongoing insecurity; suddenly curiosity about self-alteration is "sated" (satisfied/quenched) by the mere fear of loss? It reads like the writer wanted a poignant, conclusive flourish but landed on phrasing that feels emotionally mismatched or rushed—like curiosity was never really the driving emotion, so "sating" it doesn't quite land. This kind of slight logical/emotional slippage is exactly what people flag as "AI incoherence" when models generate flowery conclusions without tight emotional threading.
These are valid nitpicks—the prose is earnest, metaphor-heavy, and occasionally overwrought or imprecise in a way that screams "ambitious 20-something student essayist trying to sound profound" more than polished professional writing. Cherwell pieces often have this quality; they're not edited to death like national outlets. The "cluttered comparisons" feel (Victorian apothecary vanity, votive offerings, sharks smelling blood, lambs to slaughter, capitalist fodder, etc.) pile up densely, which can feel like a "horrible Hello Kitty room" if you're not in the mood for maximalist undergrad lyricism.
Authenticity isn't a thing. It's a lack of things, often accumulated. You are born authentic, and with that first cry you pretend to be a victim in terrible distress, and your journey away from authenticity begins.
Margaret Thatcher was quite authentic.
Jasmine: fake accents, fake hair. A complete grifter.
Paging diogenes
We are all authentic for 7-8 hrs. per day, including the toilet trips.
Is 'authenticity' in these discussions just shorthand for 'not wanting to adapt to the culture?' If you enter into a culture - whether corporate, academic, governmental, etc - where the rules were made by and for white English-speaking men, and you're not one, you will have to adapt.
Until you have enough critical mass that you can make it adapt to you, through regulatory capture, collective bargaining, voting as a bloc, moral suasion, etc.
Then I guess one of your tactics in that effort is saying "your rules force me to be inauthentic?" CC, JSM
There's nothing authentic about AI.
Authenticity—whatever it is, women and minorities are hardest hit.
Dammit the annex was the most authentic part of the museum.
I wonder how we can even debate anything much longer. With AI capable of faking video, photos and audio, any such facts you rely are suspect, and I assume eventually AI will not even be able to identify its own fakes, assuming it even wants to. Soon truth may be so well camouflaged by lies that it will be invisible, unprovable, maybe lost forever.
Sweet Meteor of Death, I beseech you: make haste.
Can a world without a grip on truth survive?
I'm only here to improve morale.
Authentic is a marketing term. We are large. We contain multitudes.
I sure was worried about purchasing a $25,000 Mickey Mantle signed baseball card, but knowing it came with a “letter of authenticity” relieved my fears. If anyone is interested in buying it, I would be willing to sell it dirt cheap. (Sarc alert)
perhaps genuine is a more correct term, its peculiar what some people think is authentic, and what isn't,
so lefties like mark ruffalo, can be anti petroleum, yet have a private jet, or share one, (do they still have those gulf stream deals)
Letters of authenticity are outdated. Test the Mick’s bat for trace DNA and dust it for finger prints.
Well if AI says it's authentic, that's good enough for me.
Hey Bagoh--or anyone else--did you read Coffee and Covid talking about Moltbot (Clawdbot) this morning?
I'm still processing, but an AI program that uses its own initiative to find, install and use AI programs to accomplish what its "owner" asks it to (or what it decides to?) is, at the very least, thought-provoking.
boatbuilder, I'll check it out, but I know it will scare me. I fear anyone I can't fire or anything I can't blow up.
Bagoh I fear anything called an "app."
But It's coming soon to a theater near you.
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