The Crushing Pursuit of Authenticity

Mariah Carey’s hit Christmas song “All I Want for Christmas is You” has been in the top ten Christmas songs for almost ten years, beginning in 2017. Unsurprisingly, it was the number one holiday song for five years in a row, beginning in 2019 and ending in 2023. What is surprising, however, is that the song didn’t come out in 2017. It was actually released over thirty years ago in 1994.

Every Christmas season, the most popular songs remain 70-80 year old classics we know and love. Nat King Cole, The Rockettes, and Frank Sinatra all spin on crackling vinyl, warming our homes with songs that have been passed down from our grandparents and, as time progresses, likely great-grandparents today. This consumption runs entirely contrary to expected norms, however. It’s difficult to think of any industry where this is true – very few people enjoy owning 80 year old cars, 80 year old tools, 80 year old clothes, or 80 year old political views. There have been thousands of Christmas albums released over the last few decades, covering virtually every single artist and every single genre. There have been countless country albums, rock, death metal, disco, pop, and rap albums that have all tried their best at the Christmas classics, but none of them have become engrained in the cultural lexicon like Mariah Carey, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and others.

Perhaps the classics remind us of our grandparents, homes filled with love and hot chocolate, and a world unburdened by modern responsibilities. Perhaps they remind us of ‘real America,’ one with a unique, Americana flavor hidden embodied by scratchy records, 50’s pickup trucks, and Telefunken microphones. These certainly add to the appeal, but I believe the real reason these songs remain popular is because they were authentic. By this, I mean that they were intended to bring joy and impart a warm, welcoming tone to an otherwise cold and dreary season, and they do this very well. When listening to these songs, it feels as if there were no ulterior motive; they weren’t doing it for money, nor for fame, nor some unidentifiable corporate obligation to engage in Christmas. Likewise, they didn’t create selfish bastardizations of Christmas classics, which had become the norm for Christmas music by the early 2000’s. Simply put, these songs warmed the soul and created a cozy, cheerful, and wholesome Christmas atmosphere.

This experience appears in stark contrast to what life feels like today. Let’s see if the following experience resonates with you, the reader: Watch this YouTube ad. Google wants to know your location. Watch this Spotify ad. This hockey/football/baseball game is paused for a media timeout. The game is back on, and they’re projecting ads onto every corner of the stadium. Google wants to know your location. Pinterest is full of ads. Check out this new Google AI. This Instagram reel was made with AI. Please update your laptop. Google wants to know your location. Subscribe to Paramount Plus. Subscribe to Hulu. Subscribe to Amazon. Subscribe to Disney Plus. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to Womble. Subscribe to Dingbo. Subscribe to this Man Box™ that sends you Chinese junk for men™ in the mail. Subscribe to “food” boxes that get dropped off at your door. Upload your documents to Gusto. Sign in through Weebo. Do your expense report through iWap. Join this Patreon. Listen to this 1,000th podcast of a grown man sitting in his basement talking about things with his friends, but first, a word from our sponsors. Google wants to know your location.

It's too much.

In this light, its easy to see why the Christmas season invokes so much nostalgia for calmness, stillness, and peace. Its easy to see why glistening, untouched snow, warm mugs of tea, reading a book under a blanket and simple days with family and friends carry so much appeal. It’s also why classic Christmas carols bring us back to those days; those authentic days where life felt easy and felt genuine. This lies at the heart of much unrest today: many of our connections feel fake, forced, and disingenuous.

Dating apps are a painful example of this. Human connection is one of the most fundamental and important aspects of life. Without it, social isolation leads to severe mental health disorders. Finding a stable partner and engaging in romantic love is a crucial fixture of social life; it helps ease stress, moderate emotions, and creates general happiness and enjoyment in life. Dating apps skip over the human connection part of romantic love and focus more on physical attraction and competition. If you aren’t the best looking, or have the funniest one-liner, or have some other stand-out feature, a potential match will very easily look you over. Functionally, this approach is window shopping, except that people’s self-esteem and mental well-being are on the line. Dating apps also skip over a crucial part of dating, which is the build-up. Meeting someone in person and getting the butterfly feeling is part of the game. Then wondering if they like you, wondering who is going to ask who out first, and the tension during the buildup is all part of the experience. Without it, relationships feel forced and inauthentic. Meeting someone for the first time with the expectation of entering a relationship sucks a lot of the authenticity out of the process and makes dating feel like a factory, assembly-line process.

Food is another great example of the lack of authenticity. A staggering 60% of the American diet comes from processed foods. These are defined by the Department of Agriculture as raw agricultural commodities altered from their original state. This includes washing, cleaning, milling, cutting, chopping, heating, pasteurizing, blanching, cooking, canning, freezing, drying, dehydrating, mixing or packaging. Ultra-processed foods contain preservatives, flavorings and other food additives, or substances approved for use in food products, such as salt, sugars and fats used to enhance flavor and increase shelf life. Given the high quantities of processed foods, it is no wonder Americans suffer from obesity, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders more than any other nation. It is also unsurprising that Americans are now turning to alternatives to processed food. Paleo and carnivore diets have skyrocketed in the last few years, as have purchases of organic foods. Products like beef tallow, mastic gum, and water purifiers have become very popular as people seek cleaner, more authentic food items that don’t poison their bodies.

AI is perhaps the most aggressive example of inauthenticity around today. While this need not be explained, I encourage the reader to ask why. Art is art, right? Why does it matter if its computer-generated or human-generated if the end result is enjoyable? By now, it is obvious that the public does not like AI generation for works of art, but is generally okay with it for things like research and writing papers. The reason it is this way is because what makes art enjoyable is the human connection. Knowing that the art was made by a person with extremely rare talents as well as deeply profound emotions draws us close to the artist and with one another as we view the art. It is the authentic emotional connection, and not the art itself, that resonates with people, and that a machine can never replace.

This is exactly why artists like Taylor Swift are so popular. It is widely accepted that Swift is not, perhaps, the most talented singer of all time. She also does not write very complicated music. And yet, she is the #1 most listened to artist of all time – a staggering feat for anyone, much less someone with the aforementioned qualities. How can this be? The simple reality is that Swift is authentic and relatable. She sings about experiences that virtually every woman has had and does so in a way that allows her audience to feel connected to her on a personal level. Likewise, she lives a very public life and does not hide her relationship troubles. This allows her audience to know that she genuinely feels and understands the troubles that she sings about. This deep connection between audience and artist transcends the music itself and creates a bond so strong it has rocketed Swift to be the richest female musician in the world. I encourage the reader to watch this video of 73,000 women singing a song titled Exile at one of Swift’s concerts and pay attention to the profoundly spiritual, authentic, and connective experience taking place.

To return again to media, we cannot understate how powerful nostalgia is in replicating (see: not creating) authenticity. By far and away, the most popular movies in Hollywood over the last ten years or so have been sequels, remakes, reboots or re-imaginings of popular movies that once did well on their own. The dearth of quality, original content helps feed the narrative that much of our society today is inauthentic and relies on nostalgia and fleeting positive sentiments to engender ticket sales. The public knows that it is simply a money grab, which makes the entire production feel slimy, fake, and sad. Much of it is a forced money grab that preys upon storylines and tropes that were once popular because new and authentic tropes cant be invented, similar to forgotten Christmas albums that made a mockery of the classics.

A movie that bucks this trend is KPOP Demon Hunters. You may not have expected this on a website catered to philosophy and the founding fathers, but the hype around this movie exists for a reason. The movie follows three animated Korean women who are based on real-life versions of themselves battling self-identity issues, self-esteem crises, and of course, demons. Being a musical, the cast sang many notable moments. What made the movie such a smashing success is that the singing and acting was authentic. The women in the movie really can sing and dance – no doubles were needed. They also really do struggle with things like body image, stage fight, and anger issues, which makes them very relatable to their audience. Most importantly, however, the movie didn’t cater to fake demographic trends. As a South Korean film, the characters were all shockingly…Korean. No inauthentic token races were added to satisfy an arbitrary DEI quota. Likewise, the movie was shockingly heterosexual. The women are allowed to ogle over muscular men with abs without any inauthentic LGBT references added. Having a Korean movie made about Koreans with only Koreans in it while being openly and aggressively heterosexual feels almost anachronistic and out of place in today’s society, even though that is predominantly what society actually looks like. The movie and its authenticity were a smashing success – the film alone raised Netflix’s revenue 17% to a whopping $11.5 billion.

Being able to relate to one another is one of the core experiences that makes us human. Knowing that other people have experienced what you are going through is powerful and binds us together. Shared experiences are what turn an otherwise random group of people into a family or even a culture, and that authentic bond is what we are all chasing. It has been watered down by corporatism, online addiction, and the pursuit of money, but still remains a powerful force. Many wandering, listless, and restless souls today are searching simply for this – an authentic, real, and genuine connection to their family, friends, and culture.

The society we live in is the one we build. When we forego meeting people in public, or when we buy toxic food and consume trash media, we empower the very things keeping us down. To build an authentic society, we must engage in authentic relationships and practices.