Why Honesty and Authenticity is the Future of the Internet
I recently wrote an Instagram post that made me feel uncomfortable — and it’s exactly what I needed.
At around 10:30 p.m., when my wife and I climbed into bed, ready to call it a day, I realized I still had one thing left to do: Post about my last run in Portland with a trail runner buddy named Yassine.
But this wasn’t a typical highlight reel kind of post.
In it, I reflected on my life and where I was five years ago when I met Yassine, which was out of shape and just getting back into running after years of drug dependence had taken its toll, both physically and mentally.
I hesitated to write this last part, anxiety rising in the pit of my stomach. Should I let the Internet know this about me? How will I be judged by friends, acquaintances, and strangers — what will they say?
For years I had carefully guarded this uncomfortable truth about my past, keeping it a secret from all but my wife, my family, and my closest friends.
Then my ego roared in, trying to convince me it wasn’t a good idea: Just stick to the status quo, keep your content surface level, you’ll feel better that way.
But I knew I wouldn’t feel better. I’d actually feel worse if I did what I had always done. I knew that it needed to come out. Now was the time.
Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. -Brené Brown
Digital Projection: Deception is a Reality
A few months back I saw a New Yorker cartoon of a man and woman walking on a beach, the man turned toward the woman, talking. Underneath the caption read, “I can’t wait to see what you’re like online.”
In its typical tongue-in-cheek way, the New Yorker cartoon was highlighting a sad paradox of the digital age: you can be anything you want to be on the Internet, least of which is your authentic self.
I thought, Is this the world we’ve accepted to live in, where there’s no congruence between our digital and analog lives?
It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -Jiddu Krishnamurti
If we answer yes to this question, we are continuing to condone the digital deceit epidemic that’s fueled so much interpersonal discontentment and division around the world. After all, if we could be our true, authentic selves online — the version our best friends and family knows — we’d show up in ways that honor who we really are in the material world.
We would no longer find it acceptable to be some cloak-and-dagger avatar sharing only the most superficial aspects of our lives, as is still the prevailing model on social media.
And I believe if we all did this, to digitally project from a place of honesty and vulnerability, there would be a fundamental shift in how we view each other.
We’d start seeing each other’s struggles as our own, as part of a shared humanity that transcends socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic, and racial differences.
We’d also no longer tolerate business as usual on the Internet. We’d leave social media platforms that have created, through their algorithms, a forum for lies and deceptive content to flourish and spread; we’d stop brigading and public shaming when we don’t know the full story and the human behind it; and we’d adopt a helpful tone when interacting that replaces a snarky, cynical, or even hateful one — the latter a communication style we wouldn’t ordinarily act from in real life (unless we want to be friendless) but do plenty of online.
We’d reset the net.
As Above, So Below: Origins of the Modern Online Paradigm
Growing up as a teenager in the 90s, I remember the early days of the Internet when there was a spirit of camaraderie and cooperation among users, perhaps because we needed to rely on each other much more to find information.
I’m talking about the mid-90s, before Google and its sophisticated algorithms had indexed so much of the Internet, making finding whatever we want as easy as typing keywords into its search engine.
Back then, the Internet felt like a magical land where new discoveries were around every corner — you just had to find them. It was a treasure trove of newly available content: Databases filled with academic articles, information sent over early peer-to-peer sharing networks, earnest discussions in Usenet groups, and more novel stuff appearing every day.
It was also a true Wild West without any established rules or authority, but like any Wild West, it was ripe for wrangling. As more and more businesses came online, early tech companies saw an opportunity to monetize with advertising models like pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM).
I believe this was the precursor to the modern problem of deceptive behavior online — clickbait, sponsored posts, disinformation websites designed to drive traffic. This coercive content with incendiary titles, misleading assertions, or hidden agendas has everything to do with making money for the poster and nothing to do with offering an honest viewpoint.
So it’s little wonder why trolls, spammers, disinformation peddlers, sham media websites and the like — bad actors we’d never give the time of day in real life — have risen to such prominence on the Internet. They’re outcomes of a fundamentally flawed ecosystem where it pays to be deceitful.
In the online attention economy, where every interaction is measured in likes, shares, upvotes, retweets, and then gets sucked into an algorithm to be spit back out to likeminds, it’s often the histrionic street preacher spouting baseless fever-dream rhetoric who’s rewarded with the largest audience.
The Future is Unwritten: Where Do We Go From Here?
There is great stuff in the minds out there in the world, and the Internet is this big machine that connects them. -Ev Williams
So much of what needs to happen next to save the Internet from devolving into a black hole of our worst instincts hinges on what it was originally created for: connection. To save the Internet from its demise, we need to rekindle our connection to one another.
A silver lining to the massive upheaval caused by COVID-19 is that we’re no longer shying away from talking about “tough” topics as a society, like systemic racism, extreme income inequality, mental health crises, identity loss through unemployment. And how can we not? Rich, poor, black, brown, white, sick, healthy, young, old — we’re all struggling to adjust our lives to the widespread changes brought by the virus.
The way we get through this time isn’t by going around it, pretending the problem’s not as big as it is and we’ll be back to normal soon.
It’s by letting down our guard to get real with one another about our coronavirus-related struggles with money, with our mental states, with our fears, with our spouse, with our job loss, with our kids, with our lack of community.
And we need to openly and vulnerably post about these issues, even if all of our friends are still stuck pumping out pictures of their pets or food they ate last night.
Soon enough, the social proof of sharing our struggles honestly and vulnerably, free from any hidden agenda or ulterior motive, like virtual signaling, will remake the Internet into the kind of place where everyone feels supported and free to be their authentic selves.
Which brings me back to my Instagram post.
“I know very little about your journey but from this post I am humbled by what you have done to overcome dependency, and I think part of that journey led you to Alejandra♥️ Yay! Chris,” commented a family friend who I’ve known since childhood.
I felt a warmth wash over me after reading this comment, the all-too-familiar dopamine release that accompanies approval on social media. But instead of lasting a few minutes, it stuck with me through the rest of the day. I had made a genuine connection with another human through sharing my struggle.
The grand takeaway is this: a more inclusive, empathetic, and compassionate Internet is attainable if we work to create it.
It all can start with a post from the heart.
