Authenticity is a product, just like any other. And it's increasingly hard to say what it even means in the 21st century.
But I always use McDonald's (although any restaurant can be used here) as the core of the conundrum of fake vs. real. Look at a corporate shot of a cheeseburger and compare it to reality. The marketing cheeseburger is the platonic ideal of the product -- it's fresh, perfectly prepared with care with all of the ingredients visible. The cheeseburger on the ground looks like a crumpled napkin in comparison.
Is the marketing cheeseburger fake?
When I look at some of the more image-conscious Facebook/Instagram people, some of them are kinda insane with editing and retouching. My wife has an old acquaintance who produces a highly "optimized" picture at least twice a month. (With substantial retouch to her face and usually other body "enhancements". In the age of Instagram+Photoshop, when does someone cross the line from marketing cheeseburger to fraud?
I think that it lies on a spectrum, that a dolled up cheeseburger could be more fake in the sense that a telephoto black-and-white picture could be less authentic than a color photo taken at a focal length of ~40mm, but it depends on the viewer whether to accept or reject a photo as true.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images [2] http://stevestenzel.blogspot.com/2013/12/photography-lies-fr...
I would say yes, it’s fake and probably fraud. You should have to show real products in advertising and not an idealized version.
At least they don't use waxes in the model burgers anymore. That's a step toward honesty, at least.
When my kids asked me why we didn't have a real Christmas tree this year, I told them, "we do have a real Christmas tree. It's made of real plastic and wire."