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The drama of authenticity is only a veil over the problem of trusting other people. If you cannot trust other people, why even post a comment, or for that matter contribute to society?

If you can trust people, then knowing when and how to trust them matters, and thus authenticity is a concern.

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So it's about connection, and how authenticity affects it.

The author's gripe is about losing one's self to the influence of society.

Being driven, rather than doing your own driving. Following instead of leading.

And then once you're in this rut, it becomes difficult to connect with you. Trust is an issue because the reader doesn't know who is writing anymore. Hence his disclaimer at the start.

I don't know what to say though. Careful, authentic writing takes time that everyone seems to be running out of.

You have actually observed something interesting here because authenticity is how we decide who to trust. Effort and voice used to be cheap signals of a real person now llms can fake pretty much both, so I'm having to work harder to know who is on the other end.

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