Why do we keep trying to manufacture authenticity? Right now everything’s BTS: “authenticity” that has to keep proving its bona fides.

When someone named the “Gen Z shake” I’d seen in so many vertical videos, all I could think was “Hurray… more performative bullshit.”

Stripping away production value doesn’t make you more real, any more than singing into a crap microphone makes you more punk rock. If you’re not giving me something with soul (or trying), you probably don’t have my attention, anyway.

Removing polish doesn’t make you scrappy. It’s spit-shining a turd.

What matters is the human moment. Because it can’t be faked. How you *present* that moment only supports it or gets in its way. *Obviously* I make my images carefully, but look at my personal projects about COVID and losing my mother (links at the bottom of my website). I’m no stranger to rough edges.

I do love to learn how the things I love were made, but only because I’m already in their spell. I don’t care about outtakes with The Rock for your $3M bandaid billboard. He’s fun, but he’s rarely real.

My approach—Radical Authenticity—is about centering and supporting the bravery of showing up. Of being seen. I’m obsessed with guiding people to that magic, then getting the hell out of the way.

(And last point… there’s no way to be authentic with an image generator, because it’s fundamentally inauthentic. You were never there. There never was a there there.)