Authenticity, everyone’s looking for it, yet it seems nowhere to be found. From the political arena to pop culture to relationships, our obsessive search for authenticity is a symptom of its absence.

We have many terms to describe insincerity and inauthenticity in the age of social media. There’s virtue signalling, which is presenting yourself as aligning with an opinion, cause or social justice movement in order to look good while not really caring about it. There’s also queerbaiting, a term used to describe a person (often a celebrity) who acts as though they were queer without publicly identifying as such, often to attract an LGBTQ audience. And, most recently, the trope of the “performative male” seems to have sprung up.

You might catch a performative male ostentatiously reading Sally Rooney in public, while sipping a matcha latte and wearing wired headphones and a pair of Birkenstocks with socks. His profile picture on dating apps might show him holding a baby, and he probably likes to talk about his dog. His interests, gestures and style are all meant to convey a progressive political sensibility and an artistic aesthetic.

In a world where Andrew Tate is a role model and young........

© The Conversation