'Authenticity is the Currency of the Future'

and maybe right now, too...

The title of this essay is a slightly paraphrased version of a claim made by American indie filmmaker Robert Meyer Burnett in several tweets dating back to at least January of 2023.

The phrase has evolved over the last few years into the title of this essay as Burnett has worked the podcast circuits that he frequents, namely the heterodox, alternative media, pop culture themed shows. On many of them, he has repeatedly spoke about his thinking behind the phrase he has coined.

I first became aware of Burnett in the mid noughties as he frequented the more mainstream podcasts and Youtube channels that report on Hollywood and pop culture broadly. I, like Burnett, am an absolute ‘sweaty’ for nerdy content like Sci-Fi, Superhero movies and Horror flicks, so I often found myself listening to his critique and commentary on all the events in the nerdy movie sphere.

He featured on a lot of the well established Hollywood journalism outlets like Collider and their affiliates at the time and was a staple voice on many of them. As a man who has produced independent movies from the ground up, working as a writer and a director, he knows the movie business and what it takes to get a film made.

Burnett was then essentially ‘cancelled’ after some admittedly ill-advised wording in some tweets he made commenting on rioting and looting in the U.S; tweets he later deleted and apologised for. Off the back of these events, many of the outlets he had been a regular voice on distanced themselves from Burnett.

Now, I’m not saying I agree or disagree with what was said, nor am I making any moral claims as to the content of his tweets. I’m just saying that he lost some work and public standing after exercising his right to free speech.

On matters of free speech I take the view of Voltaire, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. Unless you are actively and directly causing actual harm, I believe you should have the right to say whatever you want, regardless of how ill-advised, reactionary or stupid it may be. I also believe no one opinion or set of opinions or beliefs should have any more legal standing than any other. This is broadly a libertarian approach indicative of John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Danbury Baptists. I would support all three of those texts being fully plagiarised and enshrined into UK law verbatim.

Since his cancellation, Burnett has had a second resurgence as a YouTube movie critic on alternative media sites that are critical of the phenomenon that brought in this newest wave of ‘cancel culture’: Wokeism. Specifically how it propagates through pop culture and the movie business.

It is on these sources that he has become known in part for the phrase that is this essay's title: ‘Authenticity is the currency of the future’. But what does he mean, and is he right?

Well, Robert infers that people are getting sick of fakeness in the personalities and the content they see online. I myself feel nauseated by the ‘fake it til you make it’ maxim and react accordingly when I see stuff like this in the media.

People pretending to be someone they are not, like they are playing a character in a film but portraying it as their real selves. Instagram filters that distort what they really look like. Influencers only showing the ‘highlights’ of their lives, editing out all the flaws, troubles and imperfections that make them human. These are often clearly scripted and produced with high end film techniques; ring lights, blocking, staged poses, etc. Influencers who hire mansions and sports cars out for the day for use in photo shoots so they can infer that their lives are a lot more glamorous than they really are on social media.

And the more content creators chase the whims of the online algorithms and try to piggyback on every passing trend, the more homogeneous the content becomes as everyone tries to do the same thing as everyone else, over and over. Everyone is told to find their niche but they end up making stuff that looks and feels exactly the same: like it has been designed to appease the algorithm. They are all playing the same game: Engagement Optimisation.

The ‘dress for the life you want’ stuff sticks out like a sore thumb to me, striking me as disingenuous, shallow and fake. I have always had a low tolerance for inauthenticity though, to the point where I don’t believe anyone should ever smile on purpose. But I think this stuff is becoming tiresome for an increasing number of normal people too now. They, like Burnett and myself already were, are getting sick of this stuff.

The massive leaps in Ai technology are only exacerbating the problem more and will continue to do so evermore as it encroaches ever deeper into our daily lives. Now that Ai is mere months away from being able to allow anyone to generate photorealistic videos (with synced audio) that are indistinguishable from reality on their laptops, how long before almost everything we see is by definition not real?

And I have written about this before, and made similar claims about authenticity being a valuable resource due to its scarcity in the not too distant future. Most notably, in my piece ‘The Lure of the Real’ where I talk about a video game that literally predicted a mid 21st Century cultural movement where some human youths reject the fake-ness of Ai in virtual reality entertainment and art in favour of seeking out the realness and imperfections of human only made content.

I think that will happen as the media we consume will become oversaturated with fake, Ai generated content. People will crave the human connection, the human vulnerability of real art after years of Ai iteration and reiteration. People will crave the now novel signs of humanity and seek out the imperfections and flaws in real human made art after growing tired of the perfectly rendered and aesthetically sterile Ai content they see every time they look at their phones.

As I said earlier, value comes from scarcity. And that is why I believe Burnett when he says ‘Authenticity is the currency of the future’. Authenticity is rare, and becoming rarer and therefore more precious still with every day that passes.

I have banked on this to a degree with my own Substack. I am myself and nothing more here because 1: I do believe that honesty and authenticity will become increasingly valuable as time passes, 2: I don’t want to pretend to be someone else. I tried the ‘fake it til you make it’ shit and I hated myself for it (Live Not By Lies), and 3: People who care about authenticity are the kinds of people I am trying to build my audience from. If you are the kind of person who wants to see influencers who heavily curate only the highlights of their lives on Instagram (thank you, welcome & why?), then I’m sorry but don’t make content for you. I’m not a ‘living my best life’ or ‘hashtag goals’ kind of guy. I’m an ‘ugly truth’, ‘warts and all’ kind of guy.

Sure, when I film a video of myself playing music [below], I tidy the room a bit, dress up the ‘set’ and make sure I don’t have spaghetti stains on my shirt. I also will do however many takes I need until I perform the piece without mistakes. But all of that is just taking a bit of pride and professionalism in my work as I plan to use those videos as part of my work portfolio. I would much prefer to just film myself playing piano in my living room as it is, with piles of washing, cereal bowls and random bits of paper everywhere. But sadly no-one's hiring that guy to play piano at a posh venue.

But I do try to keep the videos as representative of me as possible. I keep them simple, calm and understated, because that's who I am as a musician. Big flashing lights, smoke machines and histrionic virtuosity is not my style at all. I could do it, but it’s not me, so I won’t.

More evidence to suggest that authenticity will only increase in value is the numbers that these ‘no frills’ and ‘no bullshit’ content creators are doing.

Check out the thumbnails on Mauler’s (492k Subscribers) or Little Platoon’s (201k Subscribers) YouTube videos and tell me whether you think they are playing the algorithm game? Or the fact that both put out videos of extraordinary length, often well over 3 hours long, critiquing movies down to the most minute, nerdy detail. Instead of ensuring that their videos are the algorithmically decided optimal length of 12 minutes or whatever it is, they put out videos that comprehensively outline their genuine thoughts and opinions in full, laboriously long detail. Neither do they keep to a regular upload schedule as all the online marketing guru and algorithm chasing advice tells you to do. They upload when their work is ready and finished and under no fixed schedule whatsoever.

And their channels have BILLIONS of views in total. Mauler’s third part of four in his critique of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is nearly FOUR hours long and has over 10 million views. Little Platoon uploaded a 14 HOUR compilation of his videos critiquing the Star Wars: Acolyte TV series and it has been watched by 180,000 people. And that was an omnibus of videos he had already uploaded previously, meaning his fans had seen it all already.

So why are these YouTubers and many more like them who seemingly break all the rules of being a YouTuber so successful? Answer: Authenticity. They are genuine. No frills, no bullshit, no pretence. They talk about their passions with unfiltered honesty. No crazy Ai generated thumbnails. No reactionary content based on the algorithmic trend of the week. No crazy marketing campaigns… Just an honest and authentic product that genuinely represents them as creators. That’s money.

Authenticity is not just the currency of the future as Robert Meyer Burnett suggests…, it is the currency of RIGHT NOW. The mainstream just hasn’t caught on yet, I feel.

I’ll leave you with one YouTuber that I adore precisely because of her authenticity and her ‘no bells and whistles’ approach. Erin Byrd [below], writes and then narrates to camera her excellent academic essays on social issues. It’s just her, a camera and her brilliant, informative and well researched writing speaking for itself. No pomp, no circumstance, no fake-ness. Just her and her ideas. And her videos range from having 10k to 750k views. The currency of the future, indeed.

She typically critiques the feminist academia that she used to call herself a part of with reason, logic, Socratic argumentation and empirical study in a non-partisan way. She’s great, if you like that kind of thing.

Thanks for reading and remember, keep it real, guys… The Common Centrist