Authenticity as a notion is a robust Western cultural more that I find confusing. The best parse I can get on it is this: developing an awareness and possibly a narrative around ways you behave with a subconscious expectation of social affirmation. Developing that awareness can certainly feel like a liberation of self-determination.

That can, also, undoubtedly be a powerful tool in overcoming cultural brainwashing of sorts, but I think the knife cuts both ways. The "authentic self" term makes it sound ontologically real and suggests that there is merit in searching for "finding oneself" when no ther motivating need exists. That road leads to pathological definition writing, IMHO.

Sure, learning changes you. Some of that learning is deliberate and some is unconscious, and you are what you learn. I don't think it means you should be afraid to learn new things, but you might want to pay attention to what you spend your time learning.

The answer is to think back to the kid you used to be, but now the kids are formed differently than before. The new kids have computers and YouTube, they already are participating in the misma of technology, they don't have the old memories of the before computer times to fall back into.

Author unconsciously became someone who misspells "losing" as "loosing". It proves it's not slop though, so I'm grateful.

Sorry for the snark. I like the idea of the article. I'm becoming an asshole day-by-day, I don't like it, I wonder if it's because of the deluge of idiocy that we're confronted with, that grows and grows, also thanks to comment sections (spot the irony). The sad thing about the Internet is it's a high speed tool to bring idiocy in front of you.

But even without the Internet, isn't culture a way of creating society of similar people, ie. people influenced by others? Taylor Swift is gigantic pop star, but so were the Beatles. Different regions had different local recipes, that all the moms knew how to make, spread in a memetic way...

- unpopular opinion: wipe out every comment and every post made on X, instagram and tiktok from every hard drive on the planet and you ll be absolutely blown away by how much the society ll change within a week