The authentic modern life

As celebrities turn themselves into brands, we all risk losing our grip on reality

Back in January, the notoriously reclusive musician Frank Ocean made his Instagram profile available to the public. Hundreds of thousands flocked to the newly opened feed to see photos that Ocean had privately posted for years. It was a rare glimpse into the life of the 31- year- old songwriter who has mostly shunned modern notions of celebrity and fame.

“With some pop stars,” Ocean said in an interview with GQ, “the idea of them is maybe more balanced or fully formed: a half- dozen magazine covers, x amount of interviews, a daily influx of media. When you’re completely minimal with media, there’s a lot of pressure on whatever one thing you’re doing, the stakes are higher. Social media helps that, ‘cause you’re fully in control and can message that how you want.”

For decades, our fascination with celebrities has been happily fed by media outlets. The first national weekly gossip tabloid, Broadway Brevities and Society Gossip, launched in 1916. Others soon followed. Through the years, we relied on magazines like People and Us, the kind of publications that get flipped through at dentist’s offices, to find out what celebrities are up to: who is breaking up with whom and what they’re wearing on their way to the gym. As our accessibility to content has increased, these glimpses became more frequent and extensive. By and large, though, celebrity stories had always been disseminated through the media.

That’s begun to change, however. Celebrities have recently wrested the power of their own storytelling back. The Kardashians have their own television show, Beyoncé wrote her own Vogue cover story and, in the case of Ocean, it’s an outlier for a celebrated artist to not be creating and sharing their own content over social media. As celebrities take control of their own narrative, there’s been a general assumption that it creates a more authentic experience for their audience, but just because the stories are being told from a different perspective doesn’t mean it is any more real. By dealing directly to their consumers, celebrities have essentially become personalized brands.

Brands, by nature, have something to sell. Their communication to the world is a marketing plan packaged to feel personal; to convince you to take action, in a way that feels authentic. Celebrities, as brands, are doing the exact same. It may seem that their direct approach is making for a more authentic experience, but they are, in fact, merely selling us authenticity as their own product.

Eric Hu is the Global Design Director of Nike Sportswear and previously spent years working with fashion designers and streetwear brands, helping them cultivate their own identity. Long before Nike ad campaigns featuring Colin Kaepernick and Serena Williams caused a stir, Hu spoke about how brands “weaponize authenticity” in an interview with luxury fashion retailer SSENSE. “We’re more concerned with appearing real than being real,” he said. “The sooner brands acknowledge that performative authenticity is a flawed concept, the sooner you can have a real conversation with a brand.”

This obsession with valuing the appearance of authenticity over its actualization is perhaps best exemplified by The Shop, an HBO show hosted by LeBron James. Billed as unscripted and unfiltered, the series features the basketball star talking to celebrities in a barbershop.

In the second episode of the series, Drake visited the barbershop to provide his first response to a rap beef with Pusha T that grabbed headlines throughout the s u m m e r. T h e feud had abruptly ended when Pusha released a diss track titled “The Story of Adidon,” revealing to the world that Drake has a child. (Never mind that the Canadian rapper had been waiting to share the news as part of an upcoming Adidas campaign. Let that sink in for a moment.) Alongside James and his business partner Maverick Carter, Drake talked about how certain lines in hip-hop battles shouldn’t be crossed, like when Pusha used Drake’s producer and close friend Noah Shebib’s battle with multiple sclerosis as a punchline. The three also discussed the importance of fatherhood, and at one point, Drake pulled up a photo of his son on his phone to show James.

Unscripted and unfiltered, indeed. Despite an overwhelmingly positive response to the segment, there is something about it that feels cultivated, like an inbound play in basketball rather than something that happens in transition. Even if we assume Drake didn’t think about these responses ahead of time — or only agreed to discuss certain topics prior to appearing on the show in the first place — the platform for him to address the most tumultuous point of his career to date was perfect: among friends in an environment that would not allow for any pushback.

Once again, the authenticity doesn’t matter as much as having an aura of authenticity. This is our modern era: a world where Instagram influencers are charging $165 for a four-hour creative workshop to teach you how to be yourself online; where everyone — celebrities, brands, your friend from high school who is now suddenly a different person on Instagram — is trying to find a connection to an audience. In the midst of this, we are slowly losing what being real actually means.

It may seem vapid or downright silly to write of “a relationship” with celebrities, but as social media continues to turn all of us into celebrated versions of ourselves, their outward-facing personas — their brands — have become the de facto standards for our own behaviour online. It’s as much of a performance for them as it is for us. If everyone is striving toward a performative goal, from the regular joe to the most popular celebrity, we risk creating a feedback loop wherein whatever is presented as acceptable is thereby accepted.

In the process of everyone lowering the bar for authenticity and mistaking the appearance of reality as reality, we’re reduced to applauding those who are able to create the best facade. We no longer celebrate artists or ideas; instead, we end up revering the best brand.