I don't know what you mean by 'fake.' Do you mean people have a different public persona than a private persona? Because I think that's been true for most of the history of civilization.
Older than that. I, as a layman, suspect it might be one of the points that indicate the development of conscious thought.
Because Chimps, Cuttlefish and Crows can and do lie to each other in the wild.
Chimps will cheat on each other(i.e. a non-dominant male in a group will pair off with a female chimp, but the female chimp remains paired to the more dominant male of the group. Even going so far that the "other guy" will shield his erection from the first guy to avoid a beating.
Large Cuttlefish males will create and defend "harems" of female cuttlefish during their breeding periods. Smaller male cuttlefish are known to pretend to be female to sneak into a harem and mate with them.
Crows will make false caches of food if they suspect they are being watched by another crow.
For instance, if Pinker is correct, then any sane person who had
to choose between (a) the violent chaos and abject poverty of the ‘tribal’
stage in human development and (b) the relative security and prosperity of
Western civilization would not hesitate to leap for safety. But empirical data is available here, and it suggests something is very wrong with Pinker’s conclusions.
Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when
individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice –
and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted. Some have
left us clear, rational explanations for why they made the choices they did.
Graeber goes on to give a couple of these accounts. They tend to mention a loneliness associated with "western civilization," as well as a feeling that I think lines up very well with what Marx described as alienation.
Some emphasized the virtues of freedom
they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also
freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and
wealth.
Later in the book, and I apologize that I can't find the reference right now, he comes back to this topic for a little bit, and talks about the depths of relationships that these people describe, and how their relationships in the "civilized" world are more shallow and less satisfying. Deep human relationships are the opposite of fake, so I think here we have a point in favor of "yes."
Add to that that the concept of "privacy" as we know it is relatively new. It's been 10+ years since I read a book about this, the title of which I can't even remember, but it argued that the expectation of domestic privacy, even from one's own family, is a phenomenon from the last few hundred years, especially outside the elite. People lived far, far more communally, with the expectation that they just were in each other's business more. I'd argue that it's a lot harder to be fake if you can't hide who you really are.
Between those two things, I think it's reasonable to argue that yes, society has gotten more fake.
Anyone can watch videos of some african villages being visited by outsiders and how happy the local population generally appear. There's a ton of negative stuff for those people to deal with, but I think there's something to be said about the benefits of communal living no matter how much I try to convince myself it's fine being by myself.
What if, let's say, that person has something to hide... nothing dangerous or that might cause harm to others, something that society frowns upon. My reasoning is that, it would be OK to be "fake" in those circumstances.
Hmmm I don’t really think so. Everyone has always tried to have a perfect public image since the days of yore (unless you have fuck you money). It might seem that way if you spend a lot of time on social media though, I don’t have anything other than lemmy and I’m pretty happy with it.
I think no. On social media, yes, sure. But otherwise no, the past was more tightly controlled societies. Fashion had less freedom, behavior was controlled from top down more, there was way more conformity to styles and in enforcement of all sorts of things. There was always makeup, foundation garments, heeled shoes, etc.
I do think the technology has improved though, people can get closer to their ideal look. But I don't feel like I have to participate in that world, nor do my kids. One of my sisters, and her daughter and family do live that "highlights reel" life but not many people I know do live like that, and I guess the main difference to me is I don't feel like I have to.
Post-pandemic, I started to value my privacy a little more, leading me to put up more of a wall of separation between my "public persona" and my real life. Not sure if this applies to others as well.
"Masking" is a thing neurodivergent people talk about a lot, but it's comparable to comparing "normal clothes" and costumes or drag. There is no "normal." When you get dressed for the day, you're putting on a costume. Maybe it's a business suit or a uniform, but maybe it's just "your look" for the day.
The thing is that "you" don't exist. There's memory continuity of the consciousness that drives your body each day, but how you act to other people, the beliefs you have, and the clothes you wear are all part of a complex construction that you think of as yourself. But none of that is individually "you." If you put on a costume, you would probably act different: you'd be "in-character" but you probably don't think about this as being a different you, you still feel like yourself, just wearing a costume.
But if you changed your clothes, changed your interactions with others, changed your beliefs, then people would say "you've changed" as though you had shifted into a different person.
Everyone puts on masks for different groups of people. You wear a professional mask at work, an extrovert mask when out with friends, an intimate mask (which maybe feels like no mask at all) with family. Social media puts social pressure and often monetary pressure behind maintenance of a particular mask/identity. The fact that so many people are aware of the artiface of it is what you're seeing.
It used to be that most people's days were split up into a home period, a work period, a recreational period, etc. With the modern "always online, always available" world, our masks have become fluid and a constant part of us. Instead of putting on your work face in the morning and taking it off after a long day, you have to constantly be ready to break out the correct persona at any time, depending on who is contacting you on the phone. This leads to more "cracks" in the masks. People aren't "more fake," they're revealing more of themselves than intended because the masks keep slipping. This doesn't necessarily reveal any "true self" either because there is no such thing. Rather it let's the common parts slip out more (most people hide a lot of their personal selves from work colleagues) and reveals the contradictions in the other parts that normally can embe kept seperate.
I think social media has the ability to make things impossible to ignore, things that previously people were able to ignore.
Things such as police brutality, mass shootings, for instance, probably were just as common back then as it is now. But now we're paying attention to it. I think it's the same thing here. People have always had a different public and personal life. It would be incredibly odd if someone didn't. But social media is making people pay attention to the fact that there's some people whose private lives are ugly, but who try to project a perfect public life anyways.
Nah you're just struggling with mental gymnastics. I like to call it "who" and where reconstruction... It's normal to feel that way with social media, vs real life normal conversations
You check your newsfeed, you read or see something, then get emotional, you feel like you need to rationalize a response to something that is like explaining to someone why you jumped to try to pull binoculars to see something when you're basically just seeing funny symbols through a window.
Because that's what looking at internet comments and arguing with people on the internet often if is. Your brain sometimes actively needs to stress test your adversity chunking models and agency detection.
Agency detection, is what you're observing sentient or a potential threat? If so can you detect the window or scope that your looking through, can you rationalize potential bias, and adversity chunking, check to chunk what potential threats there are together into one big lump and act racist to make things easier and de-stress yourself from the imaginary threat
If you took this borderline narcissism and paranoia to the extreme you could just become a conspiracy theorist, but you could also just get a wicked sense of humour and have a better degree of self awareness, I get it because I have in the past sometimes felt the same, it's how we are when we feel that we're stuck in a response cycle and get a kind of emotional "decision fatigue" I dunno, that's just my take, and I could be entirely wrong, feel free to speak your mind or challenge me, but that's just my two cents for now and part of why I prefer not to doomscroll too much these days.
Just consider that the average person probably has heaps of compressed and distorted subconscious memories that can be further distorted, deleted or hidden entombed in lies, misunderstandings or dreams, and that from the perspective of a silicon based chip, the human mind usually knows itself better than outsiders however the landscape of a mind is a dangerous place and doubly so because if a chip or even bacteria entering the brain could inadvertently screw things up and destroy or corrupt memories it's a wonder anyone can remember a beer or brief conversation they've had several years ago but forget what they ate for dinner just last week. If the human brain was to detect a silicon chip attempting to act on it, we really have no idea what would happen,...
Okay, goodnight guys hope you enjoyed reading my dumb sci-fi long ass post (my lame attempt at humour here)
My wife works in a highschool and feels like you do, not so much fake but addicted and you have to put on a facade like if you are walking to class alone you should be on your phone pretending to be messaging someone or else you'll feel awkward
As in misinformation and decimation of fictitious information yes social media has given everyone a megaphone. It’s also easier to find people who have similar conspiratorial views and spiral down into believing and contributing to fake news etc. and the general feeling that you can trust something to be real and not something yelled at you from a big megaphone.
As with individuals, I’m not sure where I read it first and I don’t feel like googling it now but…
Everyone has three selves: a public persona, a private persona and a personal persona.
Public is strait forward it’s the face/mask/personality one has in public with strangers, acquaintances, and some work colleagues.
Private is your personality with very close friends and family. Things you would not do or say in public but would around your close circle.
Personal is the inner you that you share with no one. Your inner thoughts, your conscience, your inner voice and inner monologue.
This is generally by a spectrum that blend into one another and change over time rather than three separate buckets. As you get older and more aware of these different perspectives some people act more like they are buckets not a spectrum. These people seem much more fake especially if you ever see their public and private personas. You may have just seen this for the first time.
You touched on something that makes sense, but for me personally it takes more than just having different public vs private personas for a person to seem fake.
Many people naturally have a different demeanor or way of interacting in public than private, which doesn't necessarily make them seem fake. What feels fake is when you can pick up on a deliberate or curated public persona, especially if it's being done deceptively or for some material gain.
Idk if you consider this fake or not, but there's considerably more plastic surgery, Botox, veneers, teeth bleaching, and appearance oriented behaviors these days. Especially in movies, but also in real life. There's not a single actor with natural teeth now, except for Steve Buschimi. Even he probably bleaches his teeth. You used to see people everywhere as they were naturally. Now it's very common to see people who have had cosmetic procedures done. There's also a lot more bodybuilding and body sculpting now. That one is possibly a positive, since it contributes to a person's overall health. Go watch a movie from the 70's. The actors look like real people. Now every actor looks like digitally sculpted perfection.
Because 20 years of social media have programed people to behave in very fake, upvote/like/positive attention dopamine reward center overdriving manners of actions to maximize attention and reward.