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.

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.

From Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything:

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.

Society has always been fake. You’re just becoming more aware of it as you get older.

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.

Perhaps as you are getting older and more wise you are simply recognizing the artificiality of some people more than you used to.

Capitalism. It’s not fake, it’s just a commodity, now.

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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.

People used to believe that leeches could suck the illness out of you. There’s always been someone selling bullshit.

If you mean specifically the outward appearance to a general audience, the term “Keeping up with the Joneses” has been around for ~110 years ( https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/01/keeping-up-with-the-joneses.html ).

Fake no. Facade for sure.

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.

I feel like everything has to be ironic now and I hate it. I feel like modern media has generally lost the ability to be genuine

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