It’s You I Like

We value authenticity. It can be difficult for some people.

Portrait of Monsieur Bertin by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, 1832 (public domain - Wikipedia)

“No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”  — Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

For those struggling with the perennial “personal brand” development, one question you might ask yourself is “What do I want the world to see?”

Because of the ubiquity of online content—whether on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or elsewhere—we have an impression of what success looks like, as if a 15-second staged and edited video could tell the full story.

Weblebrities (not influencers, mind you) are no different than celebrities of decades ago, made glamorous by the Hollywood press machine, their reputations kept intact by an incestuous relationship between studio publicists and gossip columnists. We saw wha…