The Authenticity Hoax: how we get lost finding ourselves

By Andrew Potter

One of Canada’s hippest, smartest cultural critics takes on the West’s defining value.

We live in a world increasingly dominated by the fake, the prepackaged, the artificial: fast food, scripted reality-TV shows, Facebook ‘friends’, and fraudulent memoirs. But people everywhere are demanding the exact opposite, heralding ‘authenticity’ as the cure for isolated individualism and shallow consumerism. Restaurants promote the authenticity of their cuisine, condo developers promote authentic loft living, and book reviewers regularly praise the authenticity of a new writer’s voice.

International best-selling author Andrew Potter brilliantly unpacks our modern obsession with authenticity. In this perceptive and thought-provoking blend of pop culture, history, and philosophy, he finds that, far from serving as a refuge from modern living, the search for authenticity often creates the very problems it’s meant to solve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Release date: May 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781921753107

Andrew Potter

Andrew Potter is the coauthor of the international bestseller Nation of Rebels. A journalist, writer, and teacher, he lives in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter (@jandrewpotter).

Reviews for The Authenticity Hoax

[oddbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reasonably interesting look at how it is a quest for a more authentic life often leaves us feeling dissatisfied. I'm still digesting it but ultimately I think I agree with the notion that excessive identification with a specific notion of being, like health veganism, crunch granola mommies, and similar, lead to self-absorption and makes social contact difficult. But I'm still thinking about whether or not I agree wholly with the author's perspective.

[liso_16 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I spent about 15% of this book looking up definitions, 30% enjoying the thorough analysis of all things "authentic", and 55% of the time wondering if Mr. Potter was just trying to out-cool everyone else by denying the existence of cool.

It's a rambling book, that definitely seems to get lost in philosophy and a stalwart defense of the status quo.

There are some gems, to be sure, but they're subject to the same mile-wide-but-inch-deep treatment as the rest of the book.

[giovannigf · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’m a lefty but I’m not at all averse to having my beliefs shaken. I loved Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, Potter’s collaboration with Joseph Heath, which successfully made me question a good number of my assumptions. But unfortunately, Potter fails to question his own biases enough to make a convincing case in this follow-up effort.First of all, Potter never succeeds in establishing a clear definition of authenticity, and then claims the concept is the main focus of movements such as environmentalism, organic farming, and the opposition to free markets. I could tell early on we were on shaky ground when he ties all these movements to survivalists--if it’s crazies who believe this, then surely we can’t take it seriously, can we? As an example of how he ignores other possible reasons for people’s behaviors aside for a desire for authenticity, he shrugs off the idea that people consume organic food for health reasons, claiming that there’s no conclusive proof that organic food is safer or healthier. Whether that is true or not, it still doesn’t mean that that is not why people buy it. But Potter insists that consumers’ interest in organic food is only about status-seeking, and uses a moronic op-ed from The New York Times to close his case.He also straight-out says that it’s mainly liberals who harbor this foolish desire for authenticity and wish to move back to an imaginary simpler time. I wonder how he felt about a presidential campaign centered around the slogan “Make America Great Again”? And about people rallying for a candidate they found more authentic, despite his many intellectual and moral deficiencies? The book has a number of other whoppers that have recently been proven dead wrong, such as this excellent one: “...we have every reason to believe that as people migrate online, it will be to seek out sources of information that they perceive to be unbiased, and which give them news they can’t get anywhere else. The mainstream media may be dying, but in the end our democracy will probably be healthier for it.” There are others about how we shouldn’t be afraid of Putin (!) and about how the marketing of politics “does not undermine democracy, it enhances it.” Of course, Trump’s election took many of us by surprise, but it’s still hard to understand Potter’s willful obtuseness. As global warming decimates our planet, and as the current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates, he concludes: “Coming to terms with modernity involves embracing liberal democracy and the market economy as positive goods. That means not just conceding that they are necessary evils, but that they are institutions of political and economic organization that have their own value structure, their own moral foundations, which represents a positive step away from what they have replaced. So even if it were possible, it would be wrong to turn our backs on the market.”