Maybe authenticity isn't something you can curate.

Maybe it's what survives the curation.

Stephany Wilder / September 11, 2026

Curation isn't inherently fake. We all curate what we wear, say, share, build, post, and present. The interesting question is whether so much optimization eventually removes the fingerprints of the person who made it.

The idea isn’t just “be authentic.” It is to be more skeptical of the whole authenticity industry: we’ve used the word “authentic” so much that authenticity itself is starting to feel performative.

And this connects really well to what i’ve been thinking about lately around curation, optimization, hospitality, LinkedIn, AI, and everything becoming a little too polished.

Authentic hospitality.
Authentic leadership.
Authentic experiences.
Authentic storytelling.
Authentic brands.

At some point, I think we used the word so much that we accidentally turned authenticity into an aesthetic.

Because the genuinely authentic stuff usually isn't announcing itself as authentic.

It's a little inconsistent.
Sometimes awkward.
Not always perfectly articulated.
It doesn't necessarily photograph well.
And it definitely wasn't always created with an audience in mind.

And there are a few directions here.

One is hospitality: the industry is selling “authentic local experiences” so aggressively that hotels are beginning to manufacture the same version of authenticity.

Another is professional identity: everyone is encouraged to “show up authentically,” but we're simultaneously optimizing our personal brands, LinkedIn voices, headshots, posts, etc.

And the third—and probably the strongest—is technology/AI: when virtually anything can be polished, optimized and made to sound human, the imperfect signals of actual humanity become more valuable. And I don't think that means we need to reject AI ( clearly, I am not quiet about using it), technology, editing, or optimization. I use all of them. The challenge is knowing when they are helping us communicate…Because maybe the goal isn't to make everything perfectly human.

Maybe it's to make sure there's still enough of the human left after we've made it perfect.

This reminds me of when Apple got rid of the wires on our earbuds, and then we started buying attachments so we could hang them around our necks again.

We optimized away the thing we thought we didn’t need, only to realize there was something useful about it.

I wonder if we’re doing the same thing with being human.

We keep polishing out the awkwardness, the inefficiency, the imperfections — and then looking for ways to put “authenticity” back in.

Maybe authenticity isn’t something you can curate.

Maybe it’s what survives the curation.