Notes on identity - authenticity vs 'profilicity'

This was originally published on my newsletter

I’m part way through a book called You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity in which the authors argue that the meaning of identity, as influenced by society, has changed between different types: sincerity, authenticity, and ‘profilicity’.

In their use of these terms, sincerity refers to playing social roles that are largely assigned to us: farmer, husband, mother or devout follower of a particular faith. These roles, transmitted through such things as religion, gender, class, age or social standing, dictate how we dress, what we do, and how we see the world. To be sincere is to align one’s identity fully with the given role.

After sincerity comes authenticity, which points towards the idea that the ’true you’ is what lies hidden beneath all the masks that are imposed by social roles. The authentic you is what’s left when you cast the roles off and express what remains.

Finally we come to identity through ‘profilicity’, derived from the experience of profiles of various forms on social media, dating apps, CVs and the like. Profilicity is a kind of second-order identity that emerges when we see ourselves as being seen by others. And not just any other, but a general peer, a “larger, personally unknown public”.

The authors point out that none of these identities is any less valid than another, they just reflect the way society around us works. Depending on your generation, though, you may find one of them more resonant than the others. As a mid-thirties millennial, I’ve been steeped in the story of authenticity and tend to find sincerity, as expressed here, stifling.

But in a world where personal freedoms are limited and success in life depends on living up to one’s social role, merging your identity with the roles you’ve been given is an effective strategy. Yearning for a kind of self-expression that society simply won’t grant you is likely to bring suffering.

As society becomes more dynamic and old social structures break down, the idea that ’true identity’ can be found in the absence of the roles that once gave us direction is comforting. Authenticity offers us both a chance and an imperative to ‘find ourselves’, a mission that becomes all the more compelling as society retreats from telling us who we are.

Now that we live in a hyper-connected online world, where it’s increasingly difficult to exist without being observed in some way by a largely anonymous crowd, defining who we are by how we are perceived and judged by others becomes its own strategy for success.

While it’s tempting to believe that how others perceive you shouldn’t matter, as authenticity suggests, it really depends on which societal waters you swim in. You can be as authentic as you want in your online dating profile, but if everyone around you is presenting themselves through the more highly-curated perspective of profilicity, you’ll probably get fewer matches than those whose lives are naturally performance art. Those beautiful photos on an Indonesian beach, the well-regarded political views and evidence of social validation from the general peer start to matter more and more.

When I came across these three kinds of identity, I realised that it’s quite possible for them to coexist, overlap and come into conflict if I’m not aware of the dynamics at play.

For example, my profilic identity in the last three years has become, for better or worse, “that Alexander Technique guy on Twitter”. While this isn’t wrong, it has been creating tension with my authentic identity, which has found the profilic identity increasingly ill-fitting.

As my authentic identity started to drift away from a strong focus on Alexander Technique (“I’m more than that!! I want to explore other things!!”), I’ve struggled to reconcile my ‘observed self’ and my ‘felt self’, which created a stuckness that ossified both identities.

This shouldn’t be surprising, though, because each kind of identity is real. Many people would be inclined to say that profilicity is somehow fake or illusory, but that misses the point. The authors of the book point out that while employers know that CVs are profilic—a highly curated performance that everyone plays along with—they still expect you to be able to do the job. They hire your profilic identity and, if you’re lucky, allow your authentic identity to come too. But neither is more or less real than the other.

Do the people who pay me for Alexander Technique stuff care about the authentic me? I’m lucky that many do, for sure, but most care only about my profilic self. Again, there’s no problem with this, but I think it sets up a trap that a lot of online creator types can fall into—as, indeed, do many employed people— of feeling pressured to live up to their profile.

Personally, I’ve been stuck in this conflict for long enough and want to make my profilic identity less fixated. In doing this, I’m already feeling my authentic identity take a sigh of relief and start to come more to life. From here, change becomes more possible.

I’ll leave you with a question: how do your different identities interact, and how might that be blocking your continued evolution?