authentic self (1)

Hot Social Media Trend: Be Authentic

Presenting the raw unfiltered self
Authenticity is in short supply online, says video maker Casey Neistat. His answer is a new social media network named Beme. This is a tool that allows social media users to access—and exhibit—our “real selves.” According to Neistat the app works like this: instead of the “highly sculpted, calculated, calibrated” forms of self-presentation fostered by Facebook, Instagram, and the like, Beme allows users to show themselves as they “really” are—unsculpted, unfiltered selfies. It’s about being “raw.”


Experience what that other person is experiencing

Beme lets people share four-second video clips with no option to edit, delete, or even watch onscreen as they film. By placing the phone on your chest, it automatically records and immediately posts online whatever you are seeing without the distraction of having to look through the phone. This allows you to keep your eyes on a sunset while still being able to share.

The premise is that the more purely we communicate the raw, unproduced and unpolished content of what we are experiencing the more authentically we are sharing experience.

A fan said, “It’s almost living vicariously through someone else. Not like you want to be that person, but being able to experience what that other person is experiencing, it’s fascinating, I guess.”

What is raw unthinking experience?
This is saying that if we merely observe the same thing that someone else is observing, we are sharing the same experience. How is this authentic? If we observed truly raw experience without our mind adding any meaning we wouldn't be able to even recognize a tree or any other object. The raw content of unthinking perception is described in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy Of Freedom as a chaotic aggregate of sense-data, colors, sounds and feelings of pleasure and pain. POF 4.3

Authentic individuality thinks and feels
By removing the thoughts and feelings of the observer we know nothing of how they experience the event. It is what we add to the event that reveals our authentic individuality. This is like saying we should consider paint samples on a canvas to be authentic art.

source: Kyle Vanhemert, Alex Kantrowitz

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