Authenticity

Seemingly conscious of the rhetorical bait-and-switch she’s performing, Sandberg cautions her readers: “And, yes, this shift to authenticity will take getting used to and will elicit cries about lost privacy. But people will increasingly recognise the benefits of such expression.” Converging your real and virtual selves naturally requires Facebook to know what you are doing and thinking at all times.

Authenticity is an unreachable goal. An important part of identity, as it’s long been understood, is that we act differently in different situations. We put on different roles, we code-switch. We might speak differently with our parents than we would with our children or a coworker or someone we’re flirting with at a bar. At the risk of slipping into something hazily postmodern, there is no single “self.”

–Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection