The Venetians of old time who made as great a mystery of love as of state affairs, have been replaced by the modern Venetians, whose most prominent characteristic is to make a mystery of nothing.

Criticisms of social media tend to disregard its non- or trans-authentic orientation and inappropriately set up a “pure” authenticity standard as the only correct option. Ironically, since these criticisms themselves are produced under conditions of profilicity, they do not (and cannot) meet their own authenticity ideal. Their authenticity can be deconstructed and revealed to be staged and inauthentic. The very calls to preserve our supposed authenticity only show that the age of authenticity has lost its credibility.

I travel to make my trips part of my profile, to actualize the “profilic” potential of tourism. It is a demonstration to myself and to others that I, too, am a traveler. Like others, I too travel the world. The taste to pick a fashionable destination and the capac- ity to present the particular appeal of this destination to others further contribute to and raise the prestige of my profile.

All identity modes are necessarily paradoxical---and they are useful not despite but precisely because of this characteristic. They serve to make the incongruity of human existence appear congruent. We need them to convince ourselves and others that our face is more than a mere biological coincidence further shaped by the additional coincidences of our life experiences. In fact, we inhabit bodies we did not chose, are subject to all kinds of psychological experiences that are in large part beyond our control, and need to enact multiple persona that are often in contradiction with one another. Moreover, there is no obvious match between our specific bodily shape or sex, our thoughts and feelings, and the social expectations we need to respond to. Human existence is helplessly multifarious.

Authenticity paradoxically claims that we can be original and independent, and find identity therein, even if this originality and independence must be copied or learned from somewhere else.

In profilicity, too, as with any other identity technology, once we present an identity, we are required to live up to the expectations associated with it, no matter how “fake” it is. In sincerity, we need to commit to a role. In authenticity, we need to prove how special we are. In profilicity, we need to be invested in the identity presented to the “general peer”.

The notion of the “picturesque” became popular and an influential aesthetic ideal in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Given the increasing familiarity with an always growing range of pictures, a shift in perspective took place. Instead of comparing a picture of a landscape or a person with an actual landscape or person, one could now compare actual landscapes or persons with pictures. A reversal of the traditional hierarchy between the present and its representation took place. Rather than measuring the beauty of a picture by comparing it with “reality”, one could now measure the beauty of “reality” by comparing it with pictures. This is what “picturesque” means: meeting the beauty standards of pictures, or being “picture perfect”.

Unlike in sincerity, where those whom one knows best are in the privileged position to confirm one’s identity, in profilicity those whom one does not know personally count the most.

Sincerity achieves identity by paradoxically claiming that the social roles we find ourselves in are determined by nature, by the gods, or somehow morally correct and without alternative.

In sincerity and authenticity, identity needs to be maintained and developed, but it is not subjected to the same feeding frenzy as in profilicity. Profilic identity, on and off the web, is to a large extent constituted by information, not simply by meaning. It needs to be constantly updated. A publication list that has no recent publications is worthless. A résumé that is blank for the past year will not get you a job. A new trip, a new activity, a new feeling are crucial to maintaining an active and presentable personal profile.

Niklas Luhmann did write a book on the systemic dynamics of mass media, though: a first edition of The Reality of the Mass Media was published (in German) in 1995. Here, he defines the code of the mass media system as information/non-information. This code is rather peculiar due to one specific characteristic: once information has been communicated, it is immediately transformed into non-information: “A news item run twice retains its meaning, but it loses its information value.” This most crucial feature of the mass media system, the immediate self-reversal of its code through communication, is carried on into social media. Therefore, through their code sharing with the mass media system, they may be regarded as an evolutionary development of mass media.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, coined the term “meme” in analogy to “gene.” A gene is a biological unit that replicates itself and thereby plays a central role in the reproduction of life. Dawkins thought that a similar element must exist in society, or “culture” (as he tended to say somewhat imprecisely), and that this must be equally crucial for social evolution. Thus he originally conceived of “memes” as cultural items such as certain skills or ways of doing or making things, or as artistic creations, such as melodies, that could be imitated and thereby replicated to spread over time and space. The term soon became popular beyond its academic usage and was eventually applied to “internet culture” as well. Today, in loose connection with its original meaning in Dawkins’s work, it indicates “an idea, image, video, etc. that is spread very quickly on the Internet.”

Importantly, while taking care of an exhibition in such an encompassing way, a curator remains, to use Goffman’s term, “back stage.” This signals a distinctive distance between what is exhibited on the “front stage” and the exhibitor who works behind the scene. A curator is not an exhibitionist exposing him- self. The person is, by definition, distinct from the persona. In this way, as Formilan and Stark highlight, “curation is ultimately a non- authenticity process”. Under conditions of profilicity, the difference between persona and person is understood— by both person and audience— in the same way as the difference between a curator and what she exhibits. Both the curator and the audience are aware of this difference. Despite the attachment and identification involved and acknowledged in exhibitions, authenticity is, in a strict sense, never intended in curatorship. It is therefore non-authentic but not inauthentic.

Identity is physiologically embedded and can be proliferated and extended by “spreading one’s genes.” It would be tempting to say that the biological identity formation and procreation that occurs through genes finds its social- psychological counterpart in the identity formation and procreation that occurs through memes in “culture,” and especially on the internet. Just as humans have a biological urge to affirm and extend themselves by passing on their genes, they seem to also have a social urge to pass on their memes to others.

Modern society is “democratic”: it invites public participation and evaluation. Individuals expect to be heard and seen. Profilicity is inherently democratic as well. Profiles provide opportunities to constantly engage in evaluation, to express opinions and judgments, to rate and rank, and to thereby interact with and contribute as a constituent of the general peer.

In a highly diverse society, it is important to be able to curate different personas that work in various and often unrelated social spheres.

Given the close ties between profilicity and social media, this means that personal identity, too, must be fed.

Profilicity corresponds to today’s “transparency society” and “surveillance society” where we are constantly monitored. Pro- files are intended for exhibition to the general peer and are subject to the categories and labels that algorithms and artificial intelligence impose. But because they are intentionally curated and made to be shown, it is a misconception to regard them as lethal threats to privacy or autonomy. They do not reveal any innermost core, nor do they abolish agency altogether.

In a sincerity-based society, the social persona of an individual is determined by available social roles. Once one is born into the role of daughter, it is expected that one will develop a persona in accordance with this gender role. Multiple personas are possible—daughter, mother, Christian, shopkeeper—but they all ought to correspond to patterned roles. In an authenticity-based society, everyone is expected to find or create their own original self. Again, multiple personas are possible, for instance, one may have an especially creative self and be capable of being original in different ways—as both landscaper and Olympic figure skater—but these personas are all supposed to be rooted in the same true self.

In a highly diverse society, it is important to be able to curate different personas that work in various and often unrelated social spheres. In a highly accelerated society, it is important to make identity flexible. Profiles can easily do this: we can have several at the same time, and they can all be constantly “fed”—that is, changed, updated, or deleted. Profilicity corresponds to today’s “transparency society” and “surveillance society” where we are constantly monitored. Profiles are intended for exhibition to the general peer and are subject to the categories and labels that algorithms and artificial intelligence impose. But because they are intentionally curated and made to be shown, it is a misconception to regard them as lethal threats to privacy or autonomy. They do not reveal any innermost core, nor do they abolish agency altogether.

Maybe, given the social and technological developments of recent decades, it no longer makes much sense to speak of human beings as “autonomous individuals”; and maybe we must realize that we exist in a highly complex society and are embedded deeply in its social networks. Therein control, especially by the single individual, is limited. How we look and what we think and feel are highly contingent upon the lifeworld we inhabit, and it seems much of these aspects of life are simply not up to us. Maybe they never were.

As Elena Esposito rightly highlights, the algorithms at the center of today’s surveillance or transparency mechanisms are “themselves part of the world in which they operate. They observe the world, they view the world from within, not from the out- side.”

Frank Pasquale and David Lyon, use the term “reputation” to describe what emerges from data analyses of people’s behavior. Pasquale writes, “In ever more settings, reputation is determined by secret algorithms processing inaccessible data”. However, the term “reputation” is misleading. It connotes a sincerity context where an individual has a more or less coherent and stable reputation and is known in a similar way to all members of a community. In profilicity, however, specific contexts or “settings” produce very different profiles.

Korean German author Byung-Chul Han published a short treatise titled The Transparency Society (2015), advertised as a “manifesto” that “denounces transparency as a false ideal."

Shoshana Zuboff. She expresses a widespread concern when she warns against the use of algorithms to “nudge, tune, herd, manipulate, and modify behavior in specific directions” and denounces such practices as “unacceptable threats to individual autonomy.

Since profilic identity relies heavily on public appearance, knowing who we are involves knowing how others see us. We do not find identity merely by looking inward or at our own face. We must look at the faces of others and figure out what they see, and on this basis present ourselves accordingly. In profilicity, moreover, these others are often not present and even unknown—or, as in the case of algorithms and AI, not even human. We curate, assemble, and display profilic identity by entering into social validation feedback loops with such observers.

from the perspective of authenticity, the Macau Venetian and the Parisian are epitomes of inauthenticity— but they were never meant to be authentic. Just like the picture of the University of Macau on its welcoming board, they are meant to show a place in its best light— or more precisely, they are not supposed to show a place at all, but how a place is seen as being seen. They show profiles of places and do not pretend to do anything else.

Just as in the capitalist economy the poor need to be given the constant opportunity to spend the little money they have (so that this money can eventually make the rich richer), in profilicity the low profiles constantly need to be given the opportunity to spend their profilic power in evaluating the profiles of others. And the cycle is self- reinforcing. By citing Naomi Klein or Judith But- ler, we further their high profiles. And if we don’t cite people like them, we lower our profile even further by not being “in the discourse.”

To Naomi Klein’s credit, it should be noted that she is very much aware of and explicitly addresses the fact that the great public success of No Logo made it a logo, too. Moreover, it made Naomi Klein her “own brand,” no matter how much she may have tried to reject it

Paradoxically, under conditions of profilicity, any “successful” attack against it will only result in more profilicity.

In authenticity, one way of feeling especially unique is to self- identify as the genius unrecognized by the masses. One can feel content living authentically only if a few people realize authenticity; after all, everyone else is fake. These strategies don’t really work in profilicity. Your family members’ likes don’t really count, and the unseen profile is all but worthless. Just as in the capitalist economy, the profilicity lottery only increases the gap between those who are really successful and those who are not.

suicide, as a radical form of “passive aggression,” becomes an option. By killing oneself, the subject who is denied personhood within the family brings severe disrepute to that family and thereby shames and socially punishes it. If someone feels that they have “lost face”—that is, their identity—at the hands of their family, they can in turn make the whole family lose face by committing suicide. The family is publicly exposed as dysfunctional and violating proper role enactment. The act of suicide serves as an act of revenge for the injustice received—the denial of role identity—and is intended to bring the perceived perpetrators to justice by harming their reputation and status within the local community.

Anyone who is too authentic risks not being appreciated as such.

Nothing is as unoriginal as the desire to be original.

Since authenticity needs to be recognizable, authentic individuals need to be authentic in more or less the same “fashion.

Abrahamic religions or in Confucianism, did not only provide rationalizations, and thus legitimizations, of gender inequality. What is more, they also facilitated the internalization of gender roles. The message could be: the Holy Father is male, and the Virgin Mary is female— now follow their paths! In this way, gen- der roles were perceived not as mere roles but on a deeper level, as the inescapable and invariable core of one’s being.

In their diary videos, Boho Beautiful display their authenticity through profilicity- based means. They put (staged) authenticity in the service of profilicity

Despite increasingly obvious contradictions, the authenticity discourse not only stubbornly persists but even flourishes in profilicity. It thrives particularly well in the popular literature and professional marketing of “personal branding” or “self-branding.”

Kwame Appiah further explains that a cosmopolitan nation-state that includes people with all kinds of different origins, races, genders, and sexual orientations must also be grounded in “shared practices” similar to those binding religious groups together. These practices, however, are not to be derived from transcendent beliefs (such as a belief in the same God), but from moral values— which is precisely what makes them civil religions and not religious per se

It is just as problematic now to react to the emergence of profilicity with idealized reaffirmations of authenticity as it was problematic in the eighteenth century to react to the emergence of authenticity with idealized reaffirmations of sincerity.

Now that authenticity is on the wane, two closely related reactions are common, particularly among older generations: First, we find it hard to let go. It hurts seeing the values of authenticity recede— values we have cherished and that have guided us throughout our lives. Second, given our nostalgia and our bias in authenticity’s favor, we intuitively reject profilicity.

The trouble is that we’ve tended to emphasize the details of belief over the shared practices and the moral communities that but- tress religious life. Our English word “orthodoxy” comes from a Greek word that means “correct belief.” But there’s a less familiar word, “orthopraxy,” that comes from another Greek word, πράξης (praxis), which means “action.” Orthopraxy is a matter not of believing right but of acting right.

We do not think that the authenticity nostalgia that informs their work is help- ful. Theoretically, it prevents rather than enables a conceptual, or philosophical, critique of the social and psychological factors at work. What is unfolding is not merely a “lack.” Quite to the contrary, we see a whole new identity type fulfilling functions that sincerity and authenticity did in the past. Profilicity curates identity in a complex world where technology has drastically changed the environment within which people must exist, in both body and mind. To understand and cope with this new type of identity curation a new and more complex conceptual frame- work is needed.

Eva Illouz has shown that in current “emotional capitalism,” the public exhibition of feelings and personal preferences can make the self a valuable commodity. For her, this results in a tension: “The technology of the Internet thus positions the self in a contradictory way: it makes one take a deep turn inward, that is, it requires that one focus on one’s self in order to capture and communicate its unique essence, in the form of tastes, opinions, fantasies, and emotional compatibility. On the other hand, the Internet also makes the self a commodity on public display.” Public self-display, as Illouz points out most accurately, is directed toward an “abstract and anonymous audience,” a “general audience of unknown, abstract candidates” or the “generalized and abstract audience” (80– 90). We fully agree and call this audience the “general peer.”