Authenticity Is the New Lie

“I’m just being real.”

With lighting, editing, and twenty-three takes.

Being “real” used to mean something. It meant unfiltered, unplanned, a bit rough around the edges. Now it means carefully controlled dishonesty, delivered in a way that feels natural but absolutely isn’t. The lighting is right, the angle is tested, and whatever you’re seeing has already been chosen as the version worth showing.

That’s not authenticity. That’s production.

The strange part is how convincing it is. People watch these moments and think they’re seeing something raw, something genuine, when in reality, they’re seeing something shaped just enough to feel real without actually being it. A bad day gets edited. A vulnerable moment gets framed. Even silence gets curated, so it lands the right way.

Nothing is accidental anymore.

And that’s where it flips. Because once “real” becomes something you perform, it stops being real at all. It becomes another version of the same thing - content designed to connect, not because it’s honest, but because it works.

You can feel it if you pay attention. That slight polish underneath everything. The sense that the person talking is aware of how it looks while they’re doing it. It’s not fake in the obvious way. It’s just managed.

And people still buy it. Not because they’re naïve, but because they want to. It’s easier to engage with something that feels authentic than to question whether it actually is. So, the cycle keeps going. More “real” moments, more engagement, more reward for getting the tone exactly right.

Until being authentic becomes a skill set.

Which is probably the clearest sign it isn’t anymore.

Influencers: Just the Word makes me Shudder

“Hey guys, just jumping on here…”

You can almost hear the whiney voice…  Hell, they’ve been “jumping on here” for six years. We get it!

Influencing is the only job where doing nothing somehow looks exhausting. Every post comes with a sigh, a story, a quiet explanation about how busy things have been lately, and yet from the outside it’s mostly the same cycle repeating itself. Wake up, film yourself, talk about it, and then explain how hard it is to keep up. No one is saying it’s zero effort. It’s just not what it’s being sold as. Especially when you consider they’ve done thousands of photos to capture that one shot.

Everything becomes content. Breakfast, a walk, a bad day, even taking a break gets packaged, explained, and turned into something that still feeds the algorithm. At some point, it stops being life and starts being management. You’re not just living anymore, you’re curating, constantly aware of how everything looks and whether it’s worth posting.

Then there’s the voice. That calm, slightly breathy tone that suggests something meaningful is about to be shared, when in reality it’s usually a product you “absolutely love right now,” which conveniently didn’t exist last week and won’t be mentioned again next week. It’s not recommendation. It’s rotation.

The relatability angle is where it really stretches. “I’m just like you.”

No, you’re not. You’re filming yourself being relatable under good lighting, with multiple takes and a clear sense of what will land. That’s not real life. That’s performance dressed up as honesty.

And it never stops. There’s no off switch, because everything has potential value. A normal moment can’t just be a normal moment anymore. It has to be captured, framed, edited, and shared, otherwise it feels like it didn’t count.

And maybe that’s the real issue. Not that influencing exists, but that so much of it is empty and still treated like it’s important…

Come on - Leave Him Alone (Bondi Accidentally Got It Right)

I think more needs to be said on this issue...

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle turned up at Bondi, it came with everything you’d expect - cameras, crowds, security.

And then there was the woman on the towel. She didn’t move. She didn’t react. She didn’t even look particularly interested.

The rest of it felt more accustomed to. Phones out, people watching, that shift where curiosity turns into something more intense, more entitled.

The kind of attention that doesn’t leave much room for anyone to just exist. And that’s where it stops being harmless, because this isn’t really about a beach visit. It’s about the way Prince Harry has been treated for most of his life.

He grew up inside a system that expected a version of him, then stepped away and tried to build something different. The response hasn’t been space. It’s been scrutiny, criticism, and a constant pull back into a story he clearly wants out of. I find it mind boggling.

It’s hard not to think about Princess Diana when you see it. Not dramatically, just in the repetition - the attention that doesn’t ease off, the sense that stepping back doesn’t reduce it, it just reshapes it. We said we learned from that. But attention didn’t disappear. It just became normal.

That’s why that Bondi moment works in my mind. Not because it’s clever, but because it’s simple.

One person quietly opting out. No phones, no reaction, no need to turn it into content. Just space. And that’s probably all Harry has been asking for. Not attention, not approval - just room to live without everything being turned into something bigger than it is. Strip it back and it’s simple: two people walking on a beach, a crowd deciding it matters, and one person deciding it doesn’t. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Maybe We Didn’t Learn Anything At All…

I want you to take a moment to look at this video: Hilarious moment from Harry and Meghan’s Bondi visit you totally missed

So, in it we see Prince Harry and Meghan Markle turn up at Bondi with the full travelling circus - cameras, crowds, security, and that very deliberate sense that this is meant to be a “moment.”

And right in the middle of it, someone just stays on her towel.

She doesn’t move. She doesn’t look impressed. She doesn’t even glance up properly. She keeps reading, keeps sunbaking, keeps studying; and carries on like a royal visit is about as important as a passing seagull.

It’s funny, because it’s so completely unbothered. There’s no statement in it. No attitude. Just someone quietly deciding that whatever is happening five metres away is not worth interrupting a perfectly tan.

And honestly, fair enough.

You can bring global attention, media crews, and a carefully managed narrative to Bondi Beach, but you’re still competing with someone who has just put sunscreen on and isn’t about to restart the whole process for anyone.

That’s Bondi.

But once you get past the humour, the rest of the scene starts to look a bit different. Because while one person opted out, everyone else leaned in. Phones came out, people gathered, the usual orbit formed - watching, filming, following, as if this was something they were entitled to see up close.

That part feels familiar. Not in a good way.

Because we’ve seen what that kind of attention does. We saw it with Princess Diana - the constant presence, the lack of space, the sense that someone’s life becomes public property simply because people want access to it.

Everyone said afterward that it went too far.

And yet, here we are again. Different time, better cameras, faster coverage, but the same underlying behaviour. The same quiet assumption that if someone is visible, they’re available.

Harry has been pretty clear about what that looks like from the inside. He watched it happen to his mother and has spent most of his adult life trying to step away from it. The strange part is that stepping away doesn’t seem to reduce the attention. If anything, it sharpens it.

It becomes more focused. More curious. More persistent.

Which makes that woman on the towel even more interesting.

She didn’t protest. She didn’t make a point. She just didn’t participate. And in doing that, she stripped the whole thing back to what it actually was — two people walking along a beach, surrounded by a lot of noise that only exists because people keep feeding it.

That’s the part we don’t really talk about. People feeding it.

I didn’t buy a magazine again after Dianna’s death. Oh, I know that the publishers wouldn’t have cared less. But I figured if there were thousands of us, all over the world, our protest would be heard.

And that’s what this woman did. Let them hear, and the world go on.

We like to say we learned something from Diana. That the line was crossed. That the pressure was too much. That we wouldn’t do that again. But Harry; he is in the paper every day. Usually scathing about him or his wife Megan. For him, the attention hasn’t gone away. It’s just become more constant, more casual, more normalised.

And maybe the most honest moment from that Bondi visit wasn’t the coverage, or the crowds, or the carefully framed photos. It was the person who didn’t move. Because for a second, everything dropped away, and what was left didn’t look important at all.

It just looked like people on a beach.

And maybe that’s how it should be.

Australia’s War Hero Court Case - Question Nobody Wants to Ask...

Australia likes its war stories simple. Good people. Clear enemies. Medals that mean something obvious. Heros.

When we see a warning, as per this week... everyone has a different opinion. For my mind it's a bunch of weak, little men, sitting back in their comfortable chairs saying "you could do this; or that"; without any understanding of war.

I'll say what doesn’t get said out loud often enough: Why would anyone sign up for this?

Because this is the part people don’t like admitting. Modern soldiers aren’t just asked and trained to fight.

They’re asked to fight, make impossible decisions in seconds, and then have those decisions examined years later in calm rooms by people who weren’t there. People who wouldn’t want to be there. Cowards, who are going to condemn a man to get themselves off. Yep, your more powerful than Ben…

If you believe the system works, then this is accountability doing exactly what it should. If you don’t, it starts to look like something else. A risk. A long-term one.

And risk changes behaviour. You don’t need mass panic. You just need doubt.

“Will I be backed?”

“Will context matter?”

“Or will I be judged later by people who only see the outcome?”

You can argue those questions are necessary. You can also recognise what they do. They make the job harder to step into. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth.

War isn’t clean. It isn’t controlled. It doesn’t fit neatly into legal frameworks built far away from it.

You either accept that soldiers can be held accountable, even years later, or you accept that some actions will never be properly examined.

There isn’t a version where both things sit comfortably together. So, what happens next?

If people believe they’ll be supported when they act in good faith under pressure, they’ll sign up. If they believe they’ll be abandoned when things get complicated, they won’t. It’s that simple. (and I believe that no one will sign up after this!)

This isn’t about defending anyone. And it’s not about condemning anyone either. It’s about recognising the pressure this creates on the system as a whole. Because once doubt sets in, it doesn’t stay contained.

It spreads. Quietly.