It does not surprise me that Merriam-Webster has picked AUTHENTIC as the word of the year for 2023.
In their announcement this week, they said that AUTHENTIC was one of the most looked up words in the online dictionary. (Merriam Webster is the oldest publisher of dictionaries in the USA).
I was interested to know what last year’s word was. I took a shot and guessed that it was NARCISSIST. I was wrong but pretty pretty close. The word of the year for 2022 was GASLIGHTING and in 2021 it was VACCINE. Makes sense.
So why AUTHENTIC in 2023? Well, I reckon it’s got lots to do with how all things AI crashed into the mainstream this year. So much so that I’ve developed more than a healthy dose of scepticism about most things I see online. I don’t know about you, but every time I hear a certain voice or read certain things, my inner voice screams:
Is he/she real?
Did they really write that?
I wonder how much of that was done using ChatGPT?
I smell some Deepfake around here
His academic integrity is sus
That is definitely an AI generated bikini bod!
And then someone asked me in a meeting just last week if I was concerned that AI would put me out of business as a writer. I said no, because when you are yourself, you really have no competition. I also told him that I was not that worried that an AI generated JLo was going to be sleeping on my side of the bed anytime soon either.
But seriously, why are so many people looking up the word authentic? I reckon the online search volume is an indication of our collective headspace. That line between what is real and what is fake has become so blurred that we don’t trust ourselves anymore. Our intuition is basically being put out of business!
So what are we to do, my friends? I say we focus on what we CAN control:
- We can spend our cash with brands that feel genuine
- Consume media that we have checked and cross checked
- Normalise unfollowing people that don’t sit well with our inner compass
- Limit our physical interaction with fickle people
- Produce work in line with our highest integrity
- Read the fineprint as far as copyright, trademarks and disclaimers go.
And in our quest to be more authentic, please let’s all try our best not to fake humility (I can smell that performance a mile away) *images of those I’m so real, no make-up/”praying” for the camera influencers come to mind*
How does that sound to you? If each of us focuses on just a couple of things, we’ll be all right and 2023 may just be the year we define AUTHENTIC for real.
I see YOU,
Lee Mayimele 