The Plastic Paradise: When Authenticity Becomes the New Strange
In a digital age where authenticity feels rare, we grapple with a paradox: the more we strive to stand out, the more we conform. This article explores the tension between genuine self-expression and the pressures of social media, urging us to rediscover the courage of being ourselves.

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It started with a casual conversation with my friend Katya over Telegram. I had sent her a Reels video of someone who caught my attention - not because they were trying to stand out, but because they weren't trying at all. In the world of carefully curated content, their natural presence felt almost jarring.
"He reminds me of someone," Katya typed, "but I can't quite place who."
I smiled at her message, recognizing that peculiar sensation when authenticity becomes so rare that it feels like déjà vu. "It's not so much about being busy," I replied, "it's about being genuine."
Our conversation wandered into deeper waters. "Everyone's so focused on views and followers that they all do the same thing," Katya observed. And she was right - in our pursuit of digital validation, we've created a paradox: the more we strive to stand out, the more we conform to prescribed patterns of "standing out."
This observation led us to a fascinating philosophical crossroads. In trying to understand this phenomenon, we can approach it through four distinct philosophical lenses:
The Materialist Perspective: The Economics of Authenticity
From a materialist viewpoint, our current predicament is a natural outcome of digital capitalism. When attention becomes currency, authenticity transforms into a commodity. The "plastic" behavior we observe isn't just aesthetic choice - it's an economic response to market demands. Just as mass production standardized physical goods, social media has standardized human expression.
The Idealist Angle: The Perfect Self
Idealism suggests that our online personas represent our pursuit of perfect forms - Platonic ideals of success, beauty, and influence. The standardization we see isn't just mimicry; it's humanity collectively reaching for an idealized version of itself. The tragedy lies in how this pursuit of perfection often leads us away from our authentic selves.
The Existentialist Paradox: Authentic in a Plastic World
This brings us to the existentialist perspective, which would view our current situation as a crisis of authenticity. When Sartre spoke of "existence preceding essence," he couldn't have imagined a world where our "essence" would be algorithmically determined. The existentialist would argue that our discomfort with genuine variability reveals our collective bad faith - we're running from the responsibility of being authentically ourselves.
The Pragmatist Solution: Navigating the New Normal
The pragmatist approach offers perhaps the most useful perspective for navigating this reality. Instead of lamenting the loss of authenticity or celebrating artificial conformity, we might ask: How can we maintain our genuine selves while participating in digital culture? How do we balance authenticity with the practical needs of professional and social life in a digital age?
As Katya and I concluded our chat, she posed a question that still echoes in my mind: "What if this is just the normal world we've forgotten?" Her words carried the weight of both observation and possibility. Perhaps variability isn't becoming strange; perhaps we're just temporarily lost in a plastic paradise of our own making.
The truth likely lies in the tension between these perspectives. Our world has always oscillated between authenticity and performance, between individual expression and social conformity. What's new is not the tension itself, but its intensity and visibility in our digital age.
In the end, maybe the person in that Reels video stood out not because they were extraordinary, but because they reminded us of something ordinary we've nearly forgotten - the simple courage of being oneself in a world that increasingly suggests we should be something else.
As I type this final thought, I'm reminded of what my accordion teacher once told me at the Tsarskoye Selo Arts Gymnasium: "The notes are fixed, but the music lives in the spaces between them." Perhaps that's where we'll find our way back to authenticity - not in rejecting the "plastic" world we've built, but in finding the human spaces between its carefully constructed frames.
As always, I invite you to share your opinion in the comments
With love 😽 🤗 😘
K