You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity

by Hans-Georg Moeller, Paul J. D'Ambrosio

More and more, we present ourselves and encounter others through profiles. A profile shows us not as we are seen directly but how we are perceived by a broader public. As we observe how others observe us, we calibrate our self-presentation accordingly. Profile-based identity is evident everywhere from pop culture to politics, marketing to morality. But all too often critics simply denounce this alleged superficiality in defense of some supposedly pure ideal of authentic or sincere expression.

This book argues that the profile marks an epochal shift in our concept of identity and demonstrates why that matters. You and Your Profile blends social theory, philosophy, and cultural critique to unfold an exploration of the way we have come to experience the world. Instead of polemicizing against the profile, Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio outline how it works, how we readily apply it in our daily lives, and how it shapes our values―personally, economically, and ethically. They develop a practical vocabulary of life in the digital age. Informed by the Daoist tradition, they suggest strategies for handling the pressure of social media by distancing oneself from one’s public face. A deft and wide-ranging consideration of our era’s identity crisis, this book provides vital clues on how to stay sane in a time of proliferating profiles.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Technology, Sociology, Politics, Cultural

312 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4, 2021

Reviews

[Jeff Finley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this brainy deep dive on the phenomenon of identity in the age of social media. I haven't seen this much nuance on the topic, and I really appreciate it. However, it doesn't tackle the issue of the soul or how all this "identity" stuff are just games of the ego. How our egos will even turn authenticity into an identity which then must be fed and maintained. Social media has accelerated and amplified this phenomenon, encouraging ordinary people to think of themselves as personal brands that now have to do public relations and image management.

For me, I grew increasingly disillusioned with social media and the behaviors it encourages so I deleted my accounts after more than a decade of personal brand building and online business. It sucks to be "off the grid" so to speak, but it's refreshing to live my life without worrying about how I will present it to others. That "second order observation" thing the author speaks of.

I was hoping this book might help me feel better about my discomfort with authenticity vs managing different online profiles, but not really. I mean, at least I can recognize more that what you post online doesn't have to be authentic - but I have a hard time lying or being dishonest. But if I could adopt a more "genuine pretending" attitude, perhaps I could do it. Heck, even writing this review is exhausting because I want to make sure I say how I feel and it's communicated well enough for this "general other" reader to get it.

I've thought about deleting this review entirely because it's taken me a lot of time to gather my thoughts and put them into words, but I also want to contribute and I love reading other people's reviews of stuff. I enjoy hearing what other people have to say... the discussion... even though it's not a real discussion, it's the closest I can get. It's not like I can talk about this book with my IRL friends who haven't read it. So I'll need to write this review to put myself "out there" to be seen and accept the fact that it might be disjointed or incoherent, or not perfectly communicate the essence of how I "authentically" feel about this book. It's only a sliver of my opinion. Which if this was a real conversation, my presence and "beingness" would also be there, my face, my enthusiasm, the back and forth banter, etc. But now, this is just another review to be consumed in a non-linear fashion - that could be read years from my actual writing of it.

Anyway, I've said enough. You get the gist!

[Christopher Kane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am genuinely pretending to support this book, mostly based on its content.

[Andrew]

It’s an interesting case that’s made here. Simply put, the era of sincerity gives way to the era of authenticity with the rise of the autonomous individual, which in turn gives way to the era of profilicity. Like the best works in the tradition of German social philosophy, it’s a philosophical approach that is deeply and truly applicable, even if it’s based on this cobweb of assumptions, axioms, syllogisms, and analogies that derive from particular reference points in the philosophical tradition. This is why someone like myself who clings dearly to the principles of authenticity feels a visceral repulsion at “profilic” behavior (get it for the gram bro). Some of the most thought-provoking theoretical work I’ve encountered in ages.

[David Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second book I've read from HGM. Quite interesting, but not as readily apparent as "important" compared with the Moral Fool (at least to my evaluation of importance). There is a huge amount of conceptual ground covered, the largest part being the discourse on profilicity. I think maybe the cohesiveness of the narrative suffers due to the breadth.

So, here I am posting this review on Goodreads, and cross posting to Facebook. In this way I can be seen as having read this book, and formulated some salient opinions. Likewise, by referencing this I am seen to acknowledge the purpose of this review.

[Jakob]

Finally some semi-smart writing on social media and identity. The main framework with three identity-formation tools is pretty useful (sincerity; authenticity; "profilicity"). The focus is unsurprisingly on profile-based identity building, where identity is curated under conditions of second-order observation and further shaped by social validation feedback loops. The discussion on how identity-building mechanisms have evolved and coexisted at various points in time was quite interesting, although the analysis on how profilicity became the de facto paradigm due to highly differentiated society and mass media was your standard Debord-lite fare.

However, some of the arguments made for profilicity being just another (misunderstood) tool, where any perceived negative effects are due to looking at it from the wrong lens (i.e. with sincerity- or authenticity-tinted glasses), are just obtuse:

● The defense of surveillance capitalism as an aid in identity assembly under profilicity.
● The authors’ insistence on a lack of privacy not being a problem, as personas under profilicity are going to be non-overlapping and cannot be linked to any true self.
● Not seeing the problem with identity being removed from action.
● Lauding the “democratic” process of profile-based identity building (i.e. the homogenization of behavior)

The book also had a shit ton of “Yet you participate in society”-style counterarguments against writers quoted with lamenting the lack of authenticity nowadays. Despite this, the book is a worthwhile read.

[Vidar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recension

[Konstantin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was an illuminating experience and I don't regret it at all. One of the aspects I really liked is that the authors played a lot with their concepts, finding connections and examples from pop-culture over Luhmann to Daoism, beyond what you would see in most social theory books.

To me, there already lies one of the greatest criticism of the book: The book could have worked like a edited collection/collection of essays on modes of performance in society from premodern to contemporary times. Instead, for some chapters in-between, they tried to extend it to a whole work of contemporary social theory without providing the necessary details as to be convincing. Coming from a German-speaking background, it reminded me a lot of Reckwitz 'die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten', who also tried to uncover the underlying 'mode' of contemporary society, but gave himself more time to convince the reader of his ideas.

The next point I did not like was that it seems that one (or both) of the authors seems to have a personal feud with contemporary liberal politics and DEI measures. They bring up these topics an disproportional number of times to make their points and to me some of them also seem to be their weakest ones to me (while it is not exactly the same topic, see the chapter on German Erinnerungspolitik).

Finally, as the last point of criticism, the authors seem to be really condescending of other researchers and public figures. If I were to write something along the lines of "[...] in their analysis they missed to see the point that [...]" instead of simply "[...] they focused on other aspects [...]", I wouldn't have a lot of friends left in my field. For the point of being condescending of public figures, a few times in their books, their arguments are really along the line of "the person telling us that capitalism is bad is typing this on their IPhone, checkamte atheists", which is really below what I would expect from two academic philosophers.

So do I like the book? Absolutely. On the upside, the authors have some good humour and it is a really pleasant and inspiring read.

[Tabea Werhahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Copies have replaced originals, so why are we still clinging on to the illusion of authenticity?

“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 biological coincidence further shaped by the additional coincidences of our life experiences. In fact, we inhabit bodies we did not choose, 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 body shape or sex, or thoughts and feelings, and the social expectations we need to respond to. Human existence is helplessly multifarious. Nevertheless, identity needs to be achieved. We somehow need to become one and the same individual.”

[Pablo Stange Arriagada · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Cuando se me salé un comentario de mi personalidad del otro grupo de amigos" explicado en libro.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Premodern/Modern/Postmodern trichotomy has received an important update: each worldview has its own identity-making technology. Sincerity thrived in premodernity, authenticity thrived in modernity but is currently asphyxiating, and profilicity has lately been born on the web.

Everyone complains about social media (while hypocritically still using it), so this book doesn't do that. Instead, it clarifies confusion located amongst these complaints where critics only acknowledge two identity-producing technologies: sincerity (social roles) and authenticity ("being yourself"). The tragically incorrect prediction was that the internet would allow people to "be themselves" online, when in reality online profiles jettison self-discovery in favor of self-fashioning, posing for unseen, usually unknown strangers.

Just as it was fruitless for religious moralists of yore to bemoan the burgeoning nihilism of "authenticity," where a heavy burden is placed on everyone to "discover themselves" (all in the name of escaping "oppressive" conformity), so too is it fruitless for "authenticity"-minded people to complain that, for example, protestors at a riot pose for selfies with expensive phones; in either case, it's a matter of the older generation flatly not comprehending that a new worldview is emerging before them, and the previous framework has been traded for something new. This parallels the premodern complaints of modernism being godless (yeah, modernism doesn't care, it has science), and likewise modernism moaning about how "unscientific" new age spirituality is, because duh, postmodernism is more emotionally-driven than logically driven. To make these complaints does the following:

A) Betrays the speaker's ignorance of the differences between the three worldviews' values
B) Announces the speaker's allegiance to their (usually older) faction of the three
C) Gives the speaker a sense of superiority over "kids these days" who "don't have any respect" for x, y, z, etc.

To explain what the heck Profilicity is, the following may help. Essentially, whereas premoderns found their identity in sincerely living out roles imparted to them by birth, family, or God, and whereas moderns found their identity by "exploring themselves" and essentially creating their own god, postmoderns find their identity via public profiles, usually on social media or elsewhere; these three are validated respectively by close family/religious community (sincerity), yourself/"other authentic people" (authenticity), and the "general other" (profilicity). This last one is basically strangers on the internet (but generally a higher number of people than in either of the other two cases). So the sincere are concerned with fitting in, the authentic are concerned with standing out, and the profilic are concerned with "second-order observation." Was ist das? Instead of looking at an object, you look at what people have to say about the object. For example, looking at reviews of a restaurant instead of testing it out for yourself. Essentially, this is the dangerous first step in the recursive reactions I've warned about, where you're reacting to reactions (to reactions [to reactions {to reactions}]).

Thus, nauseatingly, everyone becomes a critic, everyone thinks their voice deserves to be heard (simply because they can project it out there). This has amplified the self-expression begun by the authentic/modernists to a deafening level, insofar as it's combined with new instantaneous technology. So, instead of looking at something, or even taking a picture of it for later, you frame the image/video while keeping in mind how it will look to others when you post it later.

There are two main problems with the text at this point. Their illumination of this new phenomenon is both correct and important, but it's hampered by their A) facile passivity before the encroaching army of profilicity, and B) their atheism, which probably is what leaves them so open to this crushing wave of profilicity. The authors of the book warn how profilicity makes second-order observers highly critical, but it doesn't acknowledge in the slightest how this quickly leads to skepticism to suspicion to paranoia to deranged conspiracies like those they flirt with in the second half of the book (radical leftist dogma). The accelerating nature of society's changes make a rejection of profilicity all the more imperative, not something we can merely appease (ask the British how well that worked in the 1930s). It is precisely here in this moment that we need faith, and just because postmodernism moves it to a blind spot doesn't mean that they've gotten rid of it. Not accounting for faith merely puts yourself at a disadvantage.

That leads to the other most annoying aspect of the book, their tacit assumption of atheism, and thus their assumptions without argument of a whole myriad of issues. This irreparably colors their descriptions of both Sincerity and Authenticity. I understand that they're trying not to go overboard by bashing profilicity like everyone else, but they didn't hold back on either Sincerity or Authenticity, granting precious few positive aspects to either. That, and the awkward organization of the book took off a couple of stars.

These guys repeat a lot. They say things over and assume you didn't hear things, repeating things from already stated in quotes. I think maybe they are writing to an especially slow undergraduate audience, but it's insulting. I found it insulting that they moved so slowly at times, and it made me skim, but then I feared I was missing something important if I went too fast. They should have sped up. Do you get the picture? Am I being clear/ironic enough for you? AM I REPEATING ENOUGH?

For example, they talk about there being no "central" web site which unites the world wide web, and in the margins I wrote "rhizomatic." A full page later, they explained what rhizomatic was. Either I'm just a lot smarter than the audience they were writing for, or these guys don't know how to pace a book. And this book could have been easily 100 fewer pages. Not only the repeitions and over-explanations could be cut, but some of the examples just dragged on or were very lazily tied in with the rest of it. The Jesse Smollett example went on way too long and proved almost nothing, and the Taylor Swift example similarly glanced off the surface. Don't get me started on the gay pride chapter.

I'm already started. The second to last chapter is called "Identity." In it, the authors spend a lot of time talking about pride in identities. Then, in a classic profilicity-based move, they spend a dozen or two or three pages explaining very basic leftist politics, namely identity politics. They do this for I think two reasons: A) to prove they're leftists and not crypto-conservatives, and B) to ease the criticism of identity politics which follows. But it's a Marxist/leftist critique, so I'm not very interested in it. What follows that is a bizarre "flound’ring like a man in fire or lime," where the two atheist authors attempt to dig themselves out of the whole they're in, but without anything transcendent or anything that might smell remotely conservative (as "new-sincerity" might sound, which they explain earlier). The result is really nothing but jaw-flapping. I couldn't find any real suggestions other than "oh maybe if we have a national identity based on shared values like tolerance and stuff?" But we can't even agree on that, so what even unites us anymore? Profilicity as a rule demands superficiality, a stupefaction of the soul in the service of an anonymous averaged-out audience. I don't see any way that this could generate a unity more than the screen-deep (instead of skin-deep? get it? GET IT?) profiles where, by their own admission, the University of Nebraska--Lincoln asks graduate applicants to write a "diversity statement." As they admit, what's important isn't one's faith in such a creed, but one's ability to produce a convincing creed on demand. All I can see is this allows resentment to fester until a radical right wing resurgence crashes into everything. I really fear that's going to happen and people are not prepared for it. It's already happening in places in Europe, and I think it's only going to gain momentum, unfortunately, especially so long as the bifurcated, two-party hivemind reigns supreme.

Two major contradictions render impossible the secular route the authors would prefer. First, valuing pluralism/tolerance renders impossible a coherency of values, since you'll by necessity have to tolerate values you deeply disagree with (for example, worldviews wherein politics are not systematic but individual). So long as you tolerate these, you won't have unity, and so long as you don't have unity, their point is moot. Secondly, they try to raise the possibility of switching from an "orthodoxy" (right belief) to an "orthopraxy" (right action); this squarely contradicts their earlier claims around profilicity and virtue signalling (already discussed with the UNL example above; you don't have to act it out, just say it).

I do think they make an important point when they argue that these different technologies of identities find their strength, not their weakness in their paradoxes:

...social structures emerge and evolve not despite the paradoxes they involve but with their help. Paradoxes provide endless opportunities for "unfolding" (Paradoxieenftfaltung), they stimulate not only thought but also communication, and thereby human society. As contradictions, they can be the engine of history, as Hegel and Marx already explained.

Ultimately, the problem boils down to a theological one. Sincerity is the only honest option of the three, despite its shortcomings. In explaining sincerity, the authors differentiate between "being seen" and "being-seen-as-being-seen:"

For me to be seen directly, someone needs to be present and see me with her own eyes. In this case, I normally know the person who sees--if not personally, then at least through my also seeing her at the same time. We are both present, making us peers in that presence, and see each other eye to eye. For both sincerity and authenticity, the presence of peers is important... They are in a privileged position to validate my identity.

The first thing that this reminded me of was Job's famous confession of the Resurrection in Job 19:

And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.

Thus the Abrahamic religions place radical faith in witnessing, in martyrdom, in an incarnated epistemology and ontology. Authenticity retains a ghost of this, but it's just that: gnostic. Authenticity is a flagrant attempt to make one's self god, to "take on 'the God-like role of being the originator of their own selves.'" This is suicidal, because we are not God. This is self-evident, what with the abject failure of the authenticity paradigm. Don't believe me? How about this. "Nothing is as unoriginal as the desire to be original." "Individuality is a demand enforced by a crowd." "Clothing, dishes, and faiths are already found in society. The best one can do is choose among and perhaps modify these; they can hardly be created from scratch." And, ultimately, "A perfect original would be incomprehensible." Authenticity necessarily slides into an insane solipsism, the padded room with the rats that make one crazy. It's obvious if you watch how history has gone.

Theologically, Profilicity is even worse than Authenticity. Instead of crowning yourself god, you make a largely anonymous and definitely unqualified pantheon of minor gods, i.e. all the social media accounts you follow and are followed by. Under the regime of sincerity, yes things are narrower, more limited, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. At least you are judged by people you actually care about, people you actually respect; there is a reciprocity and warmness in sincerity which is abjectly lacking in both authenticity and especially profilicity.

In their effort to justify profilicity before a skeptical readership, the authors make fallacious leaps of logic, including comparing peer-reviewed papers to social media; the obvious fact that peer-reviewed studies are done by qualified professionals and social media is overwhelmingly used by the unwashed masses makes no difference. A good academic picks and chooses evidence to support their hypothesis, no matter how preposterous.

Of course there is some limited overlap between sincerity and profilicity, just as there's overlap between premodernity and postmodernity, but what either approach plugs in these slots makes all the difference. For example, sincerity might require someone to fulfill several roles simultaneously, similarly to someone having a tinder, snapchat, linkedin, facebook, instagram, and tiktok account, each being different. The crucial difference, however, is that in the former case, these roles all subordinate to an overarching worldview which can order them and place appropriate value on the various roles; in the latter case, schizophrenia is inevitable, as these various masks, all acknowledged to be fake and constantly shifting, cause a manic, frantic grasping at straws. The sincere person, by contrast, has stable roles which give them duties that transcend the individual. The profilic person plays a neverending video game with no pause button, one where the difficulty increases until you die or until you quit the game, whichever comes first.

I'm unsure if the willingness of the authors to play the game is out of cowardice or resignation. They seem to take a deterministic, even fatalistic approach, saying that profilicity is here to stay. I would be much more interested in ways to fight back than some version of "I for one welcome our computer overlords." And before either of the authors or any other astute reviewers criticize me for being hypocritical with my public review and my public goodreads profile: I don't give a fuck. I write these reviews to log my own thoughts about books and to help summarize them for a future version of myself. I share it with the world in the hope that others can benefit from my voracious reading. I do this not out of vanity, not out of pride, not even out of a hope that anyone reads it. In fact almost no one reads these. For me to hope otherwise would be to miss the point. I'm here to rant about books, and I don't care if anyone reads it. This simply makes sharing a link to a review of mine easier, should the need arise. In fact, I made my account private recently so that fewer people would be able to read these, in case my views would find themselves unacceptable to more timid readers.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, be sure to like and subscribe, and hit that bell icon to receive notifications every time I upload a new video.

But yeah, I find it morally repugnant to "look at the faces of others and figure out what they see, and on this basis present ourselves accordingly." This goes against everything I believe. I'm thankful that the universities still value primary sources, because profilicity is what happens when you recursively react to reactions (insert video of Joe Rogan reacting to Lebron James reacting to Donald Trump reacting to Stephen Curry). Basically, the farther you stray from the root of the issue, the more irrelevant you get. Every single religious tradition teaches this. How the authors of this book could miss this basic fact is baffling to me, especially given that at least one of them is an expert in Chinese philosophy/theology, and they literally quoted a work called "Doctrine of the Mean" (related to the Golden Mean, the Media Via, the Middle Way, etc. etc. etc.).

The final nail in the coffin of profilicity to me is the following quote: "The point is not just to be seen as virtuous, but to be seen as being seen as virtuous." If a worldview goes so far as to de-legitimize virtue per se, to replace it with a hyperreal representation of virtue, an image of an image, a ghost, a whisper, a Lie, then that worldview should rightfully be opposed and destroyed if possible. There is no excuse for this, but this notion is central to profilicity (if anything can be central to a rhizomatic technology). That's the unfortunate part, that there's no central trunk which can be cut down to kill this, it's a hydra of sorts. So I guess we better start swinging.

[Thore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and interesting.
Hans-Georg Moeller explains the history, functioning and use of 3 distinctive identity formation models, namely: sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity. Sincerity, the adherence to the roles we're given, and authenticity, the need to find the true self, are clearly common knowledge at this point. However, his introduction of a new and emerging third model, the curation of profiles to a general peer in the area where the profile is portrayed, is insightful and meaningful to understanding current politics and society more generally. The passages on identity politics are especially interesting to me.
great read, really enjoyed it.

[Limele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having engaged with Moeller and Ambrosio's work on profilicity has changed the way I view the world to no small extent, not to mention made me feel more at ease with contemporary conditions of identity. This book is concise, intelligible, and easily applied to everyday experience. I highly recommend it.

Moeller has elsewhere made me very interested in interpretation of the Zhuangzi; the section discussing parables compiled in that work was particularly rich and stimulating.

[Fede]

Ajankohtainen kirja, joka kuvaa tarkkanäköisesti koko yhteiskunnan ja elämänalueemme tällä hetkellä läpäisevää muutosta siinä, miten rakennamme, koemme ja havainnoimme identiteettejä. Kirja vääntää asian paikoin varsin rautalangasta niin, että esimerkkejä on liikaakin eikä teksti varsinaisesti ole mukaansa tempaavaa, mutta lämpimästi kuitenkin suosittelen tätä kaikille reflektiosta kiinnostuneille.

[David Peirce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio's Genuine Pretending is a favorite book. In that book, the authors looked at the ancient Taoist classic The Zhuangzi as a critique of ancient Confucian and Chinese customs that called for sincerity and authenticity as impossible to attain. The idea of sincerity, that you should bring emotional commitment to prescribed social roles, and the idea of authenticity, that you should follow your heart, are misguided. Instead of trying to negotiate our path through societal expectations as if any of that has cosmic importance or negotiate with our own heart as if we know what we want, the genuine pretender presented by the authors from The Zhuangzi finds wholeness in the dissolution of self into the bliss of not taking one's self and one's life so seriously. If I could summarize that book in one sentence, it is, "Wherever you find yourself, play along."

Identity is, thus, a central theme of their prior work, and with that as a backdrop for my review, we can talk about You and Your Profile, which tackles the subject of identity not in ancient China but in our current we-all-have-our-faces-in-our-phones world.

Most of us are disgusted and perplexed by people who are famous and rich because they have a bunch of followers on social media. Most of us have scratched our heads at the notion of viewing the world through a phone (and then applying filters) rather than putting the phone down and viewing the world for what it is. Yet we are increasingly participants in curating how people perceive us on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. We all know that nobody's life is as perfect as they present it on social media. Yet many (most?) of us increasingly filter our experience of the world and present a carefully curated profile of ourselves to the world in ways that were unimaginable even when I was a child a few decades ago.

The authors call this "profilicity" and argue that it has superseded social calls for sincerity and authenticity as the definers of identity. Further, and more importantly, the authors want to make the case that this is the modern expression of the genuine pretending introduced in their prior book on Zhuangzi. We curate and manage our identity and have different identities in different contexts and the act of doing so is itself genuine pretending.

And that's where it breaks down for me.

I wouldn't know a Kardashian or Jenner or their boobs and butts from the man on the moon. But do you think that they think that their carefully curated social media posts are not presenting the real them? Do you realize that your Facebook posts or Instagram posts or LinkedIn profile are not YOU? If social media is how you view the world and how you present to the world all day every day, then how could you not think it's real? When we take the likes and dislikes and comments and apply filters with seriousness, then we're not genuine pretending, even if we are engaged in a form of identity (and identity management) called profilicity.

The genuine pretender is whole because he doesn't become emotionally invested in being sincere or authentic. The key is to not care and to not be emotionally invested. I think that in a world where we define ourselves (identity) through the lens of what we think others think of how we present ourselves on our social media accounts (say that ten times fast), we are more invested in what people think of us than ever and that profilicity for most people is further away from the wholeness of genuine pretending than the sincerity and authenticity of ancient China ever were.

[Nathan]

I agree with Jakob's review, and I take my comments to be perhaps extensions on his theme or progress of thought. I find fault in our authors' posturing of "profilicity" on page 253 as being a continuation of the sincerity-authenticity[-profilicity] paradigm. For I think that, whatever be the shortcomings of sincerity and authenticity, "profilicity" is not committed to truth of presentation. I would recommend you read the chapter 'David Foster Wallace and The New Sincerity in American Fiction" by Adam Kelly in the collection "Consider David Foster Wallace" ed. David Hering. Pages 137 and 138 concern themselves with the character of advertising, in which Kelly says "the most basic feature of advertising is that it addresses the other only as a means of highlighting the charms of the self. It is thus fundamentally narcissistic...". That is, communication and presentation are directed at the receiver but it is not "for" the receiver. Rather, it is to direct the receiver to the merits of the self. It is a purely self-centered communication; it is meant to draw in and charm; to sell. I needn't mention the fact that so much of social media communication is about self-branding, brand-plugging via sponsorship and the like, by even ordinary people (i.e non-influencers, e.g. youtube video essayists). Indeed, social media is such that engagement (posting, commenting, etc. — using the service, with perhaps the exception of DM-ing) IS advertising. It is to garner likes, hype, vitality — further engagement with the profile and person. Again, I suggest you read that article, but it seems to me that profilicity is narcissistic in the way Kelly understands advertising to be because I think proficlity is (self-)advertising (think of LinkedIN and indeed.com). It wants to draw the viewer in and be interested in what they present. It is decidedly not committed to truth or undistorted presentation, unlike sincerity or authenticity — which I think themselves can become distorted even though they are committed to fidelity. Moreover, I would venture to suggest, without rigorous argumentation and citation, that one's profile be seen as more than merely the bio, but the entire presentation of the page including its activity — what is presented, how it's presented, as well as the profile's activity on the site.

[Hebdomeros · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a context of second-order observation, one cannot simply do good. Today, merely passing the salt to someone is not as good as posting a video of passing the salt in addition to it, because the former lacks profilic value. Merely posting the video, moreover, is not as good as the video being widely viewed and liked. The point is not just to be seen as virtuous but to be seen as being seen as virtuous. Value lies in the display of something that is regarded as right or good or virtuous. Personal virtue has to be visible in rankings, reviews, or comments for it to count. This is why moral communication is so crucial today. The general peer cannot observe that we actually act virtuously, because it is not present. It sees only that our speech acts are seen as virtuous or not. Virtue is displayed to the general peer in form of virtue speech.
We display our virtue by making virtuous observations, by displaying moral speech, by communicating ethics. What is now often called “virtue signaling,” or, more crudely, “political correctness,” is a form of moral communication where, by making moral observations, we exhibit ourselves for further moral observation. We inscribe our own moral profile into profilic moral validation feedback loops.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genealogy of our current identity technologies that is both clearly written and brimming with illustrative examples. I cannot stress enough how much of a breath of fresh air those three things are to me as a student of analytic philosophy.

Moeller gives a cultural diagnosis and by the end offers us a therapeutic response. This book is not a manifesto lamenting the loss of authenticity or sincerity in a so-called age of profiles, as others have written. Moeller posits that we do not march from one era into the next. Instead he liberates us from our preconception that any one particular mode of identity formation (sincerity, authenticity, profilicity) held us captive to begin with. We (in societies that are at least post-sincerity) are able to float, and often do, from one kind to the other. It is within our powers to scrutinize these identity technologies, utilize them in the contexts in which we deem them appropriate or necessary while retaining a critical distance from them. Moeller and D'Ambrosio help readers to recognize all three possibilities and for that alone they have made a major contribution to the understanding of identity today.

[Yossarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking of identity differently

I'm rating it five stars because finishing this book feels like the end (or at least a major milestone) of a journey I've been on ever since I stumbled upon Hans-Georg Moeller's and co.'s YouTube channel. The ideas presented and their implications for the real world are mind blowing to me. This book does a great job of explaining those ideas in more detail, presenting a thought provoking perspective on the history of identity(which is something I didn't even know was a thing) and making me feel more at ease with the brand new world the internet is curating. Can't wait to see what these philosophers come up with next.

[Matthew Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best book I've read so far in 2022. It's academic in tone but still accessible to anyone interested in the topic of identity. We are certainly living in an age of profilicity, but I feel the same way I did after I read Fisher's Capitalist Realism. There's a lot of problems with profilicity, but there's no clear way forward. It's totalising and absorbs all challengers. Anyway, I highly recommend.

[Anatolii Belikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m genuinely pretending that I’m interested in writing this reviews, cause it might benefit my social profile here.

Jokes aside, probably the most important book that I’ve read this year. Kinda helped me to establish my relationship to different modes of my life and especially to madness online. Though, it’s not a self help book or something. It’s a solid academic piece but written in a very accessible manner, which I appreciate a lot. Authors of this book also have a good YouTube channel.

[Diego Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

La reflexión que Moeller desarrolla es aguda, planteado de una manera suave y anecdótica, aborda la identidad de la mano con el fenómeno emergente en nuestro tiempo: los perfiles. Quiero apuntalar una noción muy valiosa que se pule a lo largo del ensayo, lo que hay de nosotros, nuestra identidad, está más afuera de nosotros que dentro, afuera en la sociedad.

[Oskar Knutsen Brennhagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the question of identity.

[Misha Serdiuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very timely work on how the identity is constructed, how it differs now and how should we live around it.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite excellent and accessible even to those yet to be initiated in philosphy and its terminology.

[Michał Nosek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting read. Criticizing 'having different faces' always seemed absurd to me and this book helped me grasp exactly why.

[Gage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once you learn about the identity theory of profilicity, you will start noticing it everywhere. Must read to help understand the younger generations.

[hauntedandholierthanthou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird moralizing about idpol and overall I'm still a little skeptical of how it leans into modernization theory but nevertheless, I found this very thought provoking.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to be seen as being seen as rating this book 5 stars.

[Parker]

Very interesting topic exceedingly relevant to modern life (but with roots stretching well before modernity)

[Thomas Shober · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped me escape the trap that authenticity is the only true identity technology! I didn't even know I was in the trap.