HumanWORKS

Tag: mental-health

  • The Age Ban as Confession: Why Our Response to Social Media Proves We’re Already Lost

    There’s a particular species of policy announcement that functions less as solution and more as an indirect-but-inadvertent confession. The UK’s proposed ban on social media access for under-16s belongs to this category – not because protecting children from psychological exploitation is wrong, but because the measure’s spectacular inadequacy reveals something far darker about our collective situation.


    We’re not implementing insufficient protection because we haven’t grasped the scale of harm. We’re implementing insufficient protection because we’ve lost the capacity for an adequate response. The regulatory theatre itself proves the dependency it claims to address.


    It’s rather like watching someone with late-stage addiction announce they’re cutting back to weekends only whilst their hands shake reaching for the bottle to celebrate this triumph of self-control.

    The Regulatory Confession


    Every policy reveals assumptions about what’s possible, what’s necessary, and what’s absolutely off the table. The age ban confesses several things simultaneously, though only one gets stated explicitly.


    What we admit openly:


    Children lack psychological defences to resist platform manipulation. Their impulse control isn’t fully developed. They’re vulnerable to exploitation designed by teams of behavioural psychologists specifically trained to defeat human resistance. Therefore: restrict access for the vulnerable population.


    Reasonable. Protective. Entirely inadequate.


    What we admit implicitly:


    The platforms themselves are too valuable/profitable/embedded to consider shuttering. Adult populations either possess adequate defences (demonstrably false) or their vulnerability doesn’t warrant protection (closer to actual position). The business model of attention extraction can continue operating at scale provided we check IDs at the entrance.


    What we confess accidentally:


    We lack collective capacity to choose systemic solutions even when the harm is obvious, the mechanisms are understood, and the inadequacy of half-measures is predictable. Not because we’re stupid. Because we’re dependent.


    The age ban isn’t evidence of protective governance beginning to address social media harm. It’s evidence of civilisational addiction constraining regulatory response to measures that won’t threaten the supply of cocaine water we’ve all been drinking for twenty years.


    (I’m going to lean heavily on the cocaine water metaphor throughout this piece because it captures something viscerally true that sanitised language obscures: we’re dealing with engineered dependency operating at population scale, and our inability to name it honestly contributes to our inability to address it systemically.)

    The Adequate Response We Can’t Choose


    Let’s establish what an adequate response would look like, not as fantasy but as a logical conclusion from accepted premises.


    If we accept that:


    ∙ Social media platforms are built on business models requiring psychological harm to generate sustained engagement
    ∙ The harm isn’t incidental but foundational (attention extraction demands defeating user resistance)
    ∙ Children lack defences against industrial-scale manipulation
    ∙ Adults exhibit identical vulnerability despite physical maturity
    ∙ Twenty years of operation has produced catastrophic individual and systemic consequences
    ∙ The platforms are specifically engineered to prevent voluntary cessation


    Then the adequate response is obvious: shutter the platforms entirely.


    Not as punishment. Not as Luddite rejection of technology. Rather as recognition that we’ve conducted a civilisational-scale experiment in psychological exploitation that has produced precisely the catastrophic results the original warnings predicted, and continuing the experiment serves no legitimate purpose beyond shareholder value.


    We don’t allow casinos to operate in primary schools even with age verification. We don’t permit tobacco companies to design cigarettes specifically optimised for youth addiction then rely on ID checks at point of sale. We recognise that some business models are incompatible with human wellbeing regardless of age restrictions.


    Social media platforms operating on attention extraction represent that category. The business model requires harm. Age verification doesn’t change the fundamental equation.


    So why can’t we choose the adequate response?


    Because we’re fucking addicted.


    Not metaphorically. Not as some sort of rhetorical flourish. Instead, this is an accurate description of our collective neurological situation after twenty years of systematic dependency creation.

    The Addiction That Constrains Response


    Here’s where the analysis gets uncomfortable, because it requires examining not just the platforms but our own relationship to them – and more specifically, our inability to imagine existence without them.


    Try this thought experiment: Imagine the government announced tomorrow that all social media platforms would cease UK operations in six months. Given the debacle of what’s going on within the US, this could happen if felt they were no longer a trusted ally.

    Imagine it. A complete shutdown. No Facebook, no Instagram, no TikTok, no Twitter/X, no LinkedIn. Gone.


    Notice your immediate reaction.


    Not your considered philosophical position after some careful analysis. Your immediate reaction. The one that arose before any sort of intellectual justification.


    For most people – including those who intellectually recognise the platforms’ harm – that immediate reaction includes some variation of panic, loss, resistance. How would I stay in touch with people? How would I know what’s happening? How would I maintain professional connections? How would I fill the time on the train? What would I do when I’m bored?


    That’s the language of dependency talking.


    Not “I find these platforms useful and would prefer to keep them.” That’s preference. This is “I can’t imagine functioning without them” despite the fact that you – yes, you reading this – somehow managed to function perfectly well for most of your life before they existed.


    Many of the platforms aren’t even twenty years old. If you’re over 40, you spent more of your life without them than with them. Despite this, the immediate reaction to their removal is a feeling of existential threat rather than one of mild inconvenience.


    That neurological response – the panic at imagined loss – constrains what regulatory responses feel possible. We can’t choose to shutter the platforms because we’ve lost the capacity to conceive of existence without them. Not at a policy level but at somatic level.


    The age ban represents the maximum intervention our collective dependency permits. Anything more aggressive triggers the same resistance as suggesting to the profound alcoholic that perhaps complete cessation might be healthier than switching to 4% ABV beer on weekdays.

    The Regulatory Capture By Dependency


    Traditional regulatory capture involves industry influence over regulators through lobbying, revolving doors between industry and government, the funding of sympathetic research, and other mechanisms of institutional corruption.


    All of that is happening with social media platforms. Obviously. The usual suspects doing the usual dance.
    However, there’s a second, more insidious form of capture operating here: the regulators themselves are dependent.


    The MPs drafting age restriction legislation are scrolling Twitter during parliamentary debates. The civil servants implementing policy are checking Instagram between meetings. The ministers announcing protective measures are maintaining LinkedIn profiles for professional positioning.


    They’re not corrupt in any traditional sense – such as those who are taking bribes to protect industry interests. They’re dependent in the neurological sense – their own relationship to the platforms constrains what interventions feel possible.
    You can’t design adequate response to addiction when you’re currently using. The alcoholic makes excellent arguments for why complete cessation is unnecessary, extreme, or otherwise disproportionate to the actual problem. They’re not lying – they genuinely believe the rationalisations their dependency generates.


    Social media generates the same mechanism operating at a policy level.


    The regulatory response to social media platforms is constrained not primarily by lobbying (though that’s happening) but by the regulators’ own inability to conceive of systemic solutions that would threaten their own access to the cocaine water. So instead, we’ll just ban the kids.


    This isn’t intended as conspiracy. It’s the predictable outcome of twenty years of systematic dependency creation encountering attempt at self-regulation. The addict announces they’re cutting back. The specifics of how they’re cutting back reveal they have no intention of actually stopping.


    You can check IDs at the entrance to the casino, but the house keeps operating.

    The Civilisational Bind


    Individual addiction is a story of tragedy. Civilisational addiction has existential consequences.


    When an individual becomes dependent on substances or behaviours, intervention is theoretically possible – family, friends, medical professionals, legal system, employers can potentially combine to create conditions forcing confrontation with dependency.


    When entire civilisations become dependent, who exactly is positioned to intervene?


    The mechanisms that might force confrontation with collective dependency are themselves composed of dependent individuals. Governments full of scrolling MPs. Regulatory bodies staffed by Instagram-checking civil servants. Media organisations whose business models now depend on social platform distribution. Educational institutions using the platforms for “engagement.” Healthcare systems offering mental health support via Facebook groups.

    We live in an addicted world – one where, with no hint of fucking irony, there are people suggesting a LLM is an effective therapist, and an algorithm as a suitable replacement to friendship.


    The entire institutional apparatus that might address the problem is thoroughly infiltrated – not by malicious actors but by the dependency itself.


    It’s rather like discovering the immune system has been compromised by the very pathogen it’s supposed to fight. Who mounts the immune response when the immune response is infected?


    This creates what I’ll call the Civilisational Addiction Bind:


    ∙ The harm is obvious and systemic
    ∙ Adequate response requires systemic intervention
    ∙ Systemic intervention requires collective capacity for voluntary cessation
    ∙ Voluntary cessation becomes impossible after sufficient dependency creation
    ∙ Therefore: inadequate responses that preserve access whilst performing concern


    The age ban is Exhibit A. We’ll implement symbolic protection for children whilst carefully preserving the infrastructure that created the problem, because adequate response – shuttering the platforms – triggers existential panic in the dependent population proposing the regulation. The kids are safe whilst the adults play with matches and wonder why everyone keeps getting more and more burned.

    What Recovery Would Require


    Let’s be unflinchingly honest about what an adequate response – civilisational recovery from social platform dependency – would actually require.


    It wouldn’t just policy change. Nor merely regulatory reform. Instead, it would need to be something approaching collective withdrawal from engineered dependency operating at neurological level across entire populations.


    At the individual level:


    ∙ Sustained periods without access to algorithmic feeds
    ∙ Relearning capacity for boredom, sustained attention, genuine human connection
    ∙ Confronting whatever emotional/social needs the platforms were medicating
    ∙ Rebuilding psychological architecture systematically eroded over twenty years
    ∙ Accepting that some neural pathway damage may be permanent


    At an institutional level:


    ∙ Restructuring every system now dependent on platform infrastructure
    ∙ Finding alternative mechanisms for communication, coordination, information distribution
    ∙ Accepting significant short-term disruption to operations built around platform integration
    ∙ Developing new approaches to problems we’ve forgotten how to solve without algorithmic mediation


    At civilisational level:


    ∙ Collective tolerance for extended discomfort during withdrawal period
    ∙ Sustained political will despite inevitable backlash from dependent populations
    ∙ Acceptance that recovery timelines are measured in years or decades, not quarters
    ∙ Recognition that some capabilities lost may not return in currently living generations


    Look at that list. Really examine it.


    Now consider: Do we have collective capacity for voluntary embrace of that process?


    Or are we like the late-stage alcoholic who recognises the bottle is killing them but can’t imagine Friday evening without it, Monday morning after it, the family gathering surviving exposure to it, the work stress managed absent its chemical assistance?


    The adequate response requires collective capacity we’ve systematically destroyed through the very process we’d need that capacity to address.


    We can’t choose to shut down the platforms because we’ve lost the neurological and institutional capacity to function without them. The dependency has become load-bearing infrastructure. Removing it triggers collapse fears – justified or not – that make removal psychologically impossible.


    So we’ll implement age bans. Start to check IDs. Announce we’re protecting the vulnerable whilst carefully preserving access for everyone else. Declare victory over harms we’re actively perpetuating.

    Success! Alas, no – it’s more of the same with a thin veneer of consideration for younger people whilst the rest of the adult population says it’s fine for us.

    The Tobacco Parallel That Terrifies


    You know and I know that we’ve been here before. Different substance, but remarkably similar patterns.


    The tobacco industry created:


    ∙ Obvious harm visible for decades
    ∙ Industry suppression of evidence
    ∙ Regulatory capture preventing adequate response
    ∙ Incremental half-measures arriving far too late
    ∙ Warning labels, advertising restrictions, designated areas
    ∙ Continued operation of systems known to be catastrophically harmful


    By comparison, social media platforms:


    ∙ Obvious harm visible for decades
    ∙ Industry suppression/dismissal of evidence
    ∙ Regulatory capture (now including dependency capture)
    ∙ Incremental half-measures arriving far too late
    ∙ Age restrictions, content warnings, “digital wellbeing” theatre
    ∙ Continued operation of systems known to be catastrophically harmful


    The parallel is exact. We’re following the same timeline, implementing the same inadequate measures, protecting the same profits, accepting the same casualties.


    With one crucial difference that makes the social media version potentially more catastrophic:


    Tobacco primarily killed individuals. They were horrible, preventable, unacceptable deaths – but ultimately individual tragedies aggregated. Society continued functioning. Institutions remained intact. Collective capacity for response persisted.


    Social media platforms erode collective psychological capacity itself. Not just harming individuals but degrading the civilisational infrastructure – sustained attention, impulse control, genuine connection, shared reality, democratic discourse, institutional trust – necessary for collective response to collective crisis.


    We’re losing the neurological and social capacity to address problems at the same time we’re accumulating problems requiring that capacity to address.


    Tobacco took fifty years from obvious harm to meaningful regulation. We eventually got there because collective capacity for response survived the interim casualties.
    Social media is eroding that collective capacity now and rifting the world into myriad micro-societies. Each year of continued operation makes adequate response less likely by degrading the psychological and institutional architecture necessary to choose it.


    We might not have fifty years to arrive at an adequate response. We might not even have twenty. We might already be past the point where collective capacity for voluntary cessation exists.


    The age ban, implemented two decades into obvious harm, suggests we’re already well down that trajectory.

    The Answer We Can’t Speak


    There’s a question we’re collectively avoiding, because asking it honestly would require confronting answers we lack capacity to implement.


    Not “should we ban children from social media?”


    Instead: “Should these platforms exist at all?”


    The honest answer – based on twenty years of evidence, understanding of business models requiring harm, recognition of systematic psychological exploitation, assessment of individual and civilisational consequences – is clearly no.


    They shouldn’t exist. Not in their current form. Not operating on attention extraction. Not optimised for engagement over wellbeing. Not designed to defeat human psychological defences. Not structured to prevent voluntary cessation.


    The business model is incompatible with human flourishing. Full stop.


    But we can’t choose that answer. Not because we don’t understand the harm. Because we’re dependent on the harm-creation mechanism.


    The platforms have successfully created the neurological and institutional conditions that prevent their own removal. That’s not an accident – it’s the explicit goal of engagement optimisation. Make yourself indispensable by making users dependent. Success measured by inability to imagine existence without you.


    They’ve succeeded spectacularly.


    So we implement age bans. Announce protective measures. Carefully avoid the actual question because we know – at somatic level, before intellectual justification – that we lack capacity to choose the adequate answer.


    The regulatory response itself confesses the dependency. We can only implement measures that preserve the infrastructure we’re dependent on. Anything more aggressive triggers withdrawal panic that makes it psychologically impossible.

    The Generations That Won’t Recover


    Here’s perhaps the darkest implication: even if we implemented adequate response tomorrow – complete platform shutdown, and civilisational withdrawal from engineered dependency – significant portions of currently living populations might never recover full psychological capacity.


    The neural pathways carved by twenty years of algorithmic manipulation don’t just disappear after a week off. The psychological architecture that never developed in those raised entirely within platform environments becomes hard to subvert. The institutional knowledge of how to function without digital mediation that we’ve systematically lost in service of some vague promise of social engagement.


    Some of that damage may be permanent.


    Not because humans are fundamentally broken but because neuroplasticity has limits, developmental windows eventually close, and twenty years of systematic erosion doesn’t reverse through six months of abstinence.


    The children we’re now proposing to protect with age bans were born into world where platform dependency was already civilisational norm. They never experienced pre-smartphone existence. Their entire psychological development occurred within environment optimised for attention extraction.


    Even if we stopped creating new casualties tomorrow, we’re looking at multiple generations carrying the neurological consequences of civilisational-scale experiment in psychological exploitation.


    The adequate response – shuttering platforms – would prevent additional harm but wouldn’t reverse existing damage. We’d be stopping the poisoning whilst acknowledging that some effects are permanent.


    That’s the hardest truth to accept. Particularly when accepting it would require implementing response we’ve already established we lack capacity to choose.


    So we don’t accept it. We implement age bans. Pretend that protecting future children compensates for abandoning current casualties. Announce measures that won’t meaningfully address the problem whilst carefully preserving our own access to the mechanisms creating it.
    The civilisational equivalent of the parent announcing they’re quitting drinking whilst pouring their morning whisky, rationalising that at least they’re setting a good example for the kids by not letting them drink too.

    The Confession In The Silence


    What’s most revealing isn’t what the age ban does but what it deliberately avoids.


    No discussion of shuttering platforms entirely.


    No consideration of business model regulation that would eliminate attention extraction economics.


    No proposals for systemic intervention that might actually address root causes.


    Just age verification. ID checks. Symbolic protection for one vulnerable population whilst leaving the exploitation infrastructure intact for everyone else.


    That silence – the complete absence of adequate response from policy discussion – confesses our dependency more honestly than any admission we’d make explicitly.
    We can’t discuss shuttering platforms because the suggestion triggers immediate panic. Not careful policy analysis of costs and benefits. Immediate, somatic, pre-rational resistance.


    That’s truly the words of dependency talking.


    The profound alcoholic doesn’t carefully analyse whether complete cessation might be an optimal long-term strategy. They immediately reject the suggestion as extreme, unnecessary, disproportionate. The dependency generates rationalisations that protect access to the substance.


    This is the same mechanism operating at civilisational level.


    Policy discussion carefully constrained to measures that won’t threaten platform operations. Not through conscious conspiracy but through unconscious dependency. The bounds of “reasonable policy debate” are set by collective inability to imagine existence without the things destroying us.


    The age ban represents the maximum intervention our dependency permits. Everything more aggressive is automatically categorised as unrealistic, extreme, impossible to implement – not based on careful analysis but based on somatic resistance to imagined loss.
    We’ve become the thing we’d need to not be in order to address the problem adequately.

    Whether It’s Already Too Late


    So here’s the question that matters: Is civilisational recovery from platform dependency still possible?
    Or have we passed some neurological and institutional point of no return where collective capacity for adequate response no longer exists?


    I genuinely don’t know.


    The optimistic case: Humans are remarkably resilient. Neuroplasticity continues throughout life. Social systems can reorganise rapidly when circumstances demand. We’ve recovered from collective dependencies before – smoking rates have declined significantly following adequate regulation. Civilisational recovery is difficult but possible.


    The pessimistic case: The tobacco parallel breaks down because tobacco didn’t erode collective capacity for response. Social media platforms have created dependency whilst simultaneously degrading the psychological and institutional infrastructure necessary to address dependency. Each year of continued operation makes adequate response less likely. We may have already passed the point where voluntary cessation is collectively possible.


    The honest case: We won’t know until we try. Of course, we won’t try until we’re forced to by consequences so catastrophic they override the dependency-generated resistance to adequate response.


    Which means we’re likely headed for version of civilisational withdrawal that’s involuntary rather than chosen. Not policy-driven shutdown but collapse-driven cessation when the platforms’ continued operation becomes materially impossible to sustain.


    That’s a considerably less pleasant scenario than a voluntary, managed transition to platform-free existence. However, it may be the only pathway available when the population has lost capacity for voluntary cessation.


    The age ban suggests we’re not even close to voluntary response. We’re still in the “4% beer on weekdays” phase of addressing civilisational alcoholism. The catastrophic consequences that might force involuntary withdrawal haven’t yet arrived – or haven’t yet been recognised as such by populations whose capacity for recognising catastrophe has been systematically eroded.

    The Regulatory Theatre Continues


    Meanwhile, the age ban will be implemented. Headlines will be written. Politicians will claim credit for protecting children. Industry will comply with minimal measures whilst continuing operations unchanged. Everyone will declare victory.


    Children aged 15 years and 364 days will be protected from psychological exploitation through rigorous ID verification.


    Adults aged 16 years and 1 day will continue unrestricted access to identical exploitation infrastructure, their lack of psychological defences carefully ignored because acknowledging adult vulnerability would require admitting the platforms themselves are the problem.


    And what of us? We’ll all continue scrolling, checking, engaging, medicating whatever needs the platforms serve, convincing ourselves that protecting children whilst preserving adult access represents meaningful progress rather than confession of our own dependency.


    The cocaine water keeps flowing.


    The isolation cages remain operational.


    The rats – young and old, in school uniforms and grey suits – continue drinking.


    And the fact that we can only implement symbolic protection whilst carefully preserving the exploitation infrastructure proves exactly what we’re unable to admit: we’re not protecting anyone.


    We’re protecting our access to the thing destroying us.


    The age ban is confession masquerading as solution.


    And somewhere, future historians are watching this regulatory theatre, wondering why we thought checking IDs whilst operating civilisational-scale psychological exploitation constituted meaningful reform rather than admission that we’d already lost collective capacity for adequate response.


    The answer is simple: Because we’re addicted.


    Not metaphorically.


    As neurological reality constraining what regulatory responses feel possible.


    The inadequacy of our protection reveals the depth of our dependency.


    As well as the fact that we can’t choose better measures proves we’re exactly as lost as the measures themselves confess.

  • The Authenticity Industrial Complex: How ‘Being Yourself’ Became Another Performance Metric

    So after last week’s entry into my newsletter where I awoke the somewhat more sarcastic part of my writing personality, I wanted to discuss a different topic on a similar theme.

    So, let’s talk about the most exquisite corporate magic trick of recent time: the transmutation of “just be yourself” into “perform your carefully calibrated authenticity for our quarterly evaluation while we take notes.”.

    I’m referring, of course, to the trite-but-evidently-not-serious corporate directive to “bring your authentic self to work” – a phrase that deserves its own spot in the Museum of Organisational Doublespeak alongside such classics as “we’re like family here” (translation: your boundaries will be tested) and “open door policy” (come in, but make it quick and don’t bring me problems).

    What’s truly remarkable isn’t just that corporations have successfully commodified authenticity – though that’s impressive enough (lord knows they love a metric and associated spreadsheets) – but that they’ve managed to transform what was once a philosophical pursuit into a professional obligation with all the genuine human warmth of a LinkedIn algorithm recommending you connect with someone who died three years ago.

    The Authenticity Measurement Framework™

    From my observations, the corporate authenticity directive works a bit like being told you absolutely must dance like nobody’s watching, except there’s a panel of judges with scorecards, the dance floor is surrounded by CCTV cameras, and HR has drafted a 37-page document on Appropriate Spontaneous Movement Protocols.

    Len Goodman will, of course, always give you a seven – which, depending on how the other scores turn out, will likely drag you toward the dreaded middle ground of “meets expectations”.

    “Be yourself!” they exclaim with evangelical fervour. “But not, you know, that self,” they quickly add, gesturing vaguely toward whatever aspects of your personality might cause even the mildest disruption to quarterly projections. “When I said I wanted you to be authentic, I didn’t mean like that” as you launch into a massive monologue, apropos of nothing, about how you’ve always liked that one type of train you only see occasionally.

    The acceptable authentic self bears a suspicious resemblance to a TED Talk presenter who’s had exactly one relatable struggle that taught them a valuable lesson which – through an astonishing coincidence – perfectly aligns with the organisation’s current strategic objectives. What are the odds? It’s like we only want to hear struggles when they have ended up being sorted which is the tone deaf equivalent of asking someone when they will be up to completing their project deliverable despite their recent invasive thoughts of self harm.

    You’re encouraged to express your genuine thoughts, particularly when they involve enthusiastic agreement with pre-determined leadership decisions.

    You’re welcome to bring your unique perspective, especially when it can be channelled into mandatory fun activities that will later appear in the recruitment brochure under “vibrant company culture.”. Just do me a favour and ensure those thoughts are pre-vetted internally before you mention, well, anything, OK?

    In that sense, it’s authenticity as imagined by someone who believes personality is something you select from a drop-down menu during the onboarding process – created in Excel, naturally, given that most of the world’s businesses still seem to have a weird fascination with spreadsheets when other more advanced tools are available.

    The Strategic Vulnerability Initiative

    So when you have a look around, be sure to pay particular attention to the corporate appetite for a very specific flavour of vulnerability – one that’s been carefully filtered, pasteurised, homogenised, and packaged for safe workplace consumption. It’s the equivalent of ideas cooked up by people who think they’ve gone “a little wild” because they had two espresso shots in their pickup from Costa this morning – you know, the people who have personalities that, if they were selected via a colour chart, would be somewhere between grey and beige.

    The ideal authentic vulnerability resembles a movie trailer rather than the actual film: edited highlights that suggest emotional depth without the uncomfortable duration of genuine human complexity. It’s vulnerability with excellent production values and a focus-group-tested ending.

    The acceptable vulnerability performance includes:

    – Sharing a challenge that demonstrates your growth mindset, preferably one you’ve already triumphantly overcome through a combination of grit, pluck, and corporate-approved resilience techniques (additional points if you actively cite the company was responsible for the triumph)

    – Revealing just enough personal information to seem human but not so much that colleagues might need to reconsider their casual jokes about your demographic group (I mean we’d hate to see real change, right?)

    – Expressing precisely calibrated emotion – enough to demonstrate you’re not a sociopath, but not so much that anyone might need to reschedule a meeting

    – Demonstrating the ideal level of self-awareness: enough to show you’re reflective about your flaws but not enough to question why you’re working 60 hours a week to make someone else rich

    So what are the cardinal sins that one must avoid in this vulnerability theatre? Authentic mentions of salary dissatisfaction, genuine confusion about the company’s seventeen conflicting priorities that required you to read 275 pages of buzzwords for no other reason than to tick a box, or legitimate concerns about why the last three people in your position burned out faster than a paper fireplace in a cash factory.

    The Authenticity Consultant Will See You Now

    I know it’s hard to believe that not every business needs to suck every last drop of humanity out of operations, but we know that there will always be people who want to try.

    Where there’s organisational anxiety, there’s inevitably an entire ecosystem of consultants, coaches, and thought leaders who materialise like vultures circling a wounded business model. What we need is more abstract optimisation that looks nice on a PowerPoint because “metric go up” is synonymous with virtue.

    It was from this rarefied yet fertile ground that the authenticity industrial complex was born – a magnificent marketplace of authenticity frameworks, vulnerability road maps, and genuineness methodologies all available for the reasonable price of your department’s entire professional development budget.

    These authenticity architects offer such wonders as:

    – The Seven-Step Genuine Self Activation Process™

    – Authentic Leadership Bootcamps (because nothing says “be yourself” quite like being shouted at in a hotel conference room).

    – Personal Brand Alignment Intensives (a process whereby your authentic self is carefully sculpted to match both buzzword driven market demand and your manager’s expectations)

    – Vulnerability Assessment Tools that quantify exactly how genuinely you’re expressing yourself (with convenient benchmark data from industry leaders in authentic self-presentation)

    For a modest consulting fee approximately equivalent to the annual salary of one of your graduates, your organisation too can implement a comprehensive authenticity programme where staff participate in mandatory workshops designed to facilitate the spontaneous emergence of their true selves, then return to their home offices identical to those they left, but now with the added pressure of performing “natural” behaviour on command.

    The Authenticity Permission Gradient

    One thing I do find interesting is that corporate authenticity follows a curious mathematical formula where the freedom to express one’s true self expands in direct proportion to one’s proximity to the C-suite. This produces what I call the Authenticity Permission Gradient, a fascinating phenomenon observable in any corporate environment – if you want to see evidence out in the wild, have a look around your particular locale.

    At the executive level, authentic self-expression is recognised as the natural prerogative of visionary leadership:

    – The CEO’s authentic communication style (whether cryptic, brusque, or reminiscent of a woodland creature with rabies) becomes a celebrated leadership trademark featured in business profiles

    – The CFO’s authentic need for four hours of uninterrupted thinking time each morning becomes sacred calendar territory that not even an actual office fire would dare interrupt (but if you turn down two meetings, you’d best be ready for a grilling).

    – The COO’s authentic preference for communicating exclusively through terse emails sent at 3am becomes “just how they work best”, abstract of what that might do for mental health of the mere minions who work for them

    Meanwhile, several layers down the organisational chart:

    – Your authentic communication style becomes “needs to work on professional communication skills”

    – Your authentic need for uninterrupted focus time becomes “not a team player”, despite the fact that team you’re in being quite well regarded

    – Your authentic work rhythm becomes “needs to align better with organisational workflow”

    The Authenticity Permission Gradient reveals the uncomfortable truth: organisational authenticity is the corporate equivalent of parents telling children they can be anything they want for Halloween and then adding “…as long as we can make it from this pile of cardboard boxes and it doesn’t require me to learn any new skills, spend more than £5, or challenge my extremely narrow conception of appropriate costume themes.”.

    “Look, how am I supposed to dress you up as the concept of “sadness” with this loose bag of tat I bought from Tesco, Cecil? You’re going to be a grape because this green body paint was half price.”

    The Exhaustion of Performing Non-Performance

    Perhaps the most diabolical aspect of the corporate authenticity mandate is the sheer cognitive overhead of simultaneously performing while pretending you’re not performing.

    Traditional professionalism, for all its flaws, at least had the decency to acknowledge itself as a performance. You put on the suit, you adopted the demeanour, you played the role – everyone understood the game. It was uncomfortable at times, sure, but it was a mask that at least had some semblance of a ruleset to it.

    The authenticity imperative, by contrast, demands a meta-performance so complex it would make method actors weep with inadequacy. You must craft a carefully calibrated presentation of natural behaviour, then meticulously conceal all evidence of that crafting. It’s like being told to create elaborate origami while making it appear you’re just randomly folding paper with no particular outcome in mind.

    The cognitive load is staggering. At any given moment, you must:

    – Continuously monitor which aspects of your personality are currently acceptable for workplace consumption and which must remain carefully locked in the authenticity penalty box

    – Project natural enthusiasm for corporate initiatives that, were you being truly authentic, would prompt reactions ranging from mild bewilderment to launching your laptop out of the nearest window

    – Maintain just enough uniqueness to fulfill the authenticity requirement without becoming the “difficult one” whose authenticity is somehow always causing problems

    – Construct genuine-seeming responses to questions like “What did you think of the CEO’s three-hour vision presentation?” when your authentic response would violate several HR policies

    The performance of non-performance creates a strange existential exhaustion. It’s like being a duck – appearing to glide serenely across the surface while paddling frantically underneath – except you must also strenuously deny the existence of both the paddling and the water while a team of duck performance consultants measures your gliding metrics against quarterly expectations.

    The Final Commodification Frontier

    Hey, enough of the hyperbole (even though I really like doing it). What we need to acknowledge is that we’re witnessing the late-capitalist equivalent of colonising the final unclaimed territory: the self itself.

    Having already commodified your time, attention, skills, and emotional labour, organisations have now found ways to extract value from your very identity.

    Your authentic self is no longer merely who you are – it’s a strategic asset to be leveraged, optimised, and deployed for organisational benefit.

    Your personality quirks are now “potential market differentiators”.

    Your personal history represents “engagement opportunities”.

    Your values are “brand alignment vectors”.

    Your genuine reactions are “content generation opportunities.”.

    It’s as though someone read Orwell’s 1984, focused exclusively on the concept of thoughtcrime, and said, “Well thank you for the brilliant idea George, but how can we monetise it?”

    This transformation represents the logical end point of what happens when the “brain-dead but shows one’s working” AKA spreadsheet thinking encounters human complexity. When even “being yourself” becomes another checkbox on your performance review – right between “demonstrates proficiency in Excel” and “consistently meets deadlines” – we’ve completed the circle of commodification with a thoroughness that would impress even the most ambitious McKinsey consultant. Bravo from the back from BCG and Bain I hear also.

    A Modest Proposal for Less Exhausting Existence

    Is there an alternative to this authenticity performance paradox? Perhaps. However, it requires acknowledging some uncomfortable truths about the nature of work in contemporary organisations.

    First, complete authenticity in professional environments is neither possible nor desirable. Work inevitably involves some degree of performance and boundary maintenance. The problem isn’t that we perform at work but that we’ve created the exhausting expectation that performance should appear non-performative. It’s how I imagine Britt Lower felt in Severance trying to be a character who was trying to be a character as an actress who was trying to be a character – I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.

    It’s also rather like insisting that Olympic gymnasts not only complete their routines but also convince judges they’re just naturally bouncing around like that for fun. “She stuck the landing, but I could tell she was deliberately trying to avoid falling, so I’m deducting points for inauthenticity.”. Being impacted by gravity, Grace? That’s a two point deduction on your review…

    Second, genuine improvements in workplace wellbeing come primarily through structural changes rather than psychological reframing. All the authenticity workshops in the world won’t compensate for the fact that you’re expected to do three people’s jobs for one person’s salary while pretending this arrangement fills you with authentic purpose, as opposed to watching your blood pressure rise with the speed of the latest tech bro billionaire rocket into space.

    You can authentic-self your way through a toxic workplace about as effectively as you can positive-think your way through a collapsing building. At some point, structural integrity matters more than your attitude toward falling masonry.

    Third, actual respect for individuals manifests through systems that accommodate human needs rather than those that merely celebrate self-expression within narrowly defined parameters. True respect for authenticity means creating environments where difference is structurally accommodated rather than merely symbolically acknowledged.

    Putting up a “Bring Your Authentic Self to Work” poster in an open-plan office where people can’t focus, can’t have private conversations, and can’t control their basic environmental conditions is like putting a “Just Keep Swimming!” motivational poster in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The sentiment, while admirably chipper, fails to address certain fundamental limitations of the situation.

    The Quiet Dignity of Bounded Authenticity

    Contrarian as I know I am often prone to be, there’s something quietly subversive about embracing what we might call “bounded authenticity” – the radical notion that you are under no obligation to perform comprehensive selfhood in environments primarily designed to extract value from your labour.

    Bounded authenticity acknowledges work as a domain where certain aspects of yourself are relevant and others simply aren’t. It recognises that maintaining boundaries between personal and professional identities isn’t some failure of wholeness but a perfectly reasonable adaptation to the reality that your workplace is not, in fact, entitled to the complete, unfiltered you. If you want to bring it, that’s up to you – but you can’t be forced to “be yourself”.

    This approach doesn’t mean becoming an emotionless corporate drone. Rather, it means making tactical decisions about which elements of yourself you choose to bring to professional contexts – not because authenticity is a performance obligation but because selective authenticity is a resource management strategy.

    Think of it as authentic minimalism: bringing exactly the amount of yourself that serves your purposes rather than deploying your complete selfhood in service of organisational theatre.

    The Uncomfortable Conclusion

    The authenticity industrial complex ultimately reveals a profound anxiety at the heart of contemporary work culture – a desperate attempt to reconcile fundamentally dehumanising systems with the human need for meaning and connection. Rather than redesigning those systems, we’ve opted to demand that humans perform humanity more convincingly within inhospitable environments.

    It’s a bit like discovering your fish tank has no water, then addressing the problem by requiring the fish to give enthusiastic presentations about how they’re implementing innovative dry-breathing initiatives rather than, you know, adding water to the tank. “The handbook says ‘water is weakness’, Matthew, so get those fish working with air – it’s all we’ve got.”.

    Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that authentic self-expression emerges naturally in environments designed around human needs.

    It doesn’t require facilitation, measurement, or optimisation.

    It simply appears when people feel genuinely secure, valued, and free from the pressure to perform aspects of themselves that should emerge organically or not at all.

    You know – the basics. Like your manager actually giving a shit about how you feel rather than what your happiness score is today.

    Until then, the next time your organisation invites you to “bring your authentic self to work,” perhaps the most authentic response is a politely raised eyebrow and the quiet recognition that your genuine self is not a corporate resource to be harvested but your own sovereign territory – portions of which you might occasionally lease to your employer under carefully negotiated terms, but never surrender to institutional ownership disguised as psychological liberation.

    After all, there’s something rather magnificently authentic about recognising when authenticity itself has become just another performance metric – and deciding, with quiet dignity, that some aspects of yourself deserve better stages on which to perform than the corporate authenticity theatre.

    This article originally appeared on my personal LinkedIn on April 10th, 2025. The link to the original article is located here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/authenticity-industrial-complex-how-being-yourself-matt-turvey-frsa-cqyze/?trackingId=jzhzJ%2BlCRPSJJesIJOhx%2Fg%3D%3D

  • The Uncomfortable Utility of Feeling Like a Fraud: Why Your Imposter Syndrome Might Actually Be Doing You a Solid

    Look, we need to have a deeply uncomfortable conversation about that persistent feeling that you’re somehow faking it whilst everyone else in the room has their proverbial shit neatly packed into labelled containers with colour-coded lids.

    You know the one. That low-grade psychic hum that whispers “they’re going to find you out any minute now” whilst you’re nodding sagely in a meeting about something called “strategic alignment” or “paradigm integration” or whatever linguistic mulch is being served in today’s corporate salad.

    Here’s the thing: we’ve collectively decided that this feeling – this imposter syndrome – is a bug in your psychological operating system rather than a feature. With that the internet, that magnificent producer of oversimplified solutions to complex human problems, has a ready prescription: “Just believe in yourself!” Which, as actionable advice, ranks somewhere between “just be happy” and “have you tried not being poor?”

    The Dubious Virtue of Unwavering Certainty

    Let’s consider for a moment the alternative to imposter syndrome. Not confidence – which is entirely compatible with nuanced self-assessment for the seventeen seconds I feel it in a calendar (or financial) year – but the complete absence of doubt. The absolute certainty that one’s knowledge is comprehensive and one’s skills are beyond reproach.

    Now, ask yourself: who are the people you’ve encountered in your professional life who possessed this quality? Who are the colleagues, managers, or public figures who’ve demonstrated unwavering certainty in their own competence?

    I’ll wait.

    If your experience resembles mine in even the slightest degree, you’ve just mentally assembled a rogues’ gallery of the most catastrophically incompetent individuals you’ve ever had the misfortune to share oxygen with. These are the people who’ve piloted projects into mountainsides whilst assuring everyone that turbulence is normal, and that the explosions are in your head.

    Who’ve set institutional money on fire whilst explaining that smoke is just another word for profit.

    Who’ve failed upward with the buoyancy of a helium-filled ego untethered from the gravitational pull of reality.

    The correlation is so consistent it might as well be a physical law: the more certain someone is of their competence, the more aggressively they’ll defend demonstrably terrible ideas when the consequences start arriving with the subtlety of a brick through a tastefully created stained-glass window of your preferred corporate deity.

    The Hidden Operating System of Doubt

    What if – and I’m just spitballing here – your imposter syndrome isn’t a malfunction? What if that nagging sense that you might not know everything necessary for the task at hand is actually your cognitive immune system functioning exactly as intended?

    Consider the alternative. Consider what happens when that system gets compromised.

    We all know That Guy™. The one who read half a Wikipedia article on a complex topic and is now explaining it with the conviction of someone who’s devoted three decades of focused study to the subject.

    The one who confuses having an opinion with having expertise.

    The one who mistakes volume and certainty for insight and accuracy.

    That Guy™ doesn’t have imposter syndrome, and nobody is better off for its absence.

    Your doubt – that uncomfortable, persistent questioning of whether you know enough or can do enough – creates the cognitive space necessary for continued growth. It maintains the gap between what you know and what remains to be learned. It prevents the terminal crystallisation of knowledge that ends in spectacular, confident failure.

    The “Just Believe!” Industrial Complex

    The internet drowns in advice about overcoming imposter syndrome, most of it amounting to some variation of “just believe in yourself harder.” This advice approaches psychological complexity with all the nuance of telling someone with clinical depression to “try smiling more” or instructing a person like me with chronic pain “have you considered not hurting?”. Yeah pal – I tried and, guess what, it’s still the same.

    This framing misunderstands both the phenomenon and its function. It assumes that doubt represents a defect rather than a calibration mechanism – one that prevents you from waltzing confidently into situations beyond your current capabilities with the carefree abandon of a toddler approaching an electrical socket with a fork.

    The problem isn’t the existence of doubt but its calibration. Too much, and you’re paralysed into inaction. Too little, and you’re a walking Dunning-Kruger graph with exceptionally poor risk assessment capabilities.

    The goal isn’t to eliminate doubt but to integrate it – to develop a working relationship with uncertainty that allows forward motion without delusion. This represents a far more sophisticated psychological task than “just believing in yourself,” which sounds suspiciously like advice from someone selling motivational posters featuring eagles and sunsets, whilst kneeling cross legged in tie-dyed attire.

    The Unexpected Virtue of Knowing What You Don’t Know

    Here’s the deeply unfashionable truth: knowing the limits of your knowledge and capability isn’t a weakness. It’s a metacognitive superpower in a world increasingly dominated by people who mistake confidence for competence.

    This awareness – this persistent questioning of what you know and can do – creates the necessary conditions for actual growth rather than the performance of expertise. It allows you to identify gaps in knowledge or skill before they become catastrophic failures. It enables you to ask questions when others are nodding along to avoid appearing uninformed.

    In a professional landscape increasingly resembling a confidence game in the most literal sense, this capacity becomes not a liability but an asset of considerable value. It allows you to:

    – Learn when others assume they already know

    – Question when others accept uncritically

    – Adapt when others remain rigid in their certainty

    – Grow when others have convinced themselves they’ve arrived

    None of which involves “just believing in yourself” more vigorously, and many of which add value that show your ability to “tell it like it is” is of a lot more value than the 17th nod in that room full of groupthink.

    The Arrogance Tax: What Certainty Costs Us

    The social premium placed on unwavering confidence has created environments where the appearance of certainty is rewarded above actual knowledge. This dynamic produces leaders who cannot acknowledge error, systems resistant to correction, and discourse increasingly unmoored from reality.

    We’ve all seen the consequences.

    Financial systems collapse because warning signs were dismissed by those too certain of their models.

    Companies implode because executives couldn’t admit they misunderstood market conditions.

    Political systems falter because leaders cannot acknowledge the complexity of problems facing their constituents.

    In each case, the absence of doubt – that quality we’re all supposed to be striving to eliminate – plays a central role in the eventual catastrophe.

    Meanwhile, those plagued by imposter syndrome are busy double-checking their work, seeking additional information, and considering alternative perspectives – activities that don’t exactly make for compelling LinkedIn humblebrags but tend to prevent spectacularly public failures. As many of my colleagues have commiserated from time to time – there’s some sort of privilege reserved for the rescue of a red project, and less clamour to thank the ones that never went even a yellowing shade of green.

    The Calibration Game: Making Friends with Your Doubt

    The challenge, then, isn’t to eliminate imposter syndrome but to calibrate it – to develop a working relationship with doubt that enables action without delusion.

    What might this actually look like in practice?

    First, it means recognising that confidence and certainty aren’t synonyms. Confidence allows you to act despite incomplete information; certainty precludes the possibility that such information could exist. The former enables progress; the latter ensures eventual collision with reality.

    Second, it involves distinguishing between doubt that prompts continued learning and doubt that prevents necessary action. The former expands capability; the latter constrains it unnecessarily. This distinction isn’t always immediately obvious and requires ongoing attention rather than one-time resolution.

    Third, it demands awareness of context – recognising when the social pressure for unwavering confidence might be pushing you toward certainty that exceeds your actual knowledge or capability. These moments require particular vigilance against the contagious certainty that often pervades professional environments.

    My hope is that I know when to say “I know what I’m talking about” versus “I like the idea of being seen as someone who knows what they are talking about regarding this popular topic”. The value lies is understanding which is which.

    None of this involves affirmations in the mirror or whatever self-help gurus are currently selling as the solution to the “problem” of not being sufficiently certain of your own brilliance. It mostly just requires being honest with ourselves as well as others. Imagine that?

    The Social Dimension: When “Just Believe” Becomes Gaslighting

    It’s worth noting that the experience of imposter syndrome doesn’t fall evenly across social categories. Research consistently demonstrates that women and members of marginalised groups experience imposter syndrome at higher rates – not because of inherent psychological differences but because they face greater scrutiny and more persistent questioning of their capabilities.

    In these contexts, the experience of imposter syndrome cannot be reduced to individual psychology but must be understood as responding to actual social dynamics that impose different standards for different groups. The prescription to “just believe in yourself” becomes particularly hollow when directed at those facing genuine structural barriers to recognition and advancement.

    It’s rather like telling someone they’re imagining the rain whilst refusing to acknowledge they’re the only person at the table who wasn’t given an umbrella. That sort of declaration serves to help nothing other than making the privileged look like they exploit the circumstances of those with less than them.

    What we need to do is shift the focus from trying to simply make individual psychological adjustments to creating institutional environments that recognise the value of intellectual humility and that distribute the burden of proof more equitably across social categories.

    The Integration Project: Making Doubt Your Ally

    The path forward doesn’t involve eliminating doubt but developing a more sophisticated relationship with uncertainty – one that recognises its value while preventing its transformation into paralysis.

    This integration requires moving beyond the binary thinking that frames imposter syndrome as either a weakness to be conquered or a badge of authentic humility to be celebrated. Instead, it suggests that our relationship with certainty about our capabilities requires ongoing calibration – adjusting to new information, different contexts, and evolving demands.

    It positions doubt not as an obstacle to success but as a necessary component of sustainable development – a form of cognitive friction that prevents both stagnation and delusion.

    This nuanced approach stands in stark contrast to the motivational poster simplicity of “just believe in yourself” – a prescription that, again, approaches the complexity of human cognition with all the sophistication of telling someone in a wheelchair to “just stand up and walk” because ambulatory people manage it without difficulty.

    The Uncomfortable Conclusion

    Perhaps, then, we might begin to recognise the uncomfortable utility of imposter syndrome – not as something to be overcome but as something to be integrated into a more balanced and sustainable relationship with our own capabilities and limitations.

    In a world where the most confidently wrong people seem to fail upward with remarkable consistency, perhaps your persistent doubt represents not a defect but a different kind of intelligence – one that acknowledges complexity, remains open to correction, and resists the seductive certainty that precedes catastrophic error.

    The question becomes not how to eliminate doubt but how to engage with it productively – how to maintain the humility necessary for continued growth while developing the confidence required for meaningful action. This balance represents a far more sophisticated psychological achievement than the elimination of doubt, and its development requires nuanced engagement rather than motivational platitudes.

    So the next time someone tells you to “just believe in yourself” as the antidote to imposter syndrome, perhaps consider that they’re prescribing the psychological equivalent of bloodletting – a treatment that misunderstands both the condition and its function, and that might leave you worse off than the original “ailment” ever did. If they do, maybe suggest trepanning to alleviate the spirits in their head that dreamed up their purported solution, and then debate how it might be as effective, or not as the case may be.

    In reality, your doubt might just be the most valuable thing about you in a world increasingly dominated by those who’ve eliminated it entirely from their psychological repertoire – usually with catastrophic consequences for everyone in their vicinity.

    Sometimes thinking you don’t know everything is far more valuable than trying to convince yourself – and others – that you do.

    This article was originally published on my personal LinkedIn profile on April 3, 2025. A direct link back to the original post can be found here – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uncomfortable-utility-feeling-like-fraud-why-your-you-turvey-frsa-fjewe/?trackingId=BmKLTjPfT8megNPPovceNA%3D%3D