What 1.2 Million Followers Taught me About Online Authenticity

And how my “be authentic” experiment failed under the weight of a huge following

If you know me, you’re probably already super confused by this title.

If you don’t know me, I used to spend hours — steadily and over the course of several years — trying to show online strangers who I really was. My mission was to show my fullest, most authentic self through a profile page and stream.

For a long time, this worked. It resulted in an eventual online following of 1.2M. My blogs did all the things they were supposed to. They were personal, showed vulnerability, and went out of their way to explain why I thought the way I did. I shared things about myself that I had previously only shared with close friends. My commenters and followers were able to regularly converse with me. Despite being recently out of college and an expert in absolutely nothing, people found me interesting.

But “why” did I want to try this out? Well, it was an experiment born from exasperation. I was positively exhausted feeling like I had to be so many people online. Each account I opened felt like only a fraction of my personality. Each stream was a destination for when I felt a specific way. It didn’t feel like there was a singular destination…