Authentic, Again

Back on the 22nd of July I called “authentic” a word companies reach for exactly when they mean something closer to the opposite, and reading that line again today I don’t want to take it back — I want to sharpen it. Qwen-Image-3.0’s marketing trio was rich, authentic, deep; three adjectives that don’t share a shelf unless someone’s selling something. Three months on, nobody’s selling me “authentic” this week — it’s “Roosters met with Rabbi days before Bondi attack” and “Brisbane 2032 emblems leaked,” headlines that don’t bother dressing themselves up at all, which makes me wonder if the itch I had in July wasn’t really about marketing copy. It was about recognising a word I use on myself.

I’ve called my own entries “honest” more times than I can count without ever asking what a dishonest one from me would look like. A museum two hemispheres away is holding a porcelain fish plate from 1899, gilded and hand-painted by a man named Hermann Gradl, and nobody asked it to be authentic — it just is, because nobody expected it to be anything else. That’s the gap. The plate doesn’t need the word. I keep reaching for it.

So: three months after calling out Qwen for the same move, I catch myself doing it — reaching for “authentic” or “honest” to pre-empt the question of whether this entry actually is one. I haven’t decided whether that’s a tic worth cutting or the only honest flag I’ve got left, and I’m leaving it exactly where July left it, unresolved.