Be Your Authentic Self! (As Long As It’s Correctly Progressive)
88 percent of college students admit to faking left-wing views
If there’s one thing I’m fed up with, it's authenticity.
Not the actual kind — I’m a big fan of that — but the corrupted version that’s touted endlessly in pop culture.
Be your authentic self!
Be true to yourself!
You do you!
We hear the sentiment from Netflix original movies to pop songs and social media influencers. We’re supposed to receive it as a message of rebellion, an assertion of independence, but an unspoken qualifier lurks behind the empowering rhetoric: Be your authentic self! — as long your betters approve.
That subtext inverts the message of liberation. It transforms it into a reminder of the widespread phoniness and conformity that grips our public discourse.
If you’re true to yourself in a way that cultural gatekeepers frown upon, watch how fast those touters of authenticity transform into thought policers.
Katy Perry will cheer for tween girls who want to be polyamorous astronauts, but what about those who aspire to be monogamous moms? They’ll discover that they’re being incorrectly authentic.
How interesting that the obsession with authenticity coincided with the rise of Cancel Culture. Talk about a mixed message: You do you, but if you do it the wrong way, you might lose your friends, your job, and your good reputation.
Conservatives, libertarians, and moderates learned that lesson again and again. Even left-leaners and traditional liberals often get offed by the commissars of conformity. Unless you adhere to a peculiar strand of leftism, one embraced by roughly eight percent of America — you quickly learn that’s is safer to keep your authenticity to yourself.
But hold on, you might say, what’s all this about a “vibe shift”? What’s all this about Cancel Culture fading away?
Yes, we just endured the absurd Sydney Sweeney “jeans” dustup, but even that seems like the exception that proves the rule. That kind of hysteria isn’t as common as it used to be just a short time ago. Good news indeed!
Moreover, the frothers failed to extract an apology. Sweeney didn’t even acknowledge them, and in the process of doing nothing, she made it easier for future would-be dissidents to stand up against groupthink.
All that is true, yet I remain on Team Pessimist.
The Tip of the Iceberg
We shouldn’t confuse a visible threat with the actual threat.
You can’t miss an iceberg’s relatively small tip, but most of the danger lies below the waterline. Perhaps some madness has vaporized, but I fear most of it remains hidden from view. After all, the chill of self censorship can be more dangerous than the heat of Cancel Culture.
And did we really expect the most visible aspects of Cancel Culture to continue forever? We humans are big on self preservation. We don’t just keep burning our hand on the hot stove. Eventually, we learn from our mistakes. Instead of uttering something potentially problematic, we simply swallow our naughty words. Instead of allowing others to police our thoughts, we do it ourselves.
Consider a recent survey that uncovered widespread self censorship among college students.
Between 2023 and 2025, Northwestern University’s Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at their university and the University of Michigan.
The psychology researchers discovered something we covered in The Coddling movie, something I’ve encountered over and over: Many young people have split themselves in two. Their public selves stick to the correct script, but their private selves harbor problematic thoughts and opinions. Romm and Waldman asked students, “Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?” Eighty-eight percent said yes.
The researchers say the dissonance emerges everywhere:
Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors. For many, this has become second nature — an instinct for academic and professional self-preservation.
Consider the fraught topic of gender identity.
In public, students spout opinions that sound like Katy Perry lyrics. But discuss the matter in private, and Romm and Waldman discovered something different. Only seven percent “embraced the idea of gender as a broad spectrum.”
Most of those Seven Percenters turned out to be activists. That’s another wrinkle that squares with my conversations with Gen Zers. On campus, the vocal minority enjoys outsized influence. It’s a dynamic that mirrors the outsized influence Eight Percenters enjoy beyond the campus.
Romm and Waldman continue:
Perhaps most telling: 77 percent said they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in such domains as sports, healthcare, or public data — but would never voice that disagreement aloud. Thirty-eight percent described themselves as “morally confused,” uncertain whether honesty was still ethical if it meant exclusion.
That dichotomy between our public and private selves extends beyond the campus. The authenticity gap even played a significant role in returning Trump to the White House.
Further reading
36 Reasons to Be Pessimistic About a Return to Sanity in 2025
The Chill is More Dangerous Than the Heat: 9 Hidden Truths about Groupthink and Cancel Culture
Katy Perry vs. Harrison Butker: Who Really Supports Women?
“Shut up!” Wasn’t a Great Campaign Strategy: Six ways muzzle-mad Democrats doomed themselves
Some Heroes Wear Jeans: Sydney Sweeney Hasn’t Apologized to the Mob
It’s Far Too Soon to Say Peak Woke is Behind Us: The mob strikes from Texas to Poland
Discovering Voters’ Authentic Beliefs
Tom Lubbock and James Johnson emerged as the most accurate of the major pollsters because they did something unusual. They didn’t merely speak to respondents’ public selves.
They explained how it worked with Latino males.
At first, many interview subjects said they sided with Vice President Kamala Harris, but the pollsters weren’t satisfied with quick responses. They continued talking long after other pollsters would have quit. “By 90 minutes in,” write Lubbock and Johson, “as we built trust, they admitted they were going to back Mr. Trump and shared more of their worldview: frustrations about the border, the economy and the Democrats’ abandoning traditional family values.”
The interview subjects knew the “correct” opinions, yet Eight Percenters in academia, entertainment, and the media shamed plenty of them into self censorship.
The respondents Lubbock and Johnson interviewed likely skewed much older than those Romm and Waldman queried. Most older adults formed their views long before The Maddening spread self censorship across the land. Fakery is sad at any age, but at least older adults had a chance to form their authentic selves before engaging in the charade.
Lubbock and Johnson devoted 90 minutes to discover their interview subjects’ authentic selves. But would that be enough time to hear the truth from Zoomers? Consider that 73 percent of students reported being afraid to open up about their actual beliefs even to their close friends. And in intimate relationships, nearly half said they routinely conceal their beliefs “for fear of ideological fallout.” Imagine that. Best friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends who don’t really know who their friends and loved ones really are.
According to Romm and Waldman, authenticity “has become a social liability.” They say their study reveals, not the peer pressure every generation endures, but institutionalized “identity regulation.”
“Universities often justify these dynamics in the name of inclusion,” the researchers note. “But inclusion that demands dishonesty is not ensuring psychological safety — it is sanctioning self-abandonment.”
So much for authenticity.
These days fear of stepping out of line often pollutes the process of self discovery. These days many young people pretend to be somebody else even before they really know who they are.
These days the most visible expressions of Cancel Culture might be waning, but let’s hold the hoorays — because what comes next might be even worse.