I perhaps am emphasizing the inauthenticity of social media, I'm fairly heavily influenced in my perceptions of these kinds of relationships by what I know about prominent Twitch streamers or YouTube creators who essentially have to maintain an on-camera persona at all times when they're creating content (I need to re-watch Lindsay Ellis's video on Manufacturing Authenticity, it seems directly relevant) that is often forced to be permanently optimistic, if not to merely keep up the spirits of the audience but also because they have an immense weight placed upon them by their own followers (I have watched a lot of a streamer named Ohmwrecker who does a shitload of Dead by Daylight content, and one of the most shocking aspects of them is just how many viewer messages get sent to them that are effectively mentally ill/deeply alienated and disillusioned people using him as a personal therapist. That's so much to put upon someone who is essentially a stranger who is good at a video game you like).

Certainly there is a level of authenticity to social media. But at its core these are commodities of spectacle. People gravitate toward the dramatic, like screaming matches posted to Facebook. The vast majority of things like TikTok, Vine, or YouTube are heavily edited even if they're not outright staged, even as something as simple as clip from a popular pop song or a filter. Here, on this very website, we engage in "bits" to entertain each other that are influenced by stuff we consumed elsewhere, like the podcast itself. Hell, regarding the podcast there's even times where the fact they are forced to maintain certain personas and sometimes reach the limit, like when Felix tries to force a bit and it falls flat, or Amber goes out of her way to be a contrarian.

I don't know. To get a little weird for a moment, if neoliberalism is a social engineering project aimed at the fragmentation and commodification of identity (ie forcing the working person to don the mask of worker, manager, commodity, salesperson, and consumer all at once, changing depending on the context), social media is its apotheosis in that the producers reconstruct their fragmented identities as commodities. Your sense of self is so shattered by the neoliberal way of life that there's just a void eating away inside of yourself? No problem, we've got an app for that. Just build an inauthentic self designed for consumption by the masses.