Thank you for replying. I appreciate your willingness to discuss the arguments (this being the Internet, and knowing how things on the Internet can sometimes get). Let me say to begin with, that I would certainly characterize my essay as “harsh”, which it was intended to be. But in that harshness was an attempt to combat your argument, not you or your writing. The reason I attack so vehemently is because I feel the distinction between atemporality and authenticity is very, very important to the world on numerous levels, popular culture being only one. And so I don’t wish to mince my words when it comes to making this distinction.

The distinction still being very crucial, even after reading your comment and re-reading your essay. Naturally, I think our personal opinions are no doubt quite close–otherwise, the contrast would not lay the distinction bare as it does. (Sometimes we most strongly disagree with the people we most agree with). But there are certain points I can’t surmount, and therefore, I still disagree with both the essay and your response.

Here’s the thing. It’s the word: “authenticity”. Few people who use the word spend much time castigating the inauthentic, or the un-real. And yet the obvious privileging of the authentic is as strong as ever. This isn’t simply an issue of semantics–it’s an issue of ontology. The problem finds an obvious form in Baurdrillard, but really it goes back to Heidegger. It is not enough to claim that there is no “inauthentic”. If someone is, or is searching for the authentic, if there can be such a thing as the authentic, there must be a state that is not-authentic. You don’t have to be the person to declare what is “real”. To claim there is indeed a real, is to automatically imply that in contraposes the unreal.

I don’t want to go through your essay line by line, because that is not what I wanted to do from the beginning. The reason I chose a more invective style was to create a “manifesto” of sorts, a rocket to propel me (and perhaps others) away from that sort of logic, which I hear recycled all too often. But, for the sake of clarity, here are a few passages from your original essay where I hear you reinforcing the difference between authenticity and whatever-else:

“I submit that we have chosen to create and view faux-vintage photos because they seem more authentic and real.”

“Therefore, simply being aware that the authenticity Hipstamatic purchases is simulated does disqualify the faux-vintage photo from entering into the economy of the real and authentic.”

“But the ultimate irony is that while these tools, just like all of social media, help us reinforce to ourselves and others that we are real and authentic, but they do this by simultaneously divorcing us to some degree from experiencing our present in the here and now.”

Clearly, your essay is working from the assumption that there is a desire for the real/authentic that motivates us, and which we use to classify our culture. That there is an economy of the real and authentic. Whether it is an attempt to relive a certain era, a desire to relive a certain era, or simply a desire to simulate an aesthetic of a living in a certain era (to be honest, your essay seemed to be unsure which of these faux-vintage was attempting to accomplish) doesn’t matter: the implication is that such a reaching-back by way of technology is a thing that can be done, and that it is something of significance to culture at large. The implication is that one can in fact strive for the “authentic” (back through periods of time, here-and-now, or in the future), whatever and wherever and whenever that is supposed to be.

It might seem like this is so, but nothing could be further from the truth. I agree that the past can have a certain currency, but this currency is not anything like authenticity. In fact, it is not currency. Currency can be authenticated, it can be counterfeited, and counterfeits can be detected, and destroyed. Contrary to your statement at the end of your comment in which you suggest that I feel culture is “not indicative of larger cultural forces”: I do, very much, think that there is a structure functioning within our culture. But this culture is not a system of currency, not any more than society is reducible to a country’s GDP. The “authentic” is an great abstraction–it is a simplified understanding of why we desire certain things. We don’t want things because they are authentic, we (or certain people structurally placed so as to benefit by their so-naming) deem them “authentic” because we want them. This abstraction is foolish and detrimental. We desire cultural things, whether particular artifacts of culture or the markers of particular aesthetics, whether time or place, because of their expedience to us. Because they are tools, and they function within our cultural praxis. Maybe they help us understand who we are, or maybe they just tickle our joy button. Either way, the reason why and the mechanism of its structure is not anything to do with authenticity. The reason why is what it is; authenticity is a category that seeks to exclude and objectify, as much as it simultaneously privileges classes of culture and provide a cursory, tautological explanation of “cultural forces”.

That said, I think we can agree that Instagram, etc. are important to determining the hows and whys of today’s culture, which is an important subject. But I strongly believe that “authenticity”, “nostalgia”, and “vintage” not only miss the real cultural forces going on, they rewire our theory into considering culture in the way it’s always been theorized: as something to be bought, sold, privileged, differentiated, and by these categories, taken advantage of. Culture today, if there’s anything “new” about it, is finally learning how to theorize itself. It is learning how to manipulate cultural forces for its own benefit. I think, as I’m sure you do, that we should celebrate this. Let’s start by ditching the vocabulary of its commodification.

Once again, thanks for commenting. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify, and hopefully engage the idea a little better.

Great essay, and I loved this critique of my article.

Fundamentally, I share your perspective and mostly agree. I have made the same rant about Baudrillard-ers before! I’m not sure how you missed that from my essay and characterized my essay as something you (and I!) would disagree with. I agree with your perspective, but disagree with your applying this rant to my essay.

First, I don’t have a “problem” with faux-vintage photos. My analysis did not argue that they are good or bad. I also wrote that explicitly at the beginning. I also never state that “reality” is a good or bad thing; or that inauthenticity is a good or bad thing. Baudrillard and his followers privileged the real and lamented it’s disappearance, but I don’t.

I share your stance on atemporality. But this stance does not preclude the idea of the past as having some sort of currency (unless you go so radically far as to say we cannot even fathom the idea of temporality anymore, but that’s silly). And this stance we share in no way precludes making an argument, as I did, that we increasingly borrow the cache of the past because we have all these new documentation possibilities. My argument very much takes off from your atemporality perspective. These assumptions we share might even be necessary to make the argument I make (but not the argument others make that you incorrectly lumped me with).

I like your rant, but you directed it at the wrong essay. I agree that there is no such thing as inauthenticity, and I surely am not going to be the one who states what is “real” or not. You make me out as an arbiter of the real, yet I never make any such claim in my essay.

I never argue at all that faux-vintage photos are an attempt to turn back time. That’s a serous misreading of the argument. I simply argue that we reference the past in our depictions of the present, but never claim we want our present to be more like the past.

I also never claim that faux-vintage photos are “incorrectly” nostalgic. Who am I to state what what is correct? I do state that Hipstamatic photos are not really physical, but never claim that some nostalgia is true and others false.

I either made my argument very poorly or you just skimmed it. Either are possibilities. It is a bummer, though, because you could have appreciated someone writing about nostalgia without privileging the real or making value claims or trying to state what is real or not. I agree that nostalgia is fully captured in the logic of fashion.

And I think that is the most important disagreement we have: my sense, and correct me if I am wrong, is that you feel fashion/trend choices like the resurgence of vinyl, burlesque-y clothes or a Hipstamatic photo are random and not indicative of larger cultural forces. Is that right? I got that sense when you state that you choose Instagram photos simply because they look cool, and nothing else. Well, yes, I think that is probably what most people think when they decide what they think is cool. But I also think that what we happen to think is “cool” in a given cultural moment is not random at all, but really fucking important. That existential films became trendy after the radical 60′s wound down was not random. That you and others think the photos are cool is a perfect reason to start the analysis, most definitely not a reason to end it.