People Pleasing VS Authenticity

In the pursuit of becoming successful, publicly respected, or simply operating day to day without being socially condemned, there seems to be an unspoken question that everyone asks themselves. I think a particularly good example is this: consider you want to start a YouTube channel. Whatever your reasons may be, maybe for the possible money, maybe fame, or maybe you have some belief or message you want to put in the spotlight and convince others to adopt or agree with, there’s the implicit question: “Should I focus on being authentic and discussing whatever I find interesting or important, or should I (with a sort of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ justification) do whatever is popular or likely to get views and go viral? (i.e. clickbait)”

This question is not unique to social media, before going out in public, before or even during social interaction, there is, similarly, a question we may ask ourselves (whether we are fully conscious of the question or not) “Do I try to act a certain way which I think is likely to get people to like me, or do I show (not necessarily all, but some of) my authentic self?”
The answer to this question largely depends on what your values are, but my answer is that it’s always best to be authentic and aim to be as helpful, friendly, informative as possible. To be earnestly trying to be the best person you can and help others as well as you can. This may not get the most “clicks,” or shallow sort of expressions of social approval, but “A friend to all is a friend to none” -Taylor Swift (and Aristotle,) which is to say that if you waste your time trying to please everyone, you will have to act in ways that do not align with your personal values, and you will be ‘playing both sides’ in any and all disagreements between all parties. You will necessarily not be opposing any viewpoint or condemning any behavior you find objectionable because you’re avoiding conflict and, in a sense, trying to ‘trick’ people into liking you. Which is not to say that they shouldn’t like you, you’re probably a very good person worth being friends with, but by either falsely assenting to, or at least passively refusing to object to things you don’t actually agree with, you are trying to build a friendship with them on the false pretense that you share all their views and approve of all their actions.

Being authentic may make you less friends, but you can be damn sure the friends you do make like you for who you actually are, rather than who you pretended to be in public to get people to like you. To go back to the YouTube analogy, you may get less viewers, but of those viewers, more will end up subscribers.

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