What is a word I feel too many people use?

“Authentic.”

God help me, if I hear one more person tell me they’re “just being authentic,” I might start setting fire to yoga studios and artisan coffee shops like some deranged crusader against linguistic decay. This word, once a noble descriptor of something real, solid oak, aged whiskey, or the kind of truth that could survive a knife fight. Has been bleached, beaten, and run through the Instagram filter of human vanity until it’s just a squeaky-clean marketing slogan for people selling themselves.

It’s the darling of influencers, life coaches, TED Talk prophets, and suburban wine philosophers. They wield it like a ceremonial dagger carved from driftwood, whispering about “living authentically” while selling you $200 meditation cushions and courses on “finding your true self.” And here’s the gag, they’re all wearing the same uniform. Wide-brimmed hats. Minimalist tattoos of moons and triangles. Coffee poured by the ounce into mugs that cost more than my first car. Authentic, my ass.

The real crime is how the word has lost all its sharp edges. It used to mean something dangerous, walking into the storm with no umbrella, standing in your truth even when it got you punched in the mouth. Now it’s the verbal equivalent of a gluten-free muffin: all the rough stuff scooped out and replaced with almond flour and the faint taste of nothing.

I’ve met “authentic” people in the wild. They don’t say it. They don’t hashtag it. They’re too busy living, bleeding, and occasionally crashing their truck into a ditch at 3 a.m. to sit around talking about how real they are. You feel it in your bones when you’re near them, like standing too close to a bonfire. No branding. No curated vulnerability. Just the raw, volatile heat of someone who doesn’t know how to be anything else.

So yeah, you can keep your “authentic” brunch captions and your faux-vintage “authentic experiences.” I’ll take the messy, the ugly, and the unshakably real without the label, without the performance. If it needs to be advertised as authentic, it probably isn’t.