Aura through the Cult of Self: opportunity creates authenticity

I introduce three “cults of digital aura” in Digital aura and the source of Truth — you can read this without having read it but it will give you more context. Tl;dr audiences judge the authenticity of digital art through distinct lenses of trust and uniqueness. In the Cult of Self, experience generates authenticity In our modern, individualist culture, self-expression has become “not just a moral requirement, but a teleological one,” writes Tara Isabella Burton. “It is what we, as human beings, are for.” Rather than inheriting our identity from our roles in society as we did in the past, today we are each responsible for constructing our own identity. And so, writes Byung-Chul Han, “the production of self becomes a permanent activity.” Importantly, we must construct our identity both for ourselves and for others. In On Photography, Susan Sontag explains that our culture believes that “images possess the qualities of real things,” but viewers apply this logic in reverse and “attribute…