You know, you would think so. That's what I personally feel. But there's like this whole social vibe around it that I think has swallowed up the actual act of introspection in a performance of genuineness. I once heard a woman refer to it as "the authenticity trap" and I guess that has just really stuck with me. Like people want you to be your true self and they think that they're always being their true self, but that's only because navigating social situations comes so naturally that they never have to consider the act of performing or the things they're doing to pull that off.

For people on the autism spectrum, our unfiltered selves may seem desirable until people discover that authentic autism also includes social faux pas, needing breaks when we get overstimulated, not being able to parse multiple complex interactions at once. Personally I've noticed that people who fixate on the idea of authenticity a lot tend to quickly assume I'm being disengenguine with them when I don't hold their gaze or correctly match their energy. It kind if just makes me think that authenticity as NT's conceptualize it is just another way of arbitrarily sorting people based on vibes and that I can do the same thing they think that they're doing just by being kind.

Sorry, for the rant. This is kind of a dead horse I tend to keep beating often. I've found Judith Butler's Theory of Performativity to be kind of helpful in navigating this but that's probably not how she even intended it. It just seems helpful after decades of trying to parse the "just be yourself" thought-terminating truism that people love to hand out.