How much are we faking on the internet? Discernment and building trusting online

When I start work and fire up my laptop, I go onto YouTube to find a background music playlist. My homepage is a mix of playlists, vlogs, and content creators with video titles such as "40+ product ideas for YOUR art business that MAKE MONEY", and "Financial literacy in 63 minutes", strangers over the internet with seemingly all the know-hows for success and their videos garner thousands of views.

Reflecting on these titles with a bit of skepticism, I also felt a sense of inferiority. It triggered self-comparison, making it seem like they were doing more and better, while I was indulging in content instead of being productive and proactive in bettering myself.

I am aware of the irony in my opinion. I've written posts with guides and tips as well. While I understand that personal experience is the only thing to base content on, it is hard to build credibility unless trust is established. So how can we trust the content or brand that we see online? More importantly, how can we establish trust?

Building trust with authenticity and consistency

According to this Harvard Business Review's article, trust has three core drivers: authenticity, logic, and empathy.

People tend to trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they feel that you care about them (empathy).

For brands, building trust is from consistently delivering on their promise and what they stand for. A coherent brand experience throughout all its interactions with customers and employees is a must to prove that it's true to what the brand says it is through its actions. When a brand is trusted, it benefits from having a loyal fan base as their ultimate marketing tool for reviews and word of mouth.

That's the same for personal branding too. In my personal experience, a key indicator of a trustworthy person is whether I can trust their words. Do they follow through on their promises and be responsible to own up if they fail to? Do they censor their words and withhold what they are thinking or feeling? While trust takes time to build, it's the consistency of showing up and honesty that helps to build the foundations of a trusting relationship for me.

But that becomes hard to do when it comes to trusting content from strangers online. Especially when I'm unfamiliar with the content creator, and I'm just made aware of their channel. These are the steps I take to be more discerning of the content I consume online:

1. Cross-check the facts

I studied mainly humanities in secondary school – taking history, social studies and geography for GCE 'O' levels. If I took away anything from that would be the propensity to question and cross check what is presented as "facts". Where fake news and misinformation are on the rise, we need to proactively cross check facts and recognise opinions from "truths". That means to do our own due diligence of googling from multiple sources to prove that the fact is indeed true.

2. Stick to credible sources

In his book, The Great Mental Models, author Shane Parrish advises us to "choose our mapmakers wisely" as one of his first mental models. It means to choose our sources of information wisely and understand what it is the author or creator is trying to achieve? How does their agenda influence what they are presenting? Information is usually provided by a source that has their own agenda.

This is also echoed by Adam Rodricks in his TEDx talk on trust online. He noted how trust has shifted – from trusting big corporations and influencers to "real people, engaging in real conversations with other real people in a growing creator economy on established communities". We distrust marketing messages and turn to reviews and word of mouth from fewer degrees of separation, or a community we belong because there's more honesty and transparency without hidden agendas.

Trust is precious, fragile and delicate but crucial to build genuine relationships. When reflecting upon this, it is an important reminder to stay authentic and live by my values. It means to own my emotions of inferiority and to meet these YouTube content with a sense of curiosity instead of self-comparison. It is to experiment and explore the tips and guides that are provided to discern what works for me in my own journey.

Till the next!

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Little lines of after thoughts

• Who are some creators that you trust? Why?

• What makes someone trustworthy for you?

• How can you cultivate habits of honesty and authenticity?