Rediscovering Humanity in a Tech-Driven World
February 22, 2026
In "The New Sincerity: Being 'Too Much' in a World of Not Enough," Dominic explores an artistic and cultural trend emerging in response to AI and highly optimized algorithmic creation — one that values messiness, vulnerability, and radical authenticity over polished perfection. Dominic argues that artists who lean into what might be called "cringe," "ugly," or "too much" are resisting the average-seeking nature of AI, and in doing so, reaffirm the importance of human presence and emotional depth in art. While I agree with Dominic's celebration of authenticity and resistance to algorithmic uniformity, I also think the idea of new sincerity can be understood more deeply within a broader cultural context, where authenticity becomes a way to reclaim meaning beyond mere performance.
What New Sincerity Is and Why It Matters
Dominic's blog focuses on music and performance as examples of new sincerity — citing artists whose music feels unpolished, chaotic, and deeply human. The key argument is that AI, by its design, seeks patterns and averages, smoothing out the unique and idiosyncratic elements that make human expression powerful. This leads to the claim that to be "too much" — messy, awkward, and unsanitized — is a way to resist being scraped and normalized by algorithms.
This idea connects with broader descriptions of the new sincerity movement found in cultural and philosophical discussions. New sincerity refers to a trend against irony, cynicism, and emotional detachment — a shift toward genuineness, earnestness, and vulnerability instead of dismissive distance. It represents a move away from postmodern irony and toward heartfelt engagement as a response to cultural conditions that value detachment and meta-commentary over emotional truth.
For example, American author David Foster Wallace famously imagined a literary culture that reclaimed emotional honesty and earnestness after years of postmodern irony. New sincerity does not necessarily reject complexity or nuance, but it rejects distancing and cynical indifference. In this way, what Dominic calls messy performance and radical vulnerability reflects a broader cultural yearning for connection beyond surface polish.
Where I Agree: Human Presence as a Response to AI
Dominic's argument that artists are resisting AI's smoothing tendencies by emphasizing human imperfection is compelling. The point that "you can't prompt 'the feeling of five friends losing their minds in a basement'" captures something that algorithms cannot replicate: lived experience. AI can mimic patterns in data, but it cannot inhabit the lived texture of memory, emotion, or bodily presence the way real people do. This is a powerful reminder that human expression has depth that goes beyond statistical probability.
I also agree that part of the appeal of sincerity in music and performance is emotional resonance. When artists perform in environments that feel improvisational, fragile, or unpredictable, audiences are drawn in not because the performance is perfect but because it feels real. This aligns with what cultural theorists mean when they describe new sincerity as a movement that values emotional connection over ironic detachment or cynical coolness.
Dominic's examples of musicians whose performances embrace imperfections effectively illustrate that sincerity is not "naive" or simple — it is often intentional, confrontational, and expressive. In a world where digital creation tools often aim for optimization, celebrating the raw and human highlights the limitations of technology in capturing the multifaceted reality of human experience.
Where I Think There's More to the Story
At the same time, I think Dominic's blog could go beyond the personal aesthetic examples to explore why audiences are so hungry for sincerity now. It's not just that AI creates average outputs — it's that human lives increasingly feel mediated by screens, algorithms, and performance metrics that pressure people to present curated, optimized versions of themselves. Constant comparison on social media platforms, for instance, creates a sense of distance between authentic experience and projected identity. In this context, the craving for sincerity may emerge not just as an artistic choice, but as a psychological counterforce to pervasive digital simulation.
There is research suggesting that people constantly exposed to idealized digital representations of life — whether through music, lifestyle content, or filtered social media posts — can experience increased feelings of inadequacy and alienation. When culture as a whole moves toward manufactured perfection, sincerity becomes not only an aesthetic preference but a psychological need: a way to anchor self-worth in genuine experience instead of curated image. While Dominic focuses on musicians resisting AI trends, this broader cultural factor — the dissonance between polished digital life and messy human reality — deepens the case for sincerity's appeal.
Authenticity and What It Brings to Art and Culture
Dominic's celebration of artists using messy performance aligns well with this broader context. The notion that audiences crave emotional connection is not surprising in a cultural environment saturated with simulation. When everything can be algorithmically perfected, what remains uniquely human is vulnerability — the willingness to share imperfections, uncertainty, and personal struggle.
Artists who embrace rawness, discord, and emotional risk invite audiences into a shared space of mutual humanity. This has implications beyond music or performance; it affects how we relate, how we empathize, and how we imagine community in a digital age. A movement toward sincerity, in this sense, is not merely reactionary — it is aspirational. It imagines a cultural space where beings connect through shared feeling rather than calculated representation.
Sincerity as More Than Resistance
When we describe something as sincerely human, we are not just saying it's free of irony — we are acknowledging its rootedness in context, emotion, and lived experience. In this way sincerity can function as both an aesthetic and an ethical stance: a commitment to expression that is unabashedly human.
Dominic frames new sincerity largely as an artistic response to AI's calculated outputs, but I think this concept also reflects deeper shifts in how people value connection in an age of digital mediation. It's not just that algorithms produce safer, average outputs — it's that living in a society where personal and artistic expression are increasingly measured against digital metrics encourages people to reclaim space for genuine emotional exchange. Art that embraces sincerity invites audiences into this experience, not as consumers of perfection, but as participants in shared vulnerability.
Toward a Future That Honors Feeling
Ultimately, Dominic's blog raises important questions about what it means to be human in an age where artificial intelligence and optimization shape much of our cultural landscape. Authentic expression, emotional honesty, and willingness to embrace imperfection are not just aesthetic choices — they are ways of asserting human complexity in a world that often encourages simplicity and sterility.
Rather than seeing the new sincerity as merely messy against machine, we can see it as a broader cultural movement: one that refuses to let human expression be reduced to algorithmic averages and that insists on the value of encountered, not engineered, experience. In this light, sincerity becomes more than a trend — it becomes a form of cultural resistance and a reminder of the depth and richness of human expression.
Ungvarsky, Janine. "New Sincerity." EBSCO Research Starters, 2023.