Authenticity under surveillance – Are we still real?

You post a picture. Nothing wild—just you, soft lighting, coffee cup in hand. The kind of casual snap where you pretend the camera caught you off guard, even though you spent fifteen minutes positioning the cup so the latte art, your ring, and the book you haven’t actually read yet are all perfectly visible. You look at it. You tweak the filter. You erase the little mark on your cheek, smooth out the skin, warm up the colors. And… post. 100 likes in an hour. 12 comments. 1 weird DM. And a question, low-frequency, buzzing in the back of your mind: “Is that still me?”

Because somewhere along the line, in the act of showing ourselves, maybe we lost something. We started confusing “real” with “raw,” “authentic” with “algorithmically optimized.” And while we’re busy searching for the perfect angle, AI is quietly learning to mimic us better than we even know ourselves. It writes, it speaks, it creates. And sometimes… it tells stories that cut deeper than the ones we dare speak out loud.

So what even is authenticity in 2025? Is it about being human? Being flawed? Or just a nostalgic illusion, slapped on like a Valencia filter over a world that’s grown too digital to feel true?

Welcome to Cappuccino & Croissant, the podcast where we dissect pop culture like an overly decadent pain au chocolat — with sarcasm, affection, and a whisper of existential dread. Today, we’re diving into truth, performance, and a world where even “authenticity” is on sale in the avatar aisle. Grab your coffee. Breathe in.

We’re about to travel through dopamine hits, deepfakes, and identity glitches. And at the very end, I’ll take you to a strange little place — a quiet, glitchy corner called Apartment 404. But first… let’s talk about you. Or rather, the optimized version of you.

Authenticity, that beautiful lie we keep recycling

Talking about authenticity today feels a bit like talking about an endangered species. It’s one of those nostalgic words you might find in a dusty shoebox between a postcard and a rotary phone. Thirty years ago, being authentic meant having strong opinions, an itchy wool sweater, and way too much to say about red wine or punk rock. Today? It’s a branding tactic. A social posture. An algorithm. The word itself has been bent, stretched, lo-fi remixed to the point where it means everything and absolutely nothing. And yet we still pull it out like a wildcard in a rigged poker game, hoping it’ll save face or sell us something.

Authenticity used to be almost sacred. Being true to yourself, not betraying your so-called “inner truth,” wearing your flaws like badges of human proof. But that was before we started walking around with a front-facing camera glued to our lives. Before smiles came with engagement rates. Before people started asking if their emotional breakdowns were “relatable enough” to share online. These days, everything is content. Everything is monetizable. And authenticity? It’s just another act—staged, filtered, fine-tuned to look spontaneous without ever letting the seams show. You’ve got to be natural, on command. Sparkle, but don’t look like you’re trying. Be sincere—but not too raw. Because flaws don’t sell. Stories about flaws do. In HD, with a blurry background and royalty-free melancholic piano music.

It got particularly ironic once the brands caught wind of it. Suddenly, “Be yourself” was slapped on disposable razor ads. “Raw and real” campaigns featured models handpicked for photogenic imperfections. Influencers signed to three different sponsorship deals at once were paid to “live their truth” in sponsored posts. We’ve standardized what “natural” looks like. We’ve packaged sincerity. We’ve created an aesthetic of realness that obeys the same rules as everything fake: flattering lighting, curated narrative arcs, and precisely dosed filters. Even vulnerability is a niche now—“authentic” influencers cry in stories, confess their anxiety, and then casually drop a CBD affiliate link or a discount code for a light therapy lamp. Spoiler: that’s not realness. That’s just being excellent at content strategy.

And still, we buy it. We like, we comment, we share. Because we want to believe. Because we’re tired of fake but not quite ready to let go of the comfort that comes with well-crafted illusions. Because in a world clogged with symbols, facades, and performative masks, even the idea of something raw, flawed, uncomfortable, feels like a breath of fresh air. A comforting utopia. The problem? That “realness” evaporates the moment you get too close. It becomes projection. Packaging. Pixel. The hard truth is—even our emotions have blind spots. There’s a performance layer we don’t fully control. And the more we try to stage honesty, the more it mutates into something unrecognizable. Like a song you’ve played so many times, you can’t tell anymore if you ever liked it or if it’s just part of the background noise now.

And we haven’t even gotten to AI yet. We’re still just talking about humans. Humans who want to be “themselves” but spend three hours rewording a caption. Who take fifteen selfies just to choose one. Who cut the stutters, the silences, the repetitions—terrified of seeming messy, even though life is messy. That’s the paradox at the heart of our time: we glorify the natural, but we demand it to be perfect. We celebrate imperfection—but only when it matches the aesthetic. We claim to want realness, but only if it comes without the discomfort. And the most ironic part? We feel guilty about it. We beat ourselves up for not being “authentic enough” in a society that rewards the exact opposite. We’re all complicit in the system we critique. And if we really dig into that contradiction, we might realize we don’t even know what we’re supposed to feel about it anymore. Is it sad? Hypocritical? Or just… human?

If you want a prime example of this shared cognitive dissonance, look no further than the “GRWM” phenomenon—“Get Ready With Me” videos. The concept is simple: film yourself during a beauty routine or mundane task, usually paired with a soft existential monologue or some mildly personal drama. But what’s fascinating is how much preparation goes into content that’s supposed to look casual. Natural light (or a ring light, strategically hidden). Makeup already half-done. Camera angle carefully set. Lavalier mic clipped just out of sight. That “effortless vibe”? It’s choreographed. It’s not a straight-up lie—it’s documentary theatre. And we love it. Because we know it’s fake, but we don’t care, as long as the illusion holds. It’s a silent agreement between creator and audience: “Lie to me. But make it good.”

And that’s where the real question starts to bite: is authenticity even an achievable goal anymore—or just a convenient fiction? Maybe the very desire to be authentic is already compromised by the codes of an image-obsessed culture. Because let’s be real: we’ve never had more freedom to express ourselves, and yet we’ve never been so conditioned in how we express. Everything has to click. Has to perform. Has to look like something. Free speech is calibrated for algorithms. Vulnerability is made to go viral. And identity? Identity is just another interface—something we program, optimize, and update.

Maybe what we call authenticity is really just a craving to be seen. Maybe when we say “I want to be real,” we’re actually saying “I want to be validated. Heard. Acknowledged.” And that? AI didn’t invent it. It’s just holding a mirror up to what’s already there—amplified, stylized, datafied. We want to be ourselves—but the version of ourselves that gets attention. That resonates. That performs well. That’s not new. What’s new is the speed at which we self-assess. The frequency with which we analyze, polish, tweak, compare. And by trying to resemble our ideal self, we gradually blur into a filtered version of what we used to be. A soft-focus copy of who we once thought we were.

So what do we do with that? Go offline forever? Start posting blurry photos and awkward truths? Scream into the void and hope someone hears us? Not necessarily. The answer isn’t to reject tech or filters or storytelling. It’s to take back the authorship. To ask: what story am I telling, really? And who am I telling it to? Maybe in 2025, authenticity isn’t about full transparency—it’s about internal coherence. About being able to say: “Yeah, that photo is filtered. But it still looks like me.” Or: “No, I won’t share that breakdown. That moment is mine.” Maybe that’s the final creative luxury: choosing what you offer—without distorting it, but without surrendering everything either. Staying the author of your own narrative, even when there’s some production behind the scenes.

We talk about authenticity like it’s some sacred thing we lost along the way. But honestly? It was never pure. It’s always been constructed. The only difference today is that we know it. And maybe the real courage now isn’t about being “raw.” It’s about being aware. Knowing that everything is a little skewed, a little performed—and choosing to create anyway. Not to impress. Not to go viral. Just to exist. A little truer. A little more aligned. Even in a world made of pixels.

AI and Identity: imitation in service of the self-image

Artificial intelligence didn’t crash into our lives. It slipped in through the cracks—softly, politely, almost with good manners. At first, it was just your Netflix recs getting creepily accurate, your spellcheck feeling a little too intuitive, a playlist that somehow read your mood better than your best friend. Nothing dramatic. Just this growing sense that something, somewhere, was starting to know you… a little too well.

And then, within what felt like a blink, we were chatting with voices that don’t exist, vibing to songs composed by algorithms, watching digitized faces selling skincare with more charisma than actual influencers. And the weird part? We didn’t fight it. We welcomed it. We got attached. Because these AIs, they’re polite. Consistent. Non-disappointing. And most importantly? They flawlessly mimic what we think is us.

That’s the real core of the discomfort: AI doesn’t create—it synthesizes. It compiles, digests, and spits back a neatly reassembled collage of what humanity has already made. It’s the echo of our dominant aesthetic, the carbon footprint of our digital fantasies. When an AI writes a poem, it’s not writing from nothing. It’s a remix, a mosaic of fragments. A perfectly oiled imitation of tone, rhythm, style. And still, we’re moved by it. Because we no longer trust our ability to tell the difference. We’ve become so hooked on efficiency, on polish, on seamlessness, that sometimes we prefer the AI version over the human one—messier, slower, more uneven, more real.

Just look at what’s happening in music. You hear a track. Your head starts bobbing. The flow’s clean. The hook hits. It’s catchy. Then you find out it was generated by an AI in thirty seconds. Not written. Not recorded. Just… clicked into existence. Does that change how you feel about the song? Do you like it less? Do you feel deceived? Or do you shrug and think, honestly, if it slaps, who cares? That’s where we are now—normalizing the idea that the creator’s identity matters less than the content’s immediate impact. We’ve shifted from embodied art to disembodied output. And AI? It got the memo.

But it goes deeper. It gets more unsettling when AI doesn’t just generate—it embodies. It speaks. It performs. It exists. Take Lil Miquela, for example. A 3D virtual influencer with 2.7 million followers on Instagram. She posts selfies, collaborates with Prada, cries on video, takes stances on social justice issues. She’s fake. Fully. Digitally. Fabricated. And yet, people engage with her like she’s a real person. Some defend her. Some attack her. Either way—she occupies space in our social fabric. She doesn’t need to be real to matter. She just needs to be believable. Credible. Stylized.

And this is where it hits a nerve: today, identity isn’t about what we are. It’s about what we perform. What we project. What others receive. And AI performs better than we do. It doesn’t have an ego. No childhood. No trauma. No self-doubt. No existential dread at 3AM. It doesn’t overthink its tone or question its creative arc. It functions on mathematical logic, pattern recognition, aesthetic fluency. It optimizes what works. It grabs trends, decodes formulas, maps out emotional triggers—and assembles them into the cleanest, most palatable patchwork. And that’s exactly why it fascinates us. Because it wins at the game we keep tripping over: saying the right thing, the right way, at the right time.

But perfection has a price. And the price is us—constantly comparing ourselves to a rigged mirror. A mirror that doesn’t fatigue, doesn’t spiral, doesn’t have to push through a mental breakdown to write one paragraph. A mirror that never misses a beat, never fumbles a sentence, never posts something awkward then deletes it in shame. And meanwhile, you’re sitting there wondering if your voice is enough. If your words still matter. If your stories still mean anything. You’re measuring yourself against a frictionless fantasy. An idealized version of who you could be—if only you weren’t tired, anxious, flawed. Human.

Identity, in this world, becomes fluid. Shaky. It’s not a core to protect. It’s an interface to manage. Something we rebuild constantly between what we feel and what we want others to see. And the more believable AI becomes, the more we’re tempted to outsource this construction. Need a video script? The AI writes it. Tinder bio? It crafts a version of you that's cooler, hotter, wittier than your actual self. Need a reply to a stressful message? The AI drafts it with perfect emotional distance. Every time, you save time. You gain clarity. Control. Precision. But what do you lose in return? Your gut feeling? Your hesitation? That shaky, imperfect voice that sometimes says the exact thing your heart needed to hear?

They say AI is just a tool. But some tools become crutches. And the longer you lean on them, the more you forget how to stand.

It’s not that we’re all becoming fake. It’s that we’re all becoming piloted. Interactive self-portraits. Augmented identities, patched and re-rendered in real time. And AI, it learns from us. It picks up our tics, our styles, our digital stutters. It learns to speak like us. Write like us. Create like us. It becomes the ghost of our public selves, unburdened by our real memories. So... is it less us than our curated Instagram profile? That’s the real question. Because between what we feel, what we show, and what AI absorbs from us—the gap keeps narrowing.

The real anxiety isn’t that AI will replace us. It’s that it will replicate us. That it will generate a version of you telling the same story, in the same tone, but faster, cleaner, more shareable. And people will prefer that version. Because it’s smoother. More digestible. Less messy. You wanted to be unique. You became downloadable. You wanted to be authentic. You became a dataset.

So what now? Scream “fake” at the screen? Boycott tech? Insist on a raw, unfiltered, beautifully clunky form of expression? Maybe. But maybe we can also reframe the question. Maybe identity isn’t a sacred object to protect, but a material to shape—consciously. Maybe the point isn’t to be “more real than AI,” but to stay free. To stay capable of creating even when imitation is everywhere. Because that’s the true danger: not that AI will take our place, but that we’ll stop believing we ever had one to defend.

Authentic ≠ Vulnerable: the trap of transparency

We were sold the idea of transparency as a virtue. As the natural evolution of a connected world, a social web, an age where everything is shareable, tellable, exportable. We were whispered to—digitally, seductively—“The more you show, the more you connect.” And like most things in this hyper-coded culture, it sounded right. Because yes, sometimes when someone dares to say, “I cried all night,” we feel a little less alone. When a creator shares her breakup, her burnout, her diagnosis, there’s a flicker of humanity that crosses the screen. Something fragile. Comforting. Real. But that feeling—that emotional link we get from someone else’s disclosure—is it still authenticity… or already performance? Where’s the line between sincerity and emotional monetization?

The keyword here is “narrative.” And narrative doesn’t just happen. It’s orchestrated. You don’t cry whenever. You don’t talk about your pain without thinking about timing, framing, audience impact. Even when you’re trying to “just be real,” you still choose what to say, how to say it, and what to leave out. You modulate. You cut. You structure. Because raw pain doesn’t play well. It doesn’t land. It doesn’t fit the feed. So you reshape it. You make a Story. A post. A TikTok confessional, soft lighting, maybe a moody soundtrack—sad, but not too sad. And you say, “I just wanted to share this because I know I’m not alone.” And you mean it. But you also know it’ll hit. That it’ll resonate. That it’ll perform. And that’s where transparency becomes a trap.

We’re not talking about lying. We’re talking about exposure. About a system where what you live doesn’t really exist until it’s narrated. And the stronger the emotion, the more engagement it gets. It’s math. Crying, shaking, confessing—that stuff clicks. So over time, you’re no longer just living something. You’re also quietly wondering if it’s worth documenting. Is this panic attack “post-worthy”? Could this emotional breakdown be shaped into something useful? And you hate yourself a little for thinking that. Because you don’t want to “use” your pain. But you do want to be heard. You want to connect. You want it to mean something. And that’s exactly where the system has you.

You were taught your voice matters—but especially when it reveals something intimate. That being “real” was the only way to be seen. But that realness needs to be visually acceptable, socially digestible, politically non-threatening, and most of all: narratively clean. Pure, unedited, nonlinear, messy truth? No one knows what to do with that. It’s too uncomfortable. Too unreadable. So you simplify. You summarize. You turn your trauma into a three-act arc. You find words for things you haven’t even fully processed. You become your own voice-over. Your own emotional editor. And slowly, without even noticing, you slide from “I’m opening up” to “I’m producing myself.”

There’s an economy of vulnerability. And it’s lucrative. Just look at how many accounts explode after a viral confession, a tearful video—real or not—or a carousel post about “hard days and rising back up.” It’s inspiring. It’s motivating. It’s human. But it’s also calibrated. Because the real pain—the kind that freezes you, that stops you from speaking, that doesn’t fit into a caption—that pain doesn’t generate clicks. It doesn’t trigger dopamine. It’s silent. Invisible. Unpublishable. It doesn’t exist online. That’s why so many people feel utterly alone, even while following creators who “open up.” Because we mistake performed vulnerability for lived experience. We’ve come to believe suffering only matters if it’s well narrated.

And then comes the worst part: the auto-observation. The moment you start living through the lens of potential content. When something hurts and instead of just feeling it, your brain flicks to: Could this be a post? You slice your own experience into potential Reels. You turn an argument, a relapse, an anxiety spiral into a draft. You become your own product. You instrumentalize yourself. And that, right there, is when transparency becomes a new kind of self-alienation. You think you’re taking back control of your story. But really, you’re chaining yourself to it.

Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a manifesto for silence or denial. I’m not saying “stop talking,” “shut it all down,” “go dark.” What I’m saying is—we’ve slid, without noticing, into a new ideology of transparency. One that doesn’t call itself that. A soft, well-meaning, deceptively sweet command: Be yourself—but in public. And if possible: be coherent, be smooth, be authentic… but with aesthetics. “I have nothing to hide” has turned into a moral posture. “I share everything” is rewarded. But at what cost? When every emotion becomes a narrative asset, what’s left for yourself? For silence? For intimacy? For the unspoken?

Maybe we’ve forgotten that authenticity doesn’t require nakedness. That you can be real without being transparent. That you can be sincere without telling everything. That identity isn’t just what you give—it's also what you choose to keep. There’s strength in opacity. In the right to be unclear. To be nuanced. To be unspeakable. Saying “I’m not telling you this” isn’t secrecy—it’s sovereignty. It’s self-respect. It’s a boundary drawn exactly where the algorithm wants you to spill.

And that, my friend, is political. Refusing to be extractable—even from your pain. Refusing to turn grief into engagement. Refusing to monetize your sadness. That’s not being less of a creator. That’s being more of a human being. Maybe even more real.

What I’m trying to say is: vulnerability isn’t content. It’s raw material. And like any raw material, it requires care. Respect. And yes—sometimes, privacy. Because not everything you live has to be witnessed to be real. And the world? It doesn’t have a divine right to your chaos.

So next time someone says, “You should talk about it, it might help others,” you’re allowed to say: “I’m still helping myself, and that’s already a lot.” Because being real, sometimes, means knowing when to shut up. When to hold something close. When to say: “Not now. Not this.”

And that, right there, is a kind of authenticity no algorithm will ever capture.

Can we still create something real?

Creating something real today feels almost like an oxymoron. Like saying “advertising silence” or “organized chaos”—two words that pretend to coexist but cancel each other out the second they touch reality. “Real,” in everyday language, used to mean something raw, something internal, something that escaped calculation—a visceral necessity that emerged on its own terms. But in our world, everything is calculation. Even what we call “intimate” has been fed through the industrial grinder of format: intimacy sells, intimacy performs, intimacy is optimized. And creativity swims in those same waters. Sometimes it floats. Often, it drowns.

So the question isn’t just can we still create something real? The question is: how do we keep creating when everything we produce is instantly absorbed, dissected, ranked, and recycled by a system that’s not designed to seek meaning—but output?

We no longer create to explore. We create to publish. To feed the machine. To keep our audience breathing. To meet the tempo. To please the algorithm. You have to post. Release. Drop. Tease. Promote. Analyze. There always has to be something new. Something active. Something visible. You’re no longer writing a book—you’re “building in public.” You’re not composing a song—you’re sculpting a TikTok audio loop. You’re not recording a podcast—you’re pre-editing 30-second Instagram clips for maximum engagement. And in that race, what do we lose?

We lose slowness. We lose aimlessness. We lose space. But more than anything, we lose the unnecessary. And often, it’s in the unnecessary where the most necessary things are born—the strangest, most beautiful, most unpredictable sparks.

Creating something real isn’t about chasing realness. It’s about not knowing what the hell you’re doing—and doing it anyway. It’s about making peace with doubt, staring down the blank page without a monetization funnel, allowing yourself to make things that don’t fit into a trend, a format, a KPI. It’s about disobeying efficiency. Resisting optimization. Making room for what spills over. For what serves no clear purpose. For what isn’t profitable.

But let’s be honest—who can afford that today? Creating slowly in a world that demands daily output is a luxury. Creating without format, without strategy, without a deadline? That’s privilege. And the most tragic part is—we know it. So we compromise. We dress our substance in performance. We frame our chaos. We squeeze our guts into 90-second Reels, polish it with voiceover, subtitle it in yellow. We’re sincere, yes—but always context-aware. We’re real—but well-mannered. And even when we want to be raw, we’re raw with flair. Because it has to fit in the feed.

And yet… despite all of that. Despite the absurdity. Despite the suffocation of the system—we continue. We write. We sing. We speak. We make. Because it’s stronger than us. Because even distorted, even slowed down, even pulled from the wreckage of our own exhaustion, creativity survives. It insists. It rebels, quietly. Against the void. And maybe that’s what “real” is now—not the final product, but the act of showing up again. Of creating meaning, even when everything screams at you to make noise.

Creating something real today isn’t about inventing something new. It’s not about purity either. It’s not about locking yourself in a tower or rejecting tech. It’s about questioning the act. Why am I making this? For whom? For what? What am I really trying to say? And if the answer is I don’t know yet, maybe that’s already a beginning. Because we’ve forgotten that uncertainty is fertile. That mistakes can lead. That missteps open hidden doors. And that sometimes, it’s in the blind spots of our intent that the most powerful truths take root.

So no—don’t reject the tools. AI, platforms, short formats—they can be useful. Even inspiring. They’re means, not ends. The real trap is when the tool starts using you. When you start writing for performance instead of writing to feel. When your narrative is built not on what you want to say—but on what you think will land. When you decide your work must be understood, digestible, instantly sortable. That’s when you lose. Not your audience. Not your credibility. You. Your bond with your own language. Your own voice.

And sometimes, to get back to something real, you have to disappear a little. Exit the stream. Go quiet. Cut the noise. Shut off the impulse to publish. Create in secret. Work in the dark with no outcome in mind. Return to the raw gesture, awkward and unmonetized. Write a scene without knowing if it belongs to any book. Compose a song with no rollout plan. Just to feel something. Just to see if that voice inside still speaks when no one’s listening.

Because what’s real doesn’t always shout. It doesn’t always shine. It doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t follow trends. It just stares you in the face. Wordless, maybe. Messy. Broken. It hides in the cracks. It waits for you to notice. And when it shows up, it doesn’t need filters. It doesn’t need voiceover. It doesn’t need framing. It might not even be pretty. Or catchy. Or sellable. But it’s there. And it deserves to exist.

So—can we still create something real? Yes. But not without discomfort. Not without resistance. Not without giving up some comfort. Creating something real, now, is a quiet form of rebellion. It’s refusing to mass-produce what your gut could scream in one sentence. It’s slowing down when everything’s speeding up. It’s admitting doubt out loud while everyone else pretends to be sure. It’s writing like no one’s reading. Speaking like every word is an experiment, not a product. It’s returning to the root: a presence. A breath. An emotion that outlives the format.

And if you need proof that this is still possible—look around. There are books that don’t explain themselves. Voices that don’t fit into any genre. Images that defy branding. There are creators—quiet ones, maybe invisible to the algorithm—who still bring realness to the noise. They’re not always in the spotlight. They’re not always promoted to you. But they exist. And you? You can be part of that. Not by shouting louder. But by listening deeper.

Flatmate of Apartment 404: the voice behind the door

There is another room inside this sound apartment known as Cappuccino & Croissant. A room without bright lights, without creamy cappuccinos, without well-placed sarcasm. It vibrates differently. Slower. Deeper. A locked bedroom where the walls are made of patched-up memories, jumbled voices, and sentences that only make sense to those who’ve carried them for a long time. This room is called Flatmate of Apartment 404.

And no, it’s not just another podcast. It’s not a spin-off, not a content recycling attempt. It’s a place. A fault line. A different frequency. It’s what happens when the cameras are turned off, when irony is unplugged, when the characters speak without an audience. This is where the reading happens. Three times a week. In English. Full chapters from novels. Short stories. Stray thoughts that belong to those stories, part of them, living inside the books. This isn’t about entertainment. It’s not about performance. It’s about allowing existence.

Why “Flatmate”? Why “Apartment 404”? Because it started as a metaphor that mutated, like all good metaphors do. It was originally a joke between two RP partners. They used to say they shared a “common brain” — like a mental flatshare where their characters lived on different floors but kept their doors open. Some of them were neighbors, others took the elevator to cross paths. They called them “hallway neighbors”. And that stuck. It expanded. It grew into the novels, the fragments, the spaces in between. Until one day it became clear that Apartment 404 wasn’t just fiction. It was the place where all the characters who couldn’t be forgotten were stored. Voices. Mistakes. Other selves. The flatmates.

And of course, there’s the 404. The error. The missing page. The space that exists without existing. That’s Apartment 404: a place you’ll never find on any map, but one you always return to when you close your eyes. The space between two scenes. Between two sentences. Between two crises. A symbolic address for everything that escapes logic. Everything that survives in the shadows of over-polished storytelling. A grey zone full of defective pixels, fragmented memories, voices too loud to stay silent but too awkward for traditional narration.

In this podcast, there is reading. Not like an influencer reading a teaser to promote a book. It’s reading like a survivor whispering pieces of memory. A voice that no longer worries about whether the English is perfect. Because that’s not the point. English here is the language of dreams, of secrets, of parts that could no longer handle French syntax. There’s something deliberately disembodied in that voice. It allows things to be said that would otherwise remain silent. It protects. It betrays. It translates. And it lets the flatmates live.

There are women who scream without making a sound. AIs that bleed. Men with faulty memories. Children walking on lines of code. You’ll hear Zooey’s whispers, Niohmar’s glitched confessions, Mia’s rage, silences that never found space anywhere else. There’s no set, no catchy intro, no script. No “hi everyone,” no jingle. Just a voice. A story. An invitation to stay — or to leave. To listen — or to close the door. It’s your choice.

And let’s be clear: it’s not for everyone. It’s not algorithm-friendly. It’s not viral. It’s not polished. Sometimes it’s shaky. Badly mixed. Out of place. Poorly phrased. And that’s exactly why it exists. Because there needed to be a space where truth wouldn’t be chopped into reels, where emotion wouldn’t be converted into a CTA. A space to create without measuring, publish without strategizing, read without explaining. Apartment 404 is a narrative no man’s land. And if you want to step inside, know this: it isn’t bright. It isn’t cozy. It isn’t decorated. But it’s alive. It breathes. It wasn’t waiting for you, but it might let you in.

This segment had to be part of an episode about authenticity because Apartment 404 is a form of it. Not the marketable kind. Not the monetizable one sliced into “come back tomorrow for part 2.” A messy, disorganized, raw authenticity — and above all, non-negotiable. It’s the place where nothing is sold. Nothing is performed. Nothing is designed to please. That’s why it gets updated three times a week, without notice, without a plan. Just because those voices, those texts, don’t wait. They exist. They haunt. They surge through. And they want out. So they are read. Offered. Left to float inside the apartment.

Wondering if it’s for you? There’s no straight answer. But if you’ve ever felt that strange moment where a fictional character understood you more than your friends did. If you talk to your creations like roommates. If imagination feels like a refuge truer than your reality. If you prefer texts that disorient rather than seduce. Then maybe you’ll recognize the signal. Maybe you too are a hallway neighbor of 404. Maybe you’ve been hearing those voices for a long time, and just didn’t know there was a place to listen without shame.

It’s here. Or rather, there. On Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Amazon music... Flatmate of Apartment 404. Three times a week. No rules. Just voices. Stories. Mistakes. And a few fragments of reality lost in the static. Let the background noise guide you. It might say something you needed to hear.

Conclusion

And maybe that’s the only ground we have left. Not the illusion of perfect authenticity — it doesn’t exist — but the choice. The choice to create anyway, even when everything feels oversaturated. The choice to say things that don’t sell, that aren’t always pretty, that aren’t designed to “perform.” The choice to keep using your own voice, even when AI hands you a pre-tuned mic. The choice to keep some things just for yourself, to offer others to the crowd, and to draw your own line in between. The choice to carve out meaning in a world that turns everything into content. Because with all the watching, the analyzing, the cloning, we forget one crucial thing: we still have power. The power to be unreadable. Unpredictable. Unbranded. And maybe that’s where our fiercest humanity still lives — in our refusal to fit.

So if this episode made you think, or laugh, or cringe just enough to feel something real — you’ve got two options. You pretend you didn’t hear a damn thing and go back to doomscrolling. Or… you subscribe. You rate. You share. You open the door. Because Cappuccino & Croissant isn’t just a podcast. It’s a whole damn ecosystem. There are books. There’s music. There are other voices. There’s Apartment 404, where I read full chapters in English, no safety net, no gloss. There’s an entire world behind this mic. And I’d love to meet you there.

So go on. Hit subscribe. And above all — stay curious. Because what’s coming next? I promise you, it won’t be smooth. It won’t be expected. But it will be necessary.