Tom Coates reveals authentic version of Peter Saville sticker

For the last couple of weeks there’s been a lot of chatter about Tom Coates’s authenticity shtick:

“There has to be one place in your life where you’re absolutely resolutely not for sale. For me, that place is my personal site, the representation of me online.”

Hear that crackle of vintage vinyl on the 48-track recording? Nice effect, isn’t it?

What’s really surprising about the “super spat” is that anyone at all buys Coates’s notion that bloggers are somehow authentic, while PR is fake.

Get real: every “representation of me online” is mediated, public and more or less carefully planned (the way PR campaigns are planned).

Social networks — blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it — are where you learn how to present yourself, shape your profile and market your brand (w/thanks to Mercedes Bunz).

Nice photo, though — and nothing to do, surely, with the sticker that Peter Saville did for “Creative Review” way back in January — dead authentic.