"I don’t think authenticity is wildly appreciated if you have a dark sense of humour either — I made a perfectly innocent joke..." You're right, when you say your authentic self may not be appreciated, but that doesn't change the wise advice about being you. You can try to pretend to be someone you're not, and people still hate you, so I'd rather be hated for being my authentic self, than for being a fake. BTW - There's no context where I can imagine "drowning babies" would be an innocent remark, but that's just my authentic self speaking :-)