Audiences are hard at work finding and engaging in multiform factual content spread across a wide range of streaming platforms such as Netflix or YouTube. These platforms and the accompanying digital mess of generic labelling, algorithmic recommendations, and social media marketing, in many ways push audiences to the edge of their capacities. What are audiences to do when facts and authenticity have unstable generic identities? This research draws on empirical research for streaming content (eg Netflix, YouTube) to bring to the foreground the highly contextual, unstable, and social nature of factual genres such as documentary and reality. The research points to an acute attention to friction in factual evidence, in particular friction as signs of difference in what we can call an authenticity index. The unstable markers of factuality within mixed generic digital content don’t come with agreed upon labels. There is no fixed authenticity index; it fluctuates within the production environment of factual artefacts, the dominance of streaming platforms, the buoyancy of SVOD services, and the resonance of social media conversations. Examples of markers of authenticity include something simple like doing a workout together with a YouTube video, or survival reality series, where people live in the forest. Intensely physical reactions, such as tears of joy, by participants in documentary and reality series, can be matched by physical reactions by audiences themselves. This type of somatic evidence is given value and visibility by audiences in constructing and disputing markers of authenticity in factual streaming content. In the context of the precarity of documentary and reality genres, and the rise of AI and deep fake factual content, audiences join forces to figure out what is real and how to feel about the challenges factuality faces in digital environments.