You can trust some people. Others, not so much. Unfortunately, the difference isn’t always obvious. It feels like it should be, but most people don’t hold their nose when they bullshit you and they certainly don’t put on halos when they tell the truth.
If that’s the case, how can you sniff out the bullshit? Well, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. Start from there. But even with that start, you’ll need to be wary; there are plenty of people in the world who are happy to piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining; you need to learn the difference. For example, if your foot is warm, it’s probably not rain.
Detecting bullshit starts with you, because it’s easier to bullshit a person who wants to believe what you’re telling them. But who would want to be bullshitted? Unfortunately, when the bullshit lines up with what we want to or already believe, most of us.
More often than not, we seek out facts and information that agree with the beliefs we already hold. It’s called confirmation bias. It also means we tend to ignore facts and information that disagree with what we already think. Before you point a finger at a bullshitter, hook your thumb at yourself and examine your own biases. You might also be at fault, especially if you’re looking to confirm something you already believe.
Side note - confirmation bias is especially dangerous in social media circles and on the internet. Use your brain, be skeptical of fantastic claims, and check your sources. After you check your sources, check their sources. Fifteen seconds with a search engine lets you litmus test all kinds of claims.
Back to gullibility: While you’re checking your own beliefs, be aware of what you do and don’t know about the topic in question. It’s much easier to buy into a line of bullshit reasoning when you can’t tell the lies from the truth. We all go through phases of not knowing anything when we try new stuff, I just want you to be aware of your own inexperience, especially relative to others you’re dealing with.
Here’s a personal example: A friend and I once opened a film and television production company in Charlotte. We’d both been to film school, he’d been working in the industry for a few years, and we had the basics of the technical knowledge we needed to do what we set out to do.
What we didn’t have was any experience managing a small business. Undeterred, we incorporated, spent way too much time on business cards, set up a web site, and started making cold calls.
That was when we hit a wall. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and there was a lot we didn’t know. I went to networking events, gave out those business cards we spent too much time designing, and found zero clients. Our business was going nowhere. We had no office, no showreel, no connections, and no equipment.
Along comes Joe, who owns a production company in Raleigh. He wants us to do business development for his company, and he promised me and my friend a lot of things. They’d set up an office for us in Charlotte, we’d have editing and production there, and we’d have their staff and expertise on call when we did get clients.
This was all bullshit, but since I didn’t know any better, I bought it. My friend and I gave up our business and I commuted to Raleigh for several months where I worked as a producer to understand Joe’s business and staff. Then (as we’d agreed) I told him I was ready to go back to Charlotte and set up our new shop.
Turns out, Joe didn’t want me to move back to Charlotte. He offered me a full-time role in Raleigh with a decent salary, which was nice, but not what we’d agreed. Setting up an office in Charlotte with editing and production facilities was out. If I was going back to Charlotte, I’d be doing cold calls out of my den on a cell phone. That was what I did, and I never did close any sales. Joe eventually tried to get me to quit, then fired me and tried to stop me from collecting unemployment.
What’s my point? It should have sounded too good to be true, because it was. I wasn’t in a position to understand that, because I lacked the experience and connections to verify Joe’s intentions and trustworthiness. I was young, hungry, and ready to buy a load of fresh shit from anyone with a bull. That’s lesson one. If you don’t know much, but do know the offer sounds too good to be true, be suspicious.
Lesson two? Get it in writing, or at the very least, get a witness, someone who can confirm what you heard. Joe never wrote down anything he promised, so I didn’t have anything to hold him to when he changed his mind. I’m not sure it would have made much difference, but it would have been better than nothing.
Lesson three is that when you do realize you’ve been fed a load of bullshit, don’t keep swallowing. I could have moved to Raleigh and worked for Joe, but who knows how much other bullshit he would have fed me. Leaving his company led me into advertising, which turned out to be a great career fit for me.
On the broader topic of bullshit, I’m going to cite Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, who taught a course at the University of Washington titled Calling Bullshit. “When calling bullshit, be charitable: Never assume someone is being malicious when they might simply be stupid, and don’t assume stupidity when someone might simply be mistaken.”
One last thing, before you set out with your newfound skepticism and bullshit detectors. Consider the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, also known as Brandolini’s law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
The point there is that you don’t need to go disprove all the bullshitters. Rather, you need to have a sense of the two, and give new facts, information, and promises the sniff test. If it smells funny, think twice. Or, as Sturgill Simpson said, “If there's any doubt, then there is no doubt. The gut don't never lie.”
Be careful, and don’t let anybody piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining.
I love you,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.