The Creative World’s Bullshit Industrial Complex

If someone cares more about what their industry peers think of them than the problems they are solving, they’re a bullshitter. If the idea of being “known” is barometer of their success above user (or reader) success stories, they’re a bullshitter. They are the internet’s equivalent of a reality TV star, taking advantage of the attention economy by... See more

The cynic in you may wonder, “Who cares? The more bullshitters out there, the more the non-bullshitters like me will be valued.” But what is frightening is those among us who consider success as bullshitter as actual success.

Creative people often despise those that criticize work without having work of their own. Something Teddy Roosevelt referred to as “being in the arena.” We respect opinions from those that are in the trenches with us, doing the hard things that we try to do. But this creative expert class is worse than any critic, offering other people creative sal... See more

Many sites like Medium are, yes, rich with intelligent essays, but also rich with people giving generic advice in the hopes of selling the next ebook containing aggregated advice from other advice givers. And as more of us are tasked with appearing as experts, we’re incentivized to look the other way.

This Bullshit Industrial Complex has always existed. But thanks to the precarious economics and job prospects of the creative person, it is often in a creative’s financial interest to climb the bullshit pyramid. In the short term, it’s creating a class of (often young) creatives deluded into thinking they are doing something meaningful by sharing “... See more

In these pitches there’s nothing to suggest the person has any original experience or research or insight to offer said advice. Instead they choose to quote other people who quote other people and the insights can often be traced back in a recursive loop. Their interest is not in making the reader’s life any better, it is in building their own prof... See more

They are what philosopher Harry Frankfurt would call “bullshitters.” Those that are giving advice for the sake of giving advice, without any regard as to how it is actually implemented, if it can even be implemented at all. “It’s not important to [the bullshitter] what the world really is like,” he says in a short video documentary about the phenom... See more