FAKE!
Fakers are people who misrepresent themselves to gain social status.
Vishal: There’s something that confuses me about Tim Ferriss. Have you read any of his stuff?
Bill: No.
Vishal: He’s all about trying to get a result fast. For example, suppose you want to become a recognized expert at something. He says you start by giving a talk at some small local college. Put that on your resume, and then contact a bigger college and ask to give a talk there. Emphasize that you’ve spoken at College X to enhance your credibility. Rinse, repeat, and you eventually start giving talks in bigger and bigger venues. The thing is, he doesn’t say anything about gaining knowledge, or becoming good at something, or even just gaining basic competence. He says there’s a difference between being an expert and being perceived as one, and he’s interested in showing people how to be perceived as experts. What would you say about that?
Bill: It sounds like he’s a faker—or someone teaching people to be fakers.
Vishal: Wait! A faker? What’s a faker?
Bill: Fakers are people who misrepresent themselves to gain social status. They look at people who are truly excellent at something—masters in a domain. They witness how other people admire and respect masters, and want that admiration and respect for themselves. They could earn it by working to become masters—by acknowledging their deficiencies and putting in the time and effort it takes to get better. But that’s not what fakers do. Fakers want social status on the cheap. They don’t want to invest in becoming excellent. They’re less interested in excellence than in the social trappings of excellence—less interested in being good than seeming good. So they misrepresent themselves, their abilities, their accomplishments, their experience—anything they think will enhance their social status.
Vishal: So Tim Ferriss is giving lessons in misrepresentation?
Bill: That’s what it sounds like, yes. He’s telling you how to become a recognized expert. But he’s focusing on the “recognized” part of “recognized expert,” not the “expert” part. He’s telling you how to get people to treat you as if you’re an expert even if you’re really not.
Vishal: And that’s what you mean by “social status,” when you say fakers misrepresent themselves to gain social status?
Bill: Exactly. How other people treat you is a social thing. His goal is to get other people to treat you like an expert—to gain the status or recognition that would normally belong to real experts—without being a real expert. He’s not telling you how to become an expert—how to gain the knowledge and skills it takes to be one. He’s instead telling you how to look like an expert even if you aren’t one. That’s misrepresentation: making something seem different from what it really is. And the goal of this misrepresentation is social.
Vishal: And misrepresentation for social gain is what defines fakers?
Bill: Yes. Fakers misrepresent themselves, or their abilities, or accomplishments, or interests, or commitments, in order to move up a social hierarchy. That’s not the only reason people misrepresent themselves. Sometimes people misrepresent themselves to gain other things—money, for instance. A con man doesn’t necessarily want to be respected like an expert. He just wants your money, and misrepresents himself in order to get that.
Vishal: So the con man isn’t a faker, but something else?
Bill: Right. We can make up another term to refer to people like the con man who misrepresent themselves not for social gain but for financial gain. Let’s just call them ‘scammers’.
Vishal: So fakers want social status, and scammers want money. But they’re similar because both of them…
Bill: Both of them misrepresent themselves to get what they want. They try to enhance appearance, not reality. In reality, the faker isn’t an expert, and in reality the scammer isn’t trustworthy. But the faker tries to make it look as if he’s an expert, and the scammer tries to make it look as if he’s trustworthy.
Vishal: Is misrepresentation the same as deception?
Bill: Not exactly, no. There are many forms of misrepresentation that don’t aim at deception. Fine art, for instance, often misrepresents things to achieve an aesthetic effect. For example, the hands on Michelangelo’s Moses are disproportionately large. Michelangelo was trying to express something about Moses’ character. Really knowing about Moses’ character requires knowing about Moses’ story as a whole. But Michelangelo was limited to the medium of marble. He had to try to express something about Moses’ strength and commitment using that static medium. He did so by exaggerating the size of Moses’ hands—a misrepresentation of human proportions. But the goal wasn’t to deceive the viewer about Moses’ character. On the contrary, the goal was to express a truth about his character. (Incidentally, the Greeks had a word for this kind of misrepresentation. They called it mimesis. It’s what Picasso was trying to get at when he said, “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”)
Vishal: So not all misrepresentation aims at deception?
Bill: Correct. But it’s true that when people misrepresent things, they’re often trying to deceive someone, and that’s what fakers do: they try to deceive other people into thinking they’re something they’re not.
Vishal: Has anybody written about fakers? I mean has anyone given a systematic account of them?
Bill: I don’t know of any, but I’m happy to tell you what I know.
Vishal: That would be great! It seems to me that there are a lot of fakers out there—that there’s a whole industry built on being fake. Tim Ferriss is just one example. I’m also thinking of Instagram and Facebook, and all the other online platforms that people use to present images of themselves that don’t match reality. I think people would find it useful to know what fakers are and to have some tools for spotting them.
Bill: Okay. Let’s start by filling out the picture of what fakers are. I’ve already given you a definition. Let’s talk about some common faker behaviors.
Vishal: Cool!