Spotting a BS artist
The Sunday Feed
As you grow so shall you reap. If you do not take the words too literally then it means that every passing day will make you wiser.
Yes, this is not a prerogative of people working in the office. You could be farming, doing cleaning, driving or even singing for a living.
Yet, what amazes me the most is the phenomenal growth of a complete breed of BS artists. They are everywhere. In fact, if you are a believer, you will understand that other than your god or goddess, it is the BS artist that is truly omni present.
In fact, you will be surprised to see that the BS artist are in areas where even the gods or the goddess would not dare to tread.
So, what makes this profession or trade so powerful. Given the human nature, we tend to believe the BS artist because of the dynamic storytelling attribute that they possess and always use.
So how does one spot a BS artist. Let us look at some of the most effective ways.
1. Show me the Money
Most of the time they talk about money. They tend to flaunt their own wealth in terms of property or possessions so that they come out as someone who is an extremely successful person.
In order to authenticate their statement and give it authority, they will shoot at a non-crowded, expensive location while driving a high end sports car.
2. Exaggeration
They very well know that most people harbor dreams and most of these dreams are nothing other than wishful thinking.
The moment these artists talk about an exaggerated dream, most people tend to secretly connect with them and see them as someone who understands them better than anybody else.
3. Excessive Use of Jargons.
They are aware of the blank dot effect. For those who do not know, it’s a game played by holding a piece of paper which is white. This paper will have a black dot right in the Centre.
You then go up to the audience and ask them a question as to what is it that they can see. 99.99% of the people or respondents will say that they see a black dot.
These artists will use this myopic vision syndrome to make you focus on the various jargons that they will use from time to time. This makes you forget of all the other risks and disadvantages of doing what these artists tell you to do. Just like the 99.99% of the people who become blind to the white, pristine area surrounding the black dot.
4. They talk a lot.
I often like people who talk a lot but that is only true for pubs and clubs. Because these people take away the pressure from you and do most of the talking, you can pretend to listen to them wild cherish the drink that you’re having.
However, when it comes to work, these kinds of people will be a huge burden on the taxpayer. The reason being that some of them will become politicians and convince people to invest in projects that would add absolutely no value to the growth of the economy or help improve the lives of people.
You will find these kinds of people in the corporate sector as well. They will present a lot of futuristic programs and even get budgets approved and get the project started.
They know that after a certain period, their BS will be exposed but by that time they would have already left the company. They will repeat the same thing in another organization.
5. The Connections
These people are big in terms of name dropping and most of the people they casually mention in the conversation don’t even know that these BS artists exist. Let alone knowing them at a professional or a personal level.
They are also quick to make a geographic connection with the place that they visit. They will find some story that will make them look as if they originated from the place in question.
6. They lie all the time.
Starting from the resumes to the proposals they present, they revel in lying all the time. So much so that they themselves don’t know what they have spoken or written.
The reason they get away with this can be understood by the 2 points mentioned below:
a. Most people are either too busy or too lazy to find out if these BS artists have really achieved what they claim to have.
b. It is easy to bluff about the future. No one really knows what will happen so in order to make people believe you say it loud and say it as frequently as you can.
To conclude, some of the other traits of these artists are not maintaining proper eye contact, over dressing with brand logos, gate crashing, buying fake social media followers and making unauthentic claims.
I hope you don’t come across many of these so-called BS artists because there are chances that you could get so annoyed with them that you could become the Huddersfield strangler.
But if you do see any of these traits in your supervisor or manager, you should immediately get a writing pad and pen down everything that they say so that you can show them when they refuse to accept what they had said earlier.
However, the better thing to do is always to start looking for an alternative job, because these kinds of artists were born to be one and there is very little or absolutely no chance that they are ever going to change.
John Khalkho: CEO Dolores Education