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We like impostor stories because we’re afraid we’re impostors (2016)
- chme 10y agoWe also like murder stories because we are afraid of being murdered.
- accountface 10y agoor is it because we instinctually have some compulsion to murder?
- Namrog84 10y agoI think this also touches on a 80/20 type scenario. For many professionals that take serious time and experience to have achieved. Anyone could probably have done 80% of their job with minimal training. It's the smaller less common cases that matter and make it up. It's easy to be a general when your winning. Perhaps there are no wrong moves. But to be one on losing side and turn it around requires I think a special type of person or experience. It reminds me of a 1990s movie where some rich people make a successful and non successful person switch places and prove many things are a matter of circumstances more than most. But then again watching recently The Most hated woman in America, reminds us how much an individual can pioneer something.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago"It reminds me of a 1990s movie..." Maybe you mean Trading Places (1983) with Eddie Murphy. The title has two meanings: - 'Trading' as in stock trading - 'Trading places' as in 'swapping places' I didn't notice the second meaning at the time, as the phrase 'trade places' isn't common in the UK.
- iamacynic 10y agointeresting. i didn't realize the first meaning until today.
- Namrog84 10y agoAha. Yes that's it! Enjoyable movie. Coincidentally, just rewatched it last year. Would recommend.
- lostboys67 10y agoReally the second meaning Is obvious in uk English and is used in the UK regularly.
- rahimnathwani 10y agoI don't recall it being common back when I first saw the movie, maybe 1985 or 1986.
- lostboys67 10y agoIts quite common to say I wouldn't want trade places with him.
- sametmax 10y agoBut we are imposters. Nobody gives you a manual on how to handle work, children, people, sex, money, life in general. You are suppose to figure it out on yourself, and everybody act like the others know what they are doing. We are literally faking it until we make it for the most basic things in life.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoTraining makes people more skilled than untrained people, so it doesn't seem true to say we're imposters. Whether it's firemen, doctors, pilots, or engineers, those who are trained will outperform anyone who is literally an imposter. But if it's false, why is the imposter story so persistent? Probably because it's relatable. Everyone likes to feel empowered, and it's quite empowering to feel like you could do just as well as a specialist, if only you put your mind to it. And maybe you can. But are you willing to put in the years of work? On one hand, the Dunning-Kruger effect reminds us that the most competent people tend to question their own capabilities. On the other hand, a lack of confidence is a severe penalty in most areas of your life. The best path is probably to realize whether or not you're trained (or have experience), and if you're trained, don't feel like an imposter. If you're not, don't be afraid to try, but be aware of how far your boundaries can be pushed.
- sametmax 10y agoYou are confusing expert being imposters and imposters being able to be experts. That's not the same thing. Most people couldn't do my jib without training, they are not expert in my field, yet I have never been trained to manage a team or a project, answering a customer, dealing with a crisis. Hell last I once coded a software to help with tuberculosis diagnosis and I had to look at the doctors in the eye like I was ready for it. You have to pretend you know how to seduce, to deal with your daughter crying with no apparent reason, to pay taxes because that what adults do.
- nebabyte 10y agoIf you're not counting your past experiences as "training", then by your own definition, most people could do your job "without training". The point is that if you were trained in your domain, you can't hold yourself up as an example of "an imposter who had to learn it all themselves" because some of it was given to you as "absolute" knowledge. That you weren't "trained" in some 'basic tasks' (and some people are - imagine the boy scouts, preparatory schools or the military) doesn't mean you had to "imposter" your way into learning everything else - you simply learned those "by osmosis". (Otherwise, we'd have thousands of different ways of accomplishing each of those basic tasks in use.) Social interactions are informed by past interactions, in a sort of "telephone game" through time and society (which is why trends evolve and change). And we aren't trained how to do taxes because there's an entire industry devoted to profiting off them which lobbies to keep it feeling complex and against just having the IRS send you a form to sign or dispute.
- andrewvijay 10y ago"The faux surgeon sliced into bare flesh. “The less cutting you do,” he told himself, “the less patching up you have to do afterward.”" - Very very true and its so bothering because its totally relatable with my life!
- fauria 10y agoA young man pretends to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier, conning his way into wealthy Manhattan homes. ⇨ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108149 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108149 A wily Frenchman passes again and again as a long-lost orphan ⇨ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966604/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966604/
- DubiousPusher 10y agoI am beginning to find almost nothing more intellectually irritating than articles like this which basically say, here's some poorly studied pop sociology. It explains why people like X. I have a much simpler reason people enjoy these stories. We love these stories because they roll up a handful of narrative features humans love. Suspense: Good stories need stakes. Imposters, are constantly in danger of being found out. Thus very high stakes are ever present throughout imposter narratives. Constant presentation of high stakes results in suspense Novelty: A good fake must be clever, the unclever ones don't last. So there is always some new tricks a con has to teach us. Don't believe me? MacGiver was a hit TV show and the only thing it had going for it was each episode had a couple moments of great novelty. Underdogism: The con man is going up against all of society. Every institution, socal group and personal relation has cause to uncover the faker and thus, in the game of keeping his/her secret a secret the con is on a team of one against a team of everyone else. As to why humans actually like imposter characters? Because humans like or at least empathize with any character whose story they become involved with. Humans will literally empathize with a box if you give it a bit of character (which was good news for Been Affleck's career.) Did you root for Walter White? Was it cause you think underneath you're a psychopathic genius chemist ready to turn drug lord the moment you get the personal justification to? No, it's because you saw the story from his side. At times, when you really hated what he was doing you still kind of wanted him to succeed.
- meggyMasters 10y agoexample
- jondubois 10y agoIf you feel like an impostor, then you almost certainly are one. Most impostors probably don't even realize that they're impostors. I've never felt like an impostor, every day I have the opposite feeling.
- WaxProlix 10y agoThat's great! Enjoy trading hedge funds or whatever.
- jondubois 10y agoThanks! I feel good knowing that I'm doing my bit to help make the world a better place. I just love seeing the smile on my clients' faces after a good quarter. The management fees and bonuses are just the cherry on top.
- 1123581321 10y agoHi, John. I didn't downvote this because it is a legitimate opinion and because it is true that the unskilled and ignorant are sometimes unaware of it. However, I don't agree that those people are imposters unless they're really being paid to contribute at a higher level than which they're capable of doing now or after an appropriate amount of "getting up to speed" at their job, which can legitimately take years, and meanwhile their peers are contributing enough. Employers ask for a lot, but they often don't expect to receive it or don't know when they aren't receiving much, and in either case the employee is doing satisfactory work!
- meggyMasters 10y agoexample
- meggyMasters 10y ago> We like impostor stories because we’re afraid we’re impostors (2016) > We like impostor stories because we’re afraid we’re impostors (2016)
- andrewclunn 10y agoHmmm, I think the term "hack" might be better. Wariness of the Dunning Kruger effect does not an imposter make.
- Jimmy 10y ago>Deep down, psychologists suggest, impostors appeal to us because we suspect that we are all, to some degree, faking it. No, I've never had this fear.
- empath75 10y agoFrom one of the imposter's wiki pages, some sage advice on office politics: >(Demara)'... had come to two beliefs. One was that in any organization there is always a lot of loose, unused power lying about which can be picked up without alienating anyone. The second rule is, if you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else's domain; open up new ones...' >Demara referred to it as 'expanding into the power vacuum,' and described as such; 'if you come into a new situation (there's a nice word for it) don't join some other professor's committee and try to make your mark by moving up in that committee. You'll, one, have a long haul and two, make an enemy.' Demara's technique was to find his own committee. 'That way there's no competition, no past standards to measure you by. How can anyone tell you aren't running a top outfit? And then there's no past laws or rules or precedents to hold you down or limit you. Make your own rules and interpretations. Nothing like it. Remember it, expand into the power vacuum!'[7]
- allengeorge 10y agoMaybe we like impostor stories because we can convince ourselves that the reason we don't feel like we're good at something is not because we legitimately aren't, but because we've somehow misjudged our abilities. In other words: we're better than we are, and we can do it!
- Neliquat 10y agoYou are all fake imposters.
- ythn 10y agoThe whole premise of impostors is bogus because it implies there is such a thing as non-impostors to begin with - a false assumption. At a certain point everyone has to "make up" what they are doing without knowledge of "the right way" of doing said thing.
- snorkel 10y agoImposter stories are fascinating. You can't help but marvel at the shear audacity of the imposter and their inevitable demise. It also help us all recognize imposters and their motives.