I am beginning to find almost nothing more intellectually irritating than articles like this which basically say, here's some poorly studied pop sociology. It e

I 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.