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How I Faked My Way to the Top of Paris Fashion Week [video]
- danielw68 8y agoHe also faked his way to creating a #1 ranked restaurant on Trip Advisor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqPARIKHbN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqPARIKHbN8
- denzil_correa 8y agoTripAdvisor's response to it was > Most fraudsters are trying to manipulate rankings of real restaurants. It doesn't reflect the real world as the restaurant itself was fake The video was very cool though.
- lozenge 8y agoConsidering how much money is on the line, it's laughable to think they can prevent fake reviews of real restaurants.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- buboard 8y agoabsolutely brilliant. and sad, at least the part where people are being led blindfolded
- burritofanatic 8y agoThis particular video is brilliant. I laughed when he said, "Last night, they were in Paris. Tonight, they're at the Shed."
- Palomides 8y agoarticle/non-video version of the same(?) content: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59d8v5/i-bullshitted-my-way-to-the-top-of-paris-fashion-week https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59d8v5/i-bullshitted-my-w...
- rich_ard 8y agoThanks! Much better this way, I think. What a story!
- crtasm 8y agoFun piece, it's not just the initial blag but the escalation to being invited (without asking) to a private view and getting to swan about in a designer dress. The he tracks down the closest thing to the real Georgio Peviani.
- jimmies 8y agoI used to watch "Nathan for you" which is the somewhat comedic version of the business hacking theme. The difference is that the main protagonist did not always succeed. But when he got lucky and it worked, it was funny as shit. My favorite episode is the best buy tv episode.
- ric2b 8y agoNathan for you is absolutely hilarious and brilliant. He has quite a few incomplete episodes on youtube if anyone wants to check it out. For example: https://youtu.be/xMW-SzZKJ-Q https://youtu.be/xMW-SzZKJ-Q
- acconrad 8y agoMy wife and I went to Paris for our anniversary and we didn't realize until we were there that it was Fashion Week. I am genuinely not surprised at all that this guy made it to the top. Streetwear has become so ironic because the lines have blurred between haute culture/high fashion and bargain basement designs that you genuinely can't tell what is $800 (Balenciaga Triple S https://www.balenciaga.com/us/triple-s-shoes_cod11271302nb.html https://www.balenciaga.com/us/triple-s-shoes_cod11271302nb.h...) and what is $55 (Nike Air Monarch https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-lifestyle-gym-shoe-lPtRrS https://www.nike.com/t/air-monarch-iv-lifestyle-gym-shoe-lPt...) unless you know the brands and styles.
- nopinsight 8y agoIt is great there is little objective difference between $800 and $55 pairs of shoes. It means the middle class can afford high-quality items and do not need to care if someone is willing to pay for the brand.
- klodolph 8y agoI’d say that’s not quite what’s going on here. You can’t tell when someone else is wearing an $800 or $55 pair of shoes, but in my experience the $55 shoes tend to bite my heels and fall apart within the year. If you don’t care about the brand and have a middle-class income, I might spend $55 on shoes for a growing kid but $200 on shoes for myself that I know will last for years. Not saying you can’t get good shoes for $55, just sharing my experience. Someone will come in with the Terry Pratchett quote about boots here any moment, or you can look up the quote for yourself.
- ryandrake 8y agoIve always truly believed that gullibility was one of humanity’s biggest, most exploitable weaknesses, if not the biggest. You can fake your way into almost anything with confidence and basic acting. I’m reminded of the folk wisdom about simply holding a clipboard and acting like you belong can get you into private areas of 90% of companies. All the fraud people fall for, all the scams, obvious phishing, you’d think we’d start educating people to be more skeptical/cynical but it keeps happening. When I was much, much younger back in the 90s and obsessed with video games, I faked my way into one of the major industry gatherings which I won’t name, simply by pretending to be a “games journalist” and acting the part. A pack of fun looking business cards, a fake web site, and a cheap silk shirt was all it took. It’s incedible what people believe if you don’t break the air of sincerity. This was a harmless prank, but I can see how tempting it is to use this power for evil, and it’s evidenced by the fact that so much fraud continues to be successful. How, besides education, do we turn off this trust-by-default gene? It’s really an evolutionary dead end.
- vkjv 8y agoIt's interesting that this went _beyond_ a prank. Almost the definition of "fake it until you make it."
- bfuller 8y agoI mean is it even faking it at that point? Or just pointing out how silly the whole thing is?
- frereubu 8y agoI'd argue that what you call "trust-by-default" is an aspect of social intelligence that also enables a lot of very productive relationships. It has its downsides, of course, but I think you'd find that by removing that part of our psychology you'd end up with a miserable excuse for a society.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
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- tabs_masterrace 8y agoWell he made a website advertising his brand name, then went to what is essentially a fashion conference, showed up professionally, dressed as designer with cards, and they let him in? Isn't that what you expect/hope for?
- tashoecraft 8y agoId?
- pjc50 8y agoWhy? People don't routinely ID one another in social interactions.
- posamari 8y agoI imagine earlier commenter suggested that fashion conference organisers should ID attendants on entry, this is a routine practice at many events. What do you mean?
- alphakappa 8y agoIf Georgio Paviani was real, it could also be a pseudonym for a real human being, in which case there would be no ID that you could show. Pretty sure Lady Gaga's driver license doesn't use that name.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- default-kramer 8y agoExactly. If anything, this video (which I liked) shows that the fashion industry is accepting/welcoming. It's not my scene, but if their ethos is "show up and have fun" then I support that 100%.
- on_and_off 8y agoSame, I am not really sure what this is supposed to prove.. He got to a conference and partied with some other attendees ? You could do this with any other field; including tech.
- buboard 8y agoThen again this is the world of fashion where reality doesn't matter, it's all about perception, brand and connections. His restaurant prank is even better. It would be impossible to keep up these feats for a length of time , but nevertheless it is impressive how he pulls them off.
- logfromblammo 8y agoMy hypothesis is that everybody fakes their way into Fashion Week. It's all one giant LARP event that somehow spun out of control, and now nobody knows how it manages to keep going all by itself without any GMs, or how to stop it, if there were somehow an emergency that required it to not take place. Now go re-read the Verge article or watch the video, presuming that everybody is faking, and see if the hypothesis can be falsified at any point. The part where he gets the badge? That's just some person with a badge printer, playing the part of the registrar. That part where he's trying to convince Italians that he's Italian? They're not Italian either. "Oh, of course I'll speak English to you, another completely genuine Italian person, for the sake of your photographer, obviously." It's sort of surreal, actually. Because then you can expand the hypothesis outside of Fashion Week, and it never stops.
- 0d311 8y agoThis is a terrifying thing to read on acid.
- kough 8y agoEverything is fake and we’re all going to die. Have a good trip :)
- TeMPOraL 8y agoGod, this comment is so good, I'm favouriting it. It resonates though. I suppose many of us sometimes feel that we aren't the professionals we seem, that we're just faking and role-playing to the best of our ability, and somehow things turn out ok. Then there's a view that this applies to most adults, from janitors to leaders of nations, and the whole world is just one big fake fest...
- victor106 8y agoimpressive. but to be honest for a guy with white skin and blue eyes its not that hard to fake your way into the fashion week.
- edgarvaldes 8y agoMore about being somewhat young, handsome and charismatic. White skin and blue eyes sure helps, but to some extent only.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- GirlsCanCode 8y agoYes. That's exactly what David Hampton, the subject of the play and film "Six Degrees of Separation" relied on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Separation_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Separation_(fil...
- kreeWall 8y agoThis guy also has one where he made a #1 restaurant that didn't exist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqPARIKHbN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqPARIKHbN8
- silveira 8y agoOne day he will become president somewhere.
- buboard 8y agoyou may jest, but yeah, charisma is not an absolutely positive quality, and Democracies depend too much on emotion
- bliblah 8y agoReminds me of when someone got backstage to the Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather press event and filmed the process. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PL1BC1s8CQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PL1BC1s8CQ
- cf498 8y agoReading this, I have to mention Jayson Streets social engineering talks. I am still sad that the superball walk in with a ladder was fake.
- kelvin0 8y agoWhen a 'joker' can make 'experts' look like idiots, you have to wonder about the relevance of the subject matter (in this case haute couture in Paris).
- hi41 8y agoThat was fun. Few years back a couple faked their way to President Obama's dinner at the Whitehouse. I think confidence is supremely important. I can't fake like this. I would get caught just by my looks when I lie.