5 ms·

I always interpreted 'fake it till you make it' as 'promise what you could do with sufficient resources'. That is fundamentally different from people who just

I always interpreted 'fake it till you make it' as 'promise what you could do with sufficient resources'. That is fundamentally different from people who just make up random shit that sounds good to whoever has money, without any idea or plans to materialise it or whether it's even possible. You do raise a good point with Uber/theranos/dao.

mwfunk 7y ago
"Fake it till you make it" means, sound like you're way more confident about what you're saying than you actually are, until you become the sort of person you're presenting yourself as. It's not people making up random shit, it's people making up totally plausible sounding shit.
- bradjohnson 7y ago
  If the ones that are buying that shit don't know enough about how it works, it's not that difficult for a bullshitter to make the implausible sound plausible.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  "Fake it tll you make it" was also a saying to counteract the impostor syndrome telling themselves that 'theyre worthless, cant do anything, know nothing, etc' Bullshitters never really followed this. It's the Trump game. Keep talking, making stuff up, while moving faster in the direction you want. And it's too hard to keep up, so implicitly people believe portions of it.
onemoresoop 7y ago
I interpret it as in hang on, keep on doing what you're doing and some patterns will emerge, you'll cut through the noise, etc.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
"Fake it till you make it" is often about jumping at a market opportunity on borrowed time, money, or experience. Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.
- bartread 7y ago
  > Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it. That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    I just looked this up. According to Wikipedia, Gates called MITS and offered to demonstrate an implementation of Altair BASIC in roughly 8 weeks. He used those 8 weeks to implement it. So I was wrong - he didn't license it, but merely scheduled a demo, before it existed.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Or like Bill Gates selling MSDOS (based on CP/M) to IBM
icedchai 7y ago
It's a very blurry line between "insufficient resources" and "making stuff up." Everything is easy when you're not the one doing the work.
gooseus 7y ago
I'm sure that's what every person who deploys that phrase tells themselves (and everyone else) that this is what they means. The problem is that when "making it" is a huge long-shot (most tech ideas) and "faking it" is really easy (most tech ideas) then you end up with a whole lot of fakes that never make and a bunch of people who either need to come to grips with the fact that they are basically frauds or who will simply spin it as a "learning experience" and use their failure to promote themselves as having "made it", since who has ever made it without making a few mistakes, right? Accountability is the big problem, but I also think that the superficiality of relationships is another big contributor. It's the same as accountability, really, just on a different scale and it's done before the "fraud". I once went through an LGA (large group awareness) program where a part of it was about having small teams and buddies keeping each other accountable to their personal goals. There was a phrase that came out of that when people who were supposed to be holding each others accountable would both fail in their goals because neither wanted to call the other person out for fear of being called out themselves, or out of a sense of hypocrisy for giving someone shit when they had not finishing their own goals. This was called "Cosigning each others bullshit" and I think it's what happens more often than not in high level business/political dealings. We'd have a lot less high-profile fraud/incompetence cases if more people had the courage to keep other people honest before it got to that point.
- clairity 7y ago
  it's very socially and economically costly to keep other people accountable, so most people lack the fortitude to do so. this is why we have so many hero myths/stories, to valorize those few people brave enough to pay those costs for the rest of us. that esteem bestowed is one of the few ways we can repay the costs (if only incompletely) that "heroes" incur for us.
- spaced-out 7y ago
  An uncomfortable truth about our society is that if you get rich by faking it, then you really have made it.

mwfunk 7y ago

"Fake it till you make it" means, sound like you're way more confident about what you're saying than you actually are, until you become the sort of person you're presenting yourself as. It's not people making up random shit, it's people making up totally plausible sounding shit.

bradjohnson 7y ago
If the ones that are buying that shit don't know enough about how it works, it's not that difficult for a bullshitter to make the implausible sound plausible.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
"Fake it tll you make it" was also a saying to counteract the impostor syndrome telling themselves that 'theyre worthless, cant do anything, know nothing, etc' Bullshitters never really followed this. It's the Trump game. Keep talking, making stuff up, while moving faster in the direction you want. And it's too hard to keep up, so implicitly people believe portions of it.

onemoresoop 7y ago

I interpret it as in hang on, keep on doing what you're doing and some patterns will emerge, you'll cut through the noise, etc.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

"Fake it till you make it" is often about jumping at a market opportunity on borrowed time, money, or experience. Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.

bartread 7y ago
> Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it. That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  I just looked this up. According to Wikipedia, Gates called MITS and offered to demonstrate an implementation of Altair BASIC in roughly 8 weeks. He used those 8 weeks to implement it. So I was wrong - he didn't license it, but merely scheduled a demo, before it existed.
Fnoord 7y ago
Or like Bill Gates selling MSDOS (based on CP/M) to IBM

icedchai 7y ago

It's a very blurry line between "insufficient resources" and "making stuff up." Everything is easy when you're not the one doing the work.

gooseus 7y ago

I'm sure that's what every person who deploys that phrase tells themselves (and everyone else) that this is what they means. The problem is that when "making it" is a huge long-shot (most tech ideas) and "faking it" is really easy (most tech ideas) then you end up with a whole lot of fakes that never make and a bunch of people who either need to come to grips with the fact that they are basically frauds or who will simply spin it as a "learning experience" and use their failure to promote themselves as having "made it", since who has ever made it without making a few mistakes, right? Accountability is the big problem, but I also think that the superficiality of relationships is another big contributor. It's the same as accountability, really, just on a different scale and it's done before the "fraud". I once went through an LGA (large group awareness) program where a part of it was about having small teams and buddies keeping each other accountable to their personal goals. There was a phrase that came out of that when people who were supposed to be holding each others accountable would both fail in their goals because neither wanted to call the other person out for fear of being called out themselves, or out of a sense of hypocrisy for giving someone shit when they had not finishing their own goals. This was called "Cosigning each others bullshit" and I think it's what happens more often than not in high level business/political dealings. We'd have a lot less high-profile fraud/incompetence cases if more people had the courage to keep other people honest before it got to that point.

clairity 7y ago
it's very socially and economically costly to keep other people accountable, so most people lack the fortitude to do so. this is why we have so many hero myths/stories, to valorize those few people brave enough to pay those costs for the rest of us. that esteem bestowed is one of the few ways we can repay the costs (if only incompletely) that "heroes" incur for us.
spaced-out 7y ago
An uncomfortable truth about our society is that if you get rich by faking it, then you really have made it.