This feels slightly "Black Mirror" but, to me, it's inevitable. It's a charismatic story. It's somewhat of an advertorial, not just for a person, but for an ide

This feels slightly "Black Mirror" but, to me, it's inevitable. It's a charismatic story. It's somewhat of an advertorial, not just for a person, but for an idea: that someone at Stuyvesant (which is full of high-talent, mostly middle-class, students because the truly wealthy go to schools like Dalton that deliver Harvard if you show up for class, and Stanford as a consolation prize) can make $72 million on his wits alone. I would want to believe it, were I not knowledgeable enough on finance to smell the bullshit. The current corporate world is built on lies, repeated often enough until they become truth (reputation, prestige, credibility). There are facts, and occasionally those hit back against an aggressive lie; but most of what drives economic life (especially at the individual level) is brand and reputation and social proof. How many corporate executives got there without lying about their CVs, polishing their career histories and accomplishments, and generally manicuring their reputations using a number of tools including deceit? Probably zero. Occasionally, some corporate executive gets caught in a lie and is scapegoated, usually because he was stupid and lied about something easily refutable like where he went to college... even though they all do it. The sad thing here is that we're talking about a teenager who (a) stood to gain next to nothing and (b) probably didn't intend for any of this to happen at all. The disgusting thing is that, if he takes a fall for this, then he'll have fallen not because of any deception but because of social class. A middle-class kid makes the middle-class mistake of (possibly) lying about something that can be refuted, and gets burned. An upper-class kid gets a $5 million seed round on parental connections and Stanford Welfare (a more pernicious lie, because it looks like merit) and gets away with it, being allowed to play CEO for years until "adult supervision" is brought in to administer a company that he still owns.