WHY PEOPLE BULLSHIT AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

BANISHING THE BULL

Kevin Duncan

WHY DO PEOPLE USE BULLSHIT?

Bullshit…

• Is now ubiquitous

“The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.”

Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University

Bullshit…

• Is more insidious than you might think

Bullshit: 1. The excreta of a large male bovine. 2. Technically endless supply of waffle and nonsense uttered in business

meetings; cunning wordsmithery that is neither on the side of the false nor the truth; verbal expedience. (see Bollocks, talking; Doughnut rather than the hole, it would be wise to concentrate on the; Obfuscation; Off the top of my head; Static; Talking out loud; Waffle; White noise; Word dump)

Bullshit…

• Has not attracted much sustained inquiry because we think we know how to spot it

Going forward: 1. The opposite of backwards. 2. Truly a king amongst kings; the undisputed champion of utter bullshit, with

the possible exception of “proactive”; entirely pointless modifier somehow designed to suggest a forward-looking demeanour, when any fool knows that a backward one would be detrimental for everybody, except possibly historians who should indeed adopt a backward-looking approach; selfish waste of time perpetrated by anyone using these two utterly redundant words. (see -focused; Forward-looking; Future-facing; Futureproof; Goal-oriented; Here-and-now-ness; Momentum; Proactive)

Bullshit…

• Is not easy to define because the term is often used loosely and as a generic term

of abuse Bollocks, talking: 1. Testicles that can speak. 2. Sustained burst of total rubbish blurted out in answer to an

unexpected interview question; patchwork of platitude and cliché designed to confuse; mission statement contents; any acceptance speech; 100% of proclamations made by politicians or sportsmen. (see Bullshit; Obfuscation)

Bullshit…

• Covers a multitude of sins

Knowledge management, transfer: 1. Control, or handing over of, wisdom. 2. Catastrophic inability to control or hand over any wisdom at all; brain

drain; complete loss of expertise when one intelligent person leaves the company; collapse of all IT functions when Dave leaves; haphazard filing system that passes on no knowledge whatsoever. (see Know-how; Talent, war on)

Bullshit…

• Is similar to shoddy goods – produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, and never finely crafted

Bottom feeding: 1. Eating material on the floor of a river, sea or fish tank. 2. Hoovering up any crap that has settled on the bottom; dealing

solely in the dross; working with or for the cheapest and worst possible exponents in the market; actively pursuing low-rent customers, and to hell with the consequences. (see Ambulance chasing; Scraping the barrel)

Bullshit…

• Is a lack of concern with the truth and an indifference to how things really are

Off the top of my head: 1. Something has just fallen from my cranium, such as a hat, or my wig.2. I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, so I’ll just spout any twaddle I

can think of and hope that nobody notices because they are all doing the same thing. (see Bullshit; Talking out loud; Waffle; Word dump)

Bullshit…

• Involves a kind of bluff

Obfuscation: 1. Deliberately making something obscure or difficult to understand. 2. An egregious lie or cover-up; frantic fudging of the truth to disguise

incompetence or outright crime. (see Access to information; Bollocks, talking; Broad brush; Bullshit; Keep it dark; Hedge our bets; Mum, keep; Off the top of my head; Prevaricate; Talking out loud; Techno-babble; Waffle; Word dump)

Bullshit…

• Is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed their knowledge of the facts that are relevant to the topic

Bandwidth, he doesn’t have the: 1. Not intelligent. 2. He’s thick as a brick; dead from the neck up; relentlessly useless at

work; no help at all, in fact, a downright hindrance; 100% incompetent. (see Intelligent, if you were any less ______, I’d have to water you once a day; Mental furniture; Obvious, firm grasp of the; Psychic RAM; Shilling, not the full; WOMBAT)

Bullshit…

• Can involve: deceptive misrepresentation just short of lying, especially with pretentious words misrepresentation of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings or attitudes

Jazz Hands: 1. All style and no content. 2. Soup this presentation up immediately because it is essentially

content-free (see Zee, we’ve covered everything from A to; Full Monty, the; Turd, polishing a; Wow factor)

THE BULLSHITTER

The bullshitter

• Is not necessarily a liar

Facts, cold hard: 1. The untainted truth. 2. What’s left after all the bullshit has been stripped away; most

commonly exposed as nothing of substance at all.

The bullshitter

• Is phony rather than false

Crafting, it needs a bit of: 1. Further work is required on this. 2. This is sub-standard rubbish and needs to be done again. (see Bugs,

iron out the; Drawing board, back to the; Optimal; Sub-optimal; Tools, management, unique; Woodwork, spanners in the, spanners jumping out of the)

The bullshitter

• Is faking things, but this does not mean that they necessarily get them wrong

Putting lipstick on a pig: 1. Applying cosmetics to a porcine beast, presumably to make it look better. 2. Frantically try to make something appear better than it is, usually to no

avail; futile cover up effort. (see GIGO; Jazz hands; Rebrand; RIRO; SISO; Turd, polishing a)

The bullshitter

• Has much more freedom than someone who tells the truth or lies, because they do not require an anchor point on one side or the other

Broad brush: 1. Wide painting utensil for covering a wide area.2. Total fudge; failure to come to point; obfuscation; vagueness; sweeping

attempt to avoid coming to the point. (see Gloss over; Keep it dark; Strategy)

The bullshitter

• Intends neither to report the truth nor to conceal it

Come up to scratch: 1. Reach the required level. 2. Exasperated exhortation to reach the required level, for once in your

life; desperate plea from boss to ineffective and feckless subordinate; set low standards for oneself and consistently fail to meet them; underachieve.

The bullshitter

• Is neither on the side of the truth nor on the side of the false

Competitive advantage, edge: 1. Something compelling that makes us better than our competitors. 2. Sinking feeling based on the dawning realization that we are clearly no

better than our competitors; on further examination, alarming discovery that we are actually much worse than our competitors; trumped up piece of corporate puffery to claim competitive advantage where there patently is none. (see Leverage)

The bullshitter

• Does not care whether they describe reality correctly

Reality check: 1. Occasion to consider a matter realistically or honestly. 2. Moment that seldom occurs in business due to too much haste or

downright stupidity; sometimes used in pseudo-rigorous way by glib managers, as in “I’m broadly in agreement, but I think we need to take a reality check here, Sebastian”, and often accompanied by a broad sweep of the hand or a thoughtful tug of the beard.

The bullshitter

• Just picks out material, or makes it up, to suit their purpose

Massage the numbers: 1. Rearrange finances or statistics to create a different conclusion. 2. Deceptive, often downright illegal, alteration of financial reporting

information in order to generate an entirely different outcome, usually favourable; slight of hand; legerdemain; malfeasance; contemptible twisting of reporting line to create a better picture, often resulting in company closure or personal imprisonment. (see Bottom line; Cook the books; Crunch the numbers; Fiscal juggling; Negative growth, profit; Obfuscation; Smoke and mirrors job)

The bullshitter

• Does not reject the authority of truth, as the liar does, or oppose it – they pay no

attention to it at all

Authenticity: 1. Relating to anything that is authentic. 2. Totally false, such as “This product was lovingly forged in the crucible of

time”; quality constantly demanded of staff in over-earnest companies. (see Passion, passionate; Provenance; Rebrand)

WHAT TO DO?

What to do?

• Bullshit needs to be taken seriouslyAlarm bells, set the ______ ringing: 1. Trigger warning system because there is a fire. 2. Cause total panic amongst colleagues by doing something distinctly

unnerving, such as wearing trainers with suits, reaching inside a room from the corridor when a meeting is in session and turning the light switch repeatedly on and off for five minutes, or insisting on being called Colin when your real name is Samantha. (see AWOL, go; Ballistic, go; Box of frogs, mad as a; Bundle, one stick short of a; Gene pool, swimming in the shallow end of the; Mid-life crisis; Moon, barking at the, over the, through the; Picnic, one sandwich short of a; Plot, lose the; Pram, to throw one’s toys out of the; Radar, off; Rails, gone off the)

What to do?

• Should you be genuinely duped by it, things could get awkward

Nailing a jelly to the wall, trying to: 1. Attempting an impossible task. 2. Using jelly to do something for which it was not intended; trying to use

tools that will never do the job, however insane the job is; hammering away with an inappropriate approach, too dim to realize that pausing for reflection could be more productive. (see Banana, stabbing a seal with a; Grasping at fog)

What to do?

• It pays to be on the lookout for it

Ear to the ground: 1. Well informed. 2. Phenomenally nosey.

What to do?

• Analyse the different types and the frequent perpetrators of it

SISO: 1. Shit In Shit Out. 2. Wise and eternally verified notion that if you put poor data or other effort

into something, the result will be just as bad as the crap it always was. (see GIGO; Putting lipstick on a pig; RIRO; Turd, polishing a)

What to do?

• React appropriately

Risk-averse: 1. Not prone to taking any chances. 2. Inherently conservative; weak-willed; unadventurous; lily-livered;

scared; not likely to do anything that might cause any trouble; ineffective; possibly not worth having around; a bit useless; not helping much; preferring to stay at one’s desk rather than get up and do something. (see Jobsworth)

What to do?

• Don’t act on falsehoods

60:50 relationship, this is the perfect: 1. This relationship is imbalanced. 2. Superbly exasperated expression of being set upon in a lopsided

partnership that is supposed to be equal. (see Partners)

BANISH THE BULL

Kevin Duncan

www.bulldictionary.comTwitter: @kevinduncan07979 808770