You’re scrolling past a “guru” selling a course on how to make money while you sleep, and you know that person has never held a real job. You’re watching a parent spend $3,000 on travel sports for a kid who’ll never play D1, and you know the money is going to a washed-up college player. You’re in a meeting where everyone is busy creating “meta-work” to avoid actually doing their job, and you know the company is bleeding out.
The modern economy is built on a massive, sophisticated layer of delusion where incompetence is rewarded, scams are rebranded as “innovations,” and everyone is pretending to be an expert at something they’ve never actually done.
Straight Talk
Influencers are just friendly-looking infomercials The sham-wow guy didn’t disappear; he just got a hot girl filter and a vacation montage. These influencers are essentially the same pitchmen, only now they’re selling you a lifestyle while occasionally opening mystery boxes. You think you’re getting a connection, but you’re just watching a longer, more polished version of a late-night TV commercial.
Life coaches are often just HR gossipers in disguise Dig into the background of most “executive coaches” and you’ll find someone who was mediocre at their actual job but now demands a premium for advice they’ve never used. They’ve never coached anyone, yet they expect you to pay them to fix your career. It’s a perfect scam: the more incompetent they were at their last role, the more they need you to believe they’re the solution.
Your ex pivoted from failure to selling the very thing they couldn’t do She walked away from a stable career, tried to freelance, failed, and then rebranded herself as an expert in the exact field she couldn’t master. She’s now marketing herself as a coach to help women succeed at the very thing she pivoted away from because she couldn’t make it work. It seems to be working, which is the most terrifying part of the whole mess.
American business rewards incompetence, not value creation If you actually add value to a company, you’re getting fucked; the system is designed to punish you for doing your job. The smartest move is to get your name on every committee, create “meta-work” like presentations and action plans, and then move on before implementation. You destroy company morale and profitability, but you’ll be rewarded for the sheer audacity of your inaction.
The “Entry-Level Job” requires 3–5 years of experience Companies are screaming about talent shortages while refusing to train anyone, creating a loop where no one can get experience because no one wants to give it. Training used to be part of the job market, but now that cost has been pushed entirely onto the applicant. It’s a closed loop designed to keep the talent pool small and the desperation high.
Stack ranking is a slow-motion suicide pact for companies When you rank and yank the bottom 10% every year, you’re not cutting lazy people; you’re cutting the new hires who just need time to learn. After a few decades, the entire workforce retires, and suddenly, there’s nobody left to replace them. The system eats its own young to create the illusion of vitality, leaving a hollow shell of retirees.
Your kid isn’t getting unique training from travel coaches Most travel coaches are washed-up former players who realized they can make money running a club, not because they have a secret formula. You’re paying thousands of dollars for glorified rec coaches who are just trying to get their own kids on the roster. Your kid isn’t getting a career in sports; they’re getting a friendship circle and a bill for $3,000 a year.
Local rec leagues are being destroyed by delusional parents Every douchebag parent thinks their kid is the next superstar, so much so that rec leagues are no longer good enough for their “uniquely gifted” children. The result is a system where kids can’t get on the school team because it’s full of kids with years of paid coaching. You’re ruining school sports for the kids who can’t afford the travel ball.
Crypto is a house of cards built on the greater fool theory The underlying assets have zero intrinsic value beyond a greater fool willing to pay for them. All of it could drop to $0.01 overnight, and there’s no mechanism to stop it. You’re not investing in technology; you’re betting on someone else being more desperate than you are.
NFTs were a solution to a problem no one had I spent a hundred hours convincing my CEO that NFTs were a scam, only for the entire market to collapse overnight while I waited for the meeting. It was a con that solved a problem nobody had, wrapped in a “future of the internet” narrative. At least I saved the meeting, but the damage was already done.
Lab-grown diamonds are too perfect for some people The only people arguing against lab-grown diamonds are the ones who care more about the human suffering required to mine them than the result. If the end result is too perfect, they want you to suffer for the privilege of holding a rock. I’ll take the perfect diamond, thank you, and I’ll take the one that didn’t require a blood diamond mine.
Scientology is a locked briefcase of alien overlord stories Leah Remini spent a million dollars to find out about Xenu, a bogus alien overlord story that lower-level members have no idea they’re paying for. It’s a scam where you spend time, money, and effort to find out about a story that was already told in a locked briefcase. You should watch South Park’s episode on it; it’s surprisingly informative and hilarious.
You either die Billy Mays or live to become the sham-wow guy The cycle is inevitable: you either burn out trying to sell something, or you live long enough to become the very thing you hated. The sham-wow guy is now running for congress in Texas, and he’s not alone. You’re either the pitchman or the victim, and the line between the two is thinner than you think.
What Now?
The real danger isn’t the scams themselves, but the fact that you’ve stopped noticing them because they’re just the new normal. You have to decide if you’re going to keep feeding the machine that eats its own young, or if you’re going to start eating it back. Either way, it comes from a place of spite, but at least you’ll know you’re not just another zombie waiting for the next pivot.