7 Habits of Highly Effective Bullshitters

Bullshitters have always been around. From godmen to chairmen - they can be found in our faith and in our boardrooms equally easily. Nothing new in that. But I will come to that shortly (no bullshiting, I really will).

Initially, I wanted to title this piece ‘Kings of the New World’. But I didn’t.
Because I realised the world has always been new for those who wanted it to be. For those fearless men and women, it is a new world every day. A world where borders and boundaries are dissolved like so much salt in water. Where simple and seamless are the ways to scale greater heights and deeper meaning. Where signals are used more for trains and cars than people and facts. Where time is respected enough to make it yield more. Where stuff is done and real things are achieved. Where businesses are built and value created faster by strong women and men who are able to see higher and farther.

This is not a Rand like homage to utopia. This is an observation of the real and the ready. Around us. I meet super achievers in their 10 dollar cotton shirts and founder/entrepreneurs in their scruffy loafers fishing for chump change to assuage the tuktuk meter. And then I meet jokers in their false bravado and funny display of accentuated pseudo power. Insecure earthworms looking for a quick bell and whistle routine.

The only difference is that these days, the world seems to be skewing towards the ‘less bullshit more substance’ kinda people. But then again, depends on where we are looking.

Coming back to where I had promised we would - even though we are slowly moving towards a world where we have less bullshit (and I know it in my bones that we are), it will never be completely eradicated. So it always helps to smell it from a few miles away. The following types of bullshitters exist and I speak from personal experience. So I share their profiles here as a public service action.

1. The Merchant of Menace: trades in fear. All sorts of fear. The real, the artificial, the unfounded. In fact, the more baseless the fear being bartered for knee jerks, the better for this type.
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2. The Lord of the Manure: towers over ginormous volumes of bullshit. Under his watchful eye, large swathes of crap get lovingly cultivated and turned into convincingly robust structures. Inside which they live and conduct business.
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3. The Soothslayer: pathological liar. Massaging the truth into various shapes, sizes and geometry to build good looking and oftentimes seductive products. Usually, the truth is no more present than the fig is in figment.
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4. The Lord Commander of Pointless Signals: employer of semiotics that leads nowhere. Fair maidens used to drop their perfumed hankies on the ground during Elizabethan times to attract the attention and influence the actions of brave knights. The Lord Commander drops names, references, activities, stories of proximity with powerful proper nouns and other assorted tactics from the semiotic toolkit to similarly attract the attention and influence the actions of more linear archetypes.
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5. The Wasted Wizard of the West: apes all things firang. The Great White Skin works better than mole or fox here. Expensive white trash is better than genuine brown gem. But of course, we always knew the world was fair.
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6. The Knave King of Nowhere: the thief. Steals what belongs to others. Compulsively and consistently, with zero regard for the victim. What tips the scale in his favour is the unfortunate fact that most people do not suspect him of being a thief at all. The stealing is done with liquid smoothness and usually, captivating panache.
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7. The Blunt Knight of Crafty Square: stupid yet politically intelligent. Complementary skill sets, actually. Works very well as a combination — like thick hands holding a stiletto knife.
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   If you know 'em, you can avoid them - as the store loyalty rewards manager I knew once used to say.