Fake it 'til you make it

I'm not sure how to translate this sentence from the title into Hungarian: "Lie until it becomes true?" It's not accurate because it resembles more the communication style of Fidesz (the ruling political party in today's Hungary), which suggests that if something is repeated frequently and intensely enough, it becomes ingrained in people's minds and becomes true. 

Unfortunately, this works. Jürgen Habermas' communication theory also emphasizes that interest groups should come up with unrealistically high demands because then they will meet in the middle and the middle will be higher the higher the original demand. This is exactly how a market (haggling) negotiation works as well. The lie, regardless of whether it is true or not, enters the communication space, appears on the map, cannot be ignored, one must react to it and just by doing so, it gets closer to the truth than if it had never been spoken.

Let's recognize the psychology behind this. The denial of a lie, in and of itself, keeps the lie alive because it brings it to the person's attention. And it doesn't matter whether it is denied, because we are still talking about it. It's like someone attacking you:

"How many times did you stab your mother with a knife???!!!"

"I did not kill my mother. What are you talking about?"

It doesn't matter whether you are upset or whether you deny the statement, the fact is that you are talking about your mother's murder. Which is a lie.

It is precisely because of these communication techniques that I believe the analogy that just one drop of urine can turn a whole barrel of crystal-clear water into sewage is very true. While one drop of clean water does not bring about any change in a barrel of urine. This is where we stand with the devil...

But the sentence in the title does not refer to this. It's more about pretending to be something or someone, acting as if you already are there, and then growing into that role.

What I want to write about is that this phenomenon (pretending) only becomes a guilty act if you are caught. Until then, it is encouraged.

Because what is the difference between a grand vision, a progressive plan, an idea, a vision for oneself, and its proclamation, and pretending? Nothing. Because none of them are true until we get there.

I love reading and watching those stories from the recent past where these increasingly young, rising new-generation entrepreneurs get burned. It turns out that it was all fake from the beginning, that the whole structure was a big show and the foundations were not in order.

In my opinion, the problem lies with the rules of the game, the expectations, and the atmosphere, the legends that have arisen around (especially American) tech companies.

Who am I talking about? Perhaps the latest is Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank, who sold her company to JP Morgan bank for $175 million, while generating 4 million fake users on her platform that aimed to make it easier for university students to receive financial support.

In the article linked under her name, she says that older people don't understand how this game works: "Fake it 'til you make it."

What words and phrases surround this mindset?

Overly optimistic - which, until it is spoken in an interview from prison, sounds like the energy bomb of a visionary who breaks through every obstacle.

Yes Man - only "yes" is an acceptable answer. The opposite of a Yes Man is a Naysayer, who starts every sentence with "no" or some other negative energy, telling you what not to do or what you should do, but their advice ends where action would begin.

Charlie Javice interprets her own fraud as having undoubtedly, at times - thanks to the aforementioned overly optimistic mindset - described reality more colorfully.

Comedians also exaggerate their stories to make them hit.

Make this world a better place - in the startup world, this is just as cliché (and dishonest) as world peace in beauty pageants. It's more likely they will end up in Dubai.

I cringe when I hear these phrases. I don't even need 4 million fake users to feel the sweat on my neck.

Name dropping - the phenomenon of casually dropping the names of famous or influential people that you know or want to make it seem like you know (and they know you). Until you are in pretrial detention, name dropping is social capital, which is not bad, but something to strive for.

I see this "fake it 'til you make it" mentality in the English terminology, where everyone is a CEO, COO, CTO, etc. - Chief Executive Officer - whether they run a small business or a multinational corporation. We don't do that in Hungarian. We have separate words for running and owning a small business (trafikos), and for the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of MOL (Hungarian petrol company). From this point of view, the Hungarian (language and people) is rather shy and suffers from an inferiority complex. We don't dare to dream big, and those who do are quickly labeled as fraudsters. It's interesting to observe, for example, how bad the press is in Hungary for Elon Musk.

In American culture, however, this boasting is accompanied by sparkling eyes, success is the only measure, big dreams and visions are essential tools for the road to success, and dreams begin with a little girl slipping into her mother's boat-sized high heels.

To continue, what about pitching? You have one shot. It's called an elevator pitch, and it's often described with the scene where you accidentally ride in an elevator with the CEO and have 90 seconds to present your big idea. What kind of mentality does this require? The loud, fast-talking, boasting, impressive, and convincing rhetoric of a pitching machine.

I have to say that I've been surrounded by this mentality for about 10 years since I left Hungary. It's very strong in the Estonian startup scene, and the whole society in Singapore is soaked in it. In English-speaking countries, it's even more prevalent, as English contains a whole vocabulary and life philosophies around this. In Hungarian, I think this world hasn't fully developed yet, and with a bit of luck, it never will.

I don't know if it's luck or a sign of the times, but I was introduced to this when I was over 40, and I didn't buy it. Or maybe I'm too old to keep up with it. Whatever. When I saw the forced yes man mentality in Estonia with its narrow-minded boasting, I immediately thought about the many fields I've worked in where they created their own language and hierarchy.

The father of a young man with a disability gave an interview to the BBC, and he spoke about how he felt sickened by the way helping professionals (doctors, psychologists, special educators, social workers) talked about his son and his behavior. Instead of seeing and describing his son's life as that of a vulnerable human being in natural language, they surrounded the young man living in a residential home with psychological and activist jargon and slogans, interpreting every aspect of his behavior and pouring it into big theories, which he saw not as integration but as a clinical bubble created around his son.

I understand exactly what he was talking about. We did the same thing in the field of psychiatry, and I remember as a 20-year-old student, a young professional, I tried very hard to learn the proper terminology so that the right positions would come out of my mouth, where I wanted to be seen.

Charlie Javice created 4 million fake users on her platform with the help of a data science professor who worked from home, while in reality "only" 300,000 people registered. I put the word "only" in quotes because I think 300,000 is a huge number, and there is real achievement behind the woman. That's why I dare to write about what kind of mill has ground her down.

We can talk about greed, of course; she apparently wouldn't have received 175 million for 300,000 users. She wanted to appear as big and successful as possible as soon as possible, and I think she seriously believed that there would be no problem with it as soon as JP Morgan bought the company and she became a director, with money, horses, and weapons to have 4 million users. If it had worked out for her (like IF it did for Anna Sorokin with her artist's house investment), who cares if the first users existed only in an Excel file.

We need to talk about the greed of investors. There is plenty of money in the USA and the world, which may sound strange to someone living in Hungary relying on salary and wages. Oil is no longer as profitable and is declining. Real estate is still profitable, but the 2008 crisis made many cautious. The last tech bubble was long enough ago that its memory has faded, and money is desperately searching for a place to grow, because government bonds and bank deposits are only inflating. There is strong pressure on private and institutional investors to put their money where it will grow the most. Therefore, they are almost like magnets attracting those who make big promises, because they want big returns. It is possible to build on those who make big promises because there is a huge hype around tech, and a wide range of small and institutional investors keep demand alive almost like a religion.

Many believe this is what is keeping the cryptocurrency market alive, which is also a "fake it 'til you make it" phenomenon, that is kept alive by religious hype until there is a real use case. And ultimately, does it matter? The question of what value really is has philosophical depth, but in market terms, it is simply the intersection of supply and demand, and it is insensitive to whether the driving force of demand is religious belief. The Catholic Church made a fortune with indulgences. It still exists, and they are not poor, so the business model works. Cryptocurrency could be a real replacement for money one day. Until then, the believers keep it afloat.

However, there is also a driving force. When we read the interviews and reports of these startup investors, orgasmic stories with numbers fly around, such as being able to exit with a 900% profit from a clever early investment. While government bonds pay 3+5%, and even the ill-managed Hungarian budget can only be financed at an annual interest rate of 8-9%. A well-chosen stock may yield 10-15%, and a business may yield a 30% profit in the best case scenario. Of course, there are extremes in each topic. André Kosztolányi used to hold old Tsarist bonds for decades, and at one point, he was in a political situation where he was able to squeeze his returns from the Russian state. The 900% is also such an extreme, but again, it is driven by communication and desire. A multitude of investors suffer from the FOMO phenomenon (the fear of missing out), and big talkers satisfy their desires. If it doesn't work out, then the big talkers take away the scam under the name of a fraud, and the system that created and kept them alive remains untouched.