on bullshit
This Place Is Full of It: Towards an Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale is the actual title of a paper published in Psychological Reports back in late 2020, written by Caitlin Ferreira and four co-authors. The title alone makes me very happy.
I feel like workers everywhere have an intuitive sense of what’s bullshit. Say, for example, that I text you the words “that’s bullshit” during a meeting after the boss says some bullshit. I know I can expect that you will know exactly what I mean, and that you will write back something along the lines of “lol yes” (because you’re cool which is why we’re friends). There’s a shared, unspoken understanding of the word “bullshit.”
This paper is fun for many reasons, but what I love is that it provides an actual definition of the word bullshit: “acts of communication that have no grounding in truth.”
I love that. It’s short but precise and rings completely true. Bullshitting isn’t lying. From the paper:
While liars care about the truth, know it, and deliberately misrepresent it, bullshitters neither know nor care whether something they communicate is true or not.
This, to me, captures the essence of life in the 21st century. It feels like the world is run by whoever has the energy to spout the most words during meetings—regardless of whether anything they say is accurate or useful.
Jargon, of course, is a big part of what enables this. From the paper:
Corporate jargon is one such example of organizational bullshit language, whereby words or expressions are used in an attempt to legitimize something, whilst at the same time confusing language and thinking (McCarthy et al., 2020; Spicer, 2017). McCarthy et al. (2020) refer to a number of bullshit expressions such as “blue-sky thinking” or “out-of-the-box thinking”, which are often used as vague buzzwords with minimal substance. This vagueness serves the interests of bullshitters, because communication targets are less likely to ask questions when they find it difficult to understand what has been said.
The paper goes on to poll employees at a variety of companies and finds that employees are very aware when bullshit levels increase inside a company (something I personally think is obvious to anyone currently employed).
Seriously, though: bullshit is one of the most pressing social concerns in our civilization. Every communications department in the country should have an Endowed Chair of Bullshit Studies who is examining and publicly talking about the ways leaders in business, politics, and marketing are bullshitting their way through the internet age. Bullshit touches everything and needs more critical examination.
Stuff I wrote
- Why you should always question the default settings Wired. I got to say “my burning hatred for marketing jargon could melt most moons (and the bulk of some planets)” in an article, so this is a good month.
- Install Mac software from the command line. I’m geeking out hard here, granted, but I really think typing three words is easier than using your stupid mouse to download files and drag them to the right place.
Stuff I did
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Climbed a mountain. My wife and I didn’t think there would still be snow on the coastal range. We were wrong, and ended up post-holing through knee-deep snow uphill. My feet got very wet, and I’m still sore three days later. It was worth it.
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The raspberry chocolate stout we brewed is aging in the keg, to be opened in a couple of weeks.
- This week in Mira. Please, human, allow me to eat your donut.
Send me your bullshit
You just read a bunch of my bullshit—now I want to hear yours. Respond to this email with your best (worst?) work bullshit stories. Anonymize them as much as you want—I’ll share the best ones here.