Cambridge Dumbalytica

We are so hungry for intelligence. So hungry that we see it in the most empty of places, the most vapid of people… This dude is the case in point:

The cult of faux intelligence

Essentially, the pitch was that I was going to combine big words like microtargeting, which has the word “targeting” with a “micro” before it because it sounds more sophisticated than “targeting smaller groups of people”, and which - in part - went along great with my intellect-demonstrating hand gestures, but bring… bring on board a new construct. A construct from current social conventions that I wouldn’t only start my sentence with “essentially”, therewith cheaply and undeservedly signaling intelligence, but I would also throw in other pretentious vocabulary with a superficial, yet sound logic to imply that I have a deeper understanding of something I really only have a virtue-signaling conversational grasp of.

I could build a psychological profile in each particular person’s perception of me, by implying that what I did required great sophistication, without saying it outward.

Yeah, so if you would express concern, ideally with a snobbish, academic tone, about the masterful manipulation that I’m claiming I performed on you, you will be doing me a service: I can engage with the right gesticulation, clichéd fancy words, excessively long sentences, that kind of thing. So your outrage with my supposed unethical manipulation of some currently hyped technology will be an implicit acknowledgment of said manipulation being successfully done, which sounds measurable but is religiously unprovable, and leave my heavily signaled intelligence fully buried in the subtext of the conversation, making it less liable to be questioned and allowing me to get an ego-boosting, equally phony position as “Head of Insight and Emerging Technologies” at H&M.

Then, when I see a regular girl who is clearly more down to earth and most likely more competent than me, able to explain the same process in simple English without making it sound nefarious and without implying she’s a rueful genius, I will just hope none of my H&M buddies see it, and I’ll change my hair from pink to bright green and essentially go back to my role as a priest in the cult of faux intelligence, while being too dumb to express myself in a succinct, down to earth way.