Hiding in Plain Sight

“In professional environments, the ability to play the role is generally far more important than the ability to actually do the work. Mathematician Jeff Schmidt in his excellent Disciplined Minds (2001) carefully documents how the bourgeois obsession with prioritizing form over content has played havoc with the professions. Why is it, he asks, that Catch Me If You Can–style imposters can often successfully pretend to be airline pilots or surgeons without anyone noticing they have no qualifications for the job? The answer he suggests is that it’s almost impossible to get fired from a professional job—even pilot or surgeon—for mere incompetence, but very easy to get fired for defiance of accepted standards of external behavior, that is, for not properly playing the part. The imposters have zero competence, but play the part perfectly; hence, they are much less likely to be dismissed from their positions than, say, an accomplished pilot or surgeon who openly defies the unspoken codes of external comportment attendant on the role.”—David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2019)

If you’ve seen Catch Me If You Can (2003), you know how easy it is to fool people when you look the part. What’s less obvious is that the opposite is often equally true. People like me, who’ve been fooled one too many times by smooth-talking charlatans in suits, are often overly critical of anybody who looks the part, and overly trusting of unkempt vulgarians. But alas, exceptionally good con artists have always known this.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau mastered the art of playing rich people. An impressive feat, when you think about it, because rich people are surrounded at all times by a cloud of people who are trying to play them. How did he do it? By playing the part of the uncouth but thoroughly down-to-earth guy who just doesn’t give a fuck. It’s a well-worn ploy. At least as old as Romanticism. And we ignore its allure at our peril. Protecting yourself from the Frank Abagnales of this world is important. But it’s also good to remember that being rough around the edges can be an integral part of a charlatan’s shtick.

We were raised to believe that common sense is the enemy, things are never what they seem, and judging a book by its cover is the worst thing you can do. This obsession with depths has made it possible for some straightforwardly sketchy people to hide in plain sight. Louis CK is a case in point. We stupidly assumed that a man who talks about what a pervert he is all the time, in public, couldn’t possibly be a pervert in real life. I suspect that Trump slipped under the radar for many of the same reasons.

Most people are exactly what they seem to be. That nice guy at work with the perfect teeth: he might be a monster who secretly kills kittens for fun, but he’s probably just a nice guy with perfect teeth. That rude asshole you met online: he might be a misunderstood genius with a heart of gold, but he’s probably just a rude asshole. More often than not, if it looks like a duck, it’s a duck. And if it looks like a schmuck, talks like a schmuck, and walks like a schmuck, it’s a schmuck.

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In nature, bright colors are often a warning: I’m poisonous! Don’t eat me! Stay away! Insect-eating birds avoid any butterfly who looks like a monarch, intelligent residents of the Amazon refrain from handling poison dart frogs, and only a fool would eat that bright red mushroom in the meadow. However, in the forest of social life, bright colors are often an invitation: I’m friendly, gregarious, approachable, somewhat outrageous, thoroughly interesting, and definitely not poisonous.

My friend Janice Simpkins taught me a handy heuristic based on this insight, which has served me well on numerous occasions: “If you find yourself stranded in a room full of strangers—at some social function—talk to the person wearing the loudest outfit, because that person is invariably the friendliest person in the room.”

But alas, in nature and in social life, we sometimes encounter false advertising. Biologists call it mimicry. For instance, the red milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum syspila) is not poisonous, nor is the equally harmless scarlet kingsnake (Lampropeltis elapsoides). Yet predators steer clear of them both because they look like the deadly coral snake (Micrurus fulvius).

Likewise, in social life, we sometimes encounter brightly colored bores (e.g., middle-class hipsters who dress like bohemians but talk like accountants). The sense of betrayal that washes over you when you find yourself stuck in a pointless conversation with one of these philistines is surprisingly intense: their mimicry seems to offend our innate sense of social justice. Brightly colored bores should come with a warning. Something like this:

WARNING: OBJECTS BEHIND
THIS INTERESTING PERSONA
ARE DULLER THAN THEY APPEAR

—John Faithful Hamer, Love Is Not a Liquid Asset (2020)