The Confidence of Convincing

TV shows and Movies create an image of what it means to have wealth that in turn creates a stereotype.  We are led to believe that people who have a lot of money will look and act in a given way, to the extent that we begin to determine wealth by that which is visible.  As with everything of a visual nature however, in order to create a convincing illusion you need only convince the eyes that they see things not as they really are but as you want them to see it.  Wealth therefore becomes an illusion that is about appearances more than anything else.  If you look like you have a lot of money, most people will assume you do, and more than this they will resist asking questions or digging deeper in most cases out of the desire not to commit a faux pas.

Confidence Trickery, also known simply as conning people, is all about creating confidence, both in yourself and garnering it from other people.  With such a low barrier to entry it becomes incredibly easy to trick people into believing you are rich.  There has been a rise of Instagram Models, and other social networks have similar groups of people, these are people who create idealized versions of their life to share on social media.  Wealth is the most prevalent aspect of their lives that these people attempt to promote, followed by happiness, and then fame.  People want to be seen to be rich and successful first of all, happy second, and famous third.  There was a time when this order was reversed, where fame came first and then happiness and then wealth.  That is no longer the case.

In decades past, to become famous you had to be good at something, or at least people had to think you were good at something.  Singing, Dancing, Acting, among many other things, these were talents that people pursued in their aim of fame.  Today however you do not need to be good at any of these things or any of the others in order to become famous.  Today there many people in the world who are famous for being rich, being socialites, or in some cases being famous for simply being famous - that last one is rather hard to achieve at first but once the positive feedback loop is established it becomes quite easy.

Beware the lives that people claim to have when you follow them online.  Things are often not what they same.  I may sound jaded for saying this, but I believe the reason I came to accept this as reality is because in time I saw the frauds exposed time and again for what they were.  I believe the same will hold true for most in years to come.  People will eventually see them for what they are.  That is, save for the few who actually garner fame and then go on to do something that involves talent and actually gain success, again in reverse of the traditional process, normally success comes first and then fame, not the other way around.

This mentality is most succinctly put by the mantra "fake it, until you make it" - that's all well and good if you succeed in the end, but if you don't then what will happen to you when you have spent a life faking it and the reality hits that it was all a lie?  Will you cope with reality when the bubble of belief that you will one day make it eventually bursts and you hit the ground?  There is another saying that is put forward by many who dabble in gambling - only gamble what you are prepared to lose; perhaps in the world of faking it, you should ask yourself, if you want it all are you really prepared to risk it all to get it?