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Entrepreneurialism is the New Con
That's what he held up a sign saying. He stood outside this window and that window. This window was chic-industrial, a few white flowers. That window was an orientation office for new hires. One woman paid him mind, crossed her arms and compressed her sweater.
He was back the next day — You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.
The company had been in business for two years, developing technology frameworks marketed to other businesses. Sit your buckets of data on our framework and it'll sort it. We sort it through mobility. We keep it fresh by keeping it moving. Their website had images of flying folders going here, going there, into lines.
That's your data, said Fudge at one client meeting. Fudge owned the company now. He combed his hair differently now.
That's -your- data, he emphasized, as he and the other people in the room, dressed up for this, all watched their webwork of files be visually reflected on a projector screen being alphabetized, sorted by size, redistributed to new directories that Fudge's program and company were creating algorithmically.
— It really feels very real, said one young man like it was the first time he thought it possible that it wasn't.
This company paid up.
Fudge and Company would have a day's access to their customer information before returning it, scrubbed and dry, plus the 8% gains as promised on client appraisal and discount rates that would never be noticed.
— They're just lapsed— it's not a work of magic or trickery. It's one of attention.
— Sure, like where do you keep your eye in all the mess, said one worker overseeing the data to another at a different company. They both collapsed into their hands like they were actually despondent, though they weren't, they just made an excessive salary for what they did and were a little overwhelmed.
They too called Fudge and Company; had heard about him through a boyfriend.
— It just made everything, all the data and everything, feel real.
And wasn't it real? Arguable philosophically but it was real enough to buy food and an apartment.
— I'd keep my eye on that Fudge, said a man in a white shirt. I can smell a cheat — couldn't describe the smell, but I know it.
And business started to fade for Fudge & Co, because when gains or profits started to come back, they weren't what was projected, far from it.
— We've all heard this story, said Fudge to his employees, standing in their office there on Purning, backlit by a big television. The screen was swirling with exclamation marks.
— We've got an investor.
— Jay NGL, he said, and out strode Jay NGL.
— Don't trust him, said one of Fudge's company to another. I can smell a cheat and that is one.
But they took his money, all 2.5 million. Let him walk the company from Miami to Boise, Boise to Boulder. And it fell apart. That's the nature of bonds. Look at tape, glue. Is older tape more or less stuck than new tape?
And at the bottom of all this, all the last checks written to the few employees who passed legal action, was a man in front of a glass window, this window and that window. And who was he? Well, Fudge of course.
See, Fudge followed Jay NGL until he could smell his sole rubber, and even then he believed something might come of it.
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This didn't do what I wanted it to. I was reading a beautifully provocative article on con-men and how 'story-twist' could be studied as a means of conning. Gaining someone's confidence and then enacting some sleight of hand while attention is elsewhere, then 'cooling the mark', letting them down easy so that this new world that they live in without what they had before has just enough of a social framework that they won't cause a scene and draw attention to the con.
I think writing this shard of a story just ultimately drew out a sadness in me of how much conning there actually is and put to question my whole motivation for trying to write into that methodology. Why do I need to do more of it?
Writing with intent to trick or create mechanism is an easy first place for me to go. I used to buy and read magician's kits. Loved joke books. If one practices other people's ingenuities enough, it looks astounding to the new audience.
The tricks of the Tech world which is piled high with a nasty swarm of deceptions is one of the stranger landscapes I've been privy to and it bubbled out of me instinctively: "A complex, dysfunctional bureaucracy, a vast, cumbersome and deficient infrastructure set in a culture of easy patronage and low-grade corruption." This may be American business since American business; since 'the self-made man'.
This may be bigger than that.
I'll just note it for now and keep trying to find other ways to live.
Would hate to grow bitter, you know ;)