A quick analysis of this strange phenomenon, with some suggestions about how to cope with people who bullshit. bulldictionary.com Buy the book: http://amzn.to/2doeOTI

1. BANISHING THE BULL
Kevin Duncan

2. WHY DO PEOPLE
USE BULLSHIT?

3. Bullshit…
• Is now ubiquitous
“The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the
nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with
instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve
among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the
concept.”
Professor Harry G. Frankfurt,
Princeton University

4. Bullshit…
• Is more insidious than you might think
Bullshit:
1. The excreta of a large male bovine.
2. Technically endless supply of waffle and nonsense uttered in business
meetings; cunning wordsmithery that is neither on the side of the
false nor the truth; verbal expedience. (see Bollocks, talking;
Doughnut rather than the hole, it would be wise to concentrate on
the; Obfuscation; Off the top of my head; Static; Talking out loud;
Waffle; White noise; Word dump)

5. Bullshit…
• Has not attracted much sustained inquiry
because we think we know how to spot it
Going forward:
1. The opposite of backwards.
2. Truly a king amongst kings; the undisputed champion of utter bullshit, with
the possible exception of “proactive”; entirely pointless modifier somehow
designed to suggest a forward-looking demeanour, when any fool knows
that a backward one would be detrimental for everybody, except possibly
historians who should indeed adopt a backward-looking approach; selfish
waste of time perpetrated by anyone using these two utterly redundant
words. (see -focused; Forward-looking; Future-facing; Futureproof; Goal-
oriented; Here-and-now-ness; Momentum; Proactive)

6. Bullshit…
• Is not easy to define because the term is
often used loosely and as a generic term
of abuse
Bollocks, talking:
1. Testicles that can speak.
2. Sustained burst of total rubbish blurted out in answer to an
unexpected interview question; patchwork of platitude and cliché
designed to confuse; mission statement contents; any acceptance
speech; 100% of proclamations made by politicians or sportsmen. (see
Bullshit; Obfuscation)

7. Bullshit…
• Covers a multitude of sins
Knowledge management, transfer:
1. Control, or handing over of, wisdom.
2. Catastrophic inability to control or hand over any wisdom at all; brain
drain; complete loss of expertise when one intelligent person leaves
the company; collapse of all IT functions when Dave leaves;
haphazard filing system that passes on no knowledge whatsoever. (see
Know-how; Talent, war on)

8. Bullshit…
• Is similar to shoddy goods – produced in
a careless or self-indulgent manner,
and never finely crafted
Bottom feeding:
1. Eating material on the floor of a river, sea or fish tank.
2. Hoovering up any crap that has settled on the bottom; dealing
solely in the dross; working with or for the cheapest and worst
possible exponents in the market; actively pursuing low-rent
customers, and to hell with the consequences. (see Ambulance
chasing; Scraping the barrel)

9. Bullshit…
• Is a lack of concern with the truth and an
indifference to how things really are
Off the top of my head:
1. Something has just fallen from my cranium, such as a hat, or my wig.
2. I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, so I’ll just spout any twaddle I
can think of and hope that nobody notices because they are all doing
the same thing. (see Bullshit; Talking out loud; Waffle; Word dump)

10. Bullshit…
• Involves a kind of bluff
Obfuscation:
1. Deliberately making something obscure or difficult to understand.
2. An egregious lie or cover-up; frantic fudging of the truth to disguise
incompetence or outright crime. (see Access to information; Bollocks,
talking; Broad brush; Bullshit; Keep it dark; Hedge our bets; Mum,
keep; Off the top of my head; Prevaricate; Talking out loud; Techno-
babble; Waffle; Word dump)

11. Bullshit…
• Is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations
or opportunities to speak about some topic
exceed their knowledge of the facts that are
relevant to the topic
Bandwidth, he doesn’t have the:
1. Not intelligent.
2. He’s thick as a brick; dead from the neck up; relentlessly useless at
work; no help at all, in fact, a downright hindrance; 100%
incompetent. (see Intelligent, if you were any less ______, I’d have to
water you once a day; Mental furniture; Obvious, firm grasp of the;
Psychic RAM; Shilling, not the full; WOMBAT)

12. Bullshit…
• Can involve:
deceptive misrepresentation
just short of lying, especially with pretentious words
misrepresentation of somebody’s own thoughts,
feelings or attitudes
Jazz Hands:
1. All style and no content.
2. Soup this presentation up immediately because it is essentially
content-free (see Zee, we’ve covered everything from A to; Full
Monty, the; Turd, polishing a; Wow factor)

13. THE BULLSHITTER

14. The bullshitter
• Is not necessarily a liar
Facts, cold hard:
1. The untainted truth.
2. What’s left after all the bullshit has been stripped away; most
commonly exposed as nothing of substance at all.

15. The bullshitter
• Is phony rather than false
Crafting, it needs a bit of:
1. Further work is required on this.
2. This is sub-standard rubbish and needs to be done again. (see Bugs,
iron out the; Drawing board, back to the; Optimal; Sub-optimal; Tools,
management, unique; Woodwork, spanners in the, spanners jumping
out of the)

16. The bullshitter
• Is faking things, but this does not mean
that they necessarily get them wrong
Putting lipstick on a pig:
1. Applying cosmetics to a porcine beast, presumably to make it look better.
2. Frantically try to make something appear better than it is, usually to no
avail; futile cover up effort. (see GIGO; Jazz hands; Rebrand; RIRO; SISO;
Turd, polishing a)

17. The bullshitter
• Has much more freedom than someone
who tells the truth or lies, because they do
not require an anchor point on one side or
the other
Broad brush:
1. Wide painting utensil for covering a wide area.
2. Total fudge; failure to come to point; obfuscation; vagueness;
sweeping attempt to avoid coming to the point. (see Gloss over; Keep it
dark; Strategy)

18. The bullshitter
• Intends neither to report the truth nor to
conceal it
Come up to scratch:
1. Reach the required level.
2. Exasperated exhortation to reach the required level, for once in your
life; desperate plea from boss to ineffective and feckless subordinate;
set low standards for oneself and consistently fail to meet them;
underachieve.

19. The bullshitter
• Is neither on the side of the truth nor on
the side of the false
Competitive advantage, edge:
1. Something compelling that makes us better than our competitors.
2. Sinking feeling based on the dawning realization that we are clearly no
better than our competitors; on further examination, alarming
discovery that we are actually much worse than our competitors;
trumped up piece of corporate puffery to claim competitive advantage
where there patently is none. (see Leverage)

20. The bullshitter
• Does not care whether they describe
reality correctly
Reality check:
1. Occasion to consider a matter realistically or honestly.
2. Moment that seldom occurs in business due to too much haste or
downright stupidity; sometimes used in pseudo-rigorous way by glib
managers, as in “I’m broadly in agreement, but I think we need to take a
reality check here, Sebastian”, and often accompanied by a broad
sweep of the hand or a thoughtful tug of the beard.

21. The bullshitter
• Just picks out material, or makes it up, to
suit their purpose
Massage the numbers:
1. Rearrange finances or statistics to create a different conclusion.
2. Deceptive, often downright illegal, alteration of financial reporting
information in order to generate an entirely different outcome, usually
favourable; slight of hand; legerdemain; malfeasance; contemptible
twisting of reporting line to create a better picture, often resulting in
company closure or personal imprisonment. (see Bottom line; Cook the
books; Crunch the numbers; Fiscal juggling; Negative growth, profit;
Obfuscation; Smoke and mirrors job)

22. The bullshitter
• Does not reject the authority of truth, as
the liar does, or oppose it – they pay no
attention to it at all
Authenticity:
1. Relating to anything that is authentic.
2. Totally false, such as “This product was lovingly forged in the crucible of
time”; quality constantly demanded of staff in over-earnest companies.
(see Passion, passionate; Provenance; Rebrand)

23. WHAT TO DO?

24. What to do?
• Bullshit needs to be taken seriously
Alarm bells, set the ______ ringing:
1. Trigger warning system because there is a fire.
2. Cause total panic amongst colleagues by doing something distinctly
unnerving, such as wearing trainers with suits, reaching inside a room
from the corridor when a meeting is in session and turning the light
switch repeatedly on and off for five minutes, or insisting on being
called Colin when your real name is Samantha. (see AWOL, go; Ballistic,
go; Box of frogs, mad as a; Bundle, one stick short of a; Gene pool,
swimming in the shallow end of the; Mid-life crisis; Moon, barking at
the, over the, through the; Picnic, one sandwich short of a; Plot, lose
the; Pram, to throw one’s toys out of the; Radar, off; Rails, gone off the)

25. What to do?
• Should you be genuinely duped by it,
things could get awkward
Nailing a jelly to the wall, trying to:
1. Attempting an impossible task.
2. Using jelly to do something for which it was not intended; trying to use
tools that will never do the job, however insane the job is; hammering
away with an inappropriate approach, too dim to realize that pausing
for reflection could be more productive. (see Banana, stabbing a seal
with a; Grasping at fog)

26. What to do?
• It pays to be on the lookout for it
Ear to the ground:
1. Well informed.
2. Phenomenally nosey.

27. What to do?
• Analyse the different types and the
frequent perpetrators of it
SISO:
1. Shit In Shit Out.
2. Wise and eternally verified notion that if you put poor data or other effort
into something, the result will be just as bad as the crap it always was.
(see GIGO; Putting lipstick on a pig; RIRO; Turd, polishing a)

28. What to do?
• React appropriately
Risk-averse:
1. Not prone to taking any chances.
2. Inherently conservative; weak-willed; unadventurous; lily-livered;
scared; not likely to do anything that might cause any trouble;
ineffective; possibly not worth having around; a bit useless; not
helping much; preferring to stay at one’s desk rather than get up
and do something. (see Jobsworth)

29. What to do?
• Don’t act on falsehoods
60:50 relationship, this is the perfect:
1. This relationship is imbalanced.
2. Superbly exasperated expression of being set upon in a lopsided
partnership that is supposed to be equal. (see Partners)

30. BANISH THE BULL
Kevin Duncan
www.bulldictionary.com
Twitter: @kevinduncan
07979 808770