Faking it.
Doing my cocktail hour surfing/browsing/blogging – Found Radar magazine by way of Tom Asacker (just published a book on branding, for sale at Amazon) by way of Seth Godin. (See how this blogging/viral marketing stuff works?) If you like your news and gossip with a heavy side of snark…check out Radar. Here’s a sampling from the mag – writer Daniel Radosh’s article: “Famous for What? Talentless people are becoming famous at a terrifying rate, but what’s become of genuine achievement? Welcome to the faking-it generation, where expertise and accomplishment have become footnotes to exhibitionism, a catchphrase, and a really good look.”
“Faking it has almost no relationship to talent whatsoever. All that matters is that one’s perceived success outstrips any actual accomplishment. Consider Donald Trump, a businessman whose first job was delivering newspapers from the back of his dad’s limousine and who later parlayed his family’s great wealth into a $3 billion hole of debt. Sure, the fact that his creditors didn’t slit his throat is something of an achievement, but, as with his hit TV show, his triumph has more to do with his outsize persona than with his business acumen. You know those fancy Trump Place apartments that The Apprentice winner Kelly Perdew is overseeing as his prize? The Donald owns only a minority share of them. As with many of “his” properties, other, more solvent owners have let Trump put his name in gold letters on the buildings because it adds $150 a square foot to the condo prices. In the new-fame era, fake success equals real money.
Reminds me of another quote about the Donald from one of the really, truly big real estate moguls in NYC (Trump isn’t the biggest – not even close) – “Donald’s secret of success – staying on good terms with his parents.”
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