Bullshit has always existed, but modern life has refined it into a near professional discipline. In offices, institutions and public discourse, people increasingly speak in ways that sound meaningful while being anchored to nothing. The performance of insight has overtake the practice of it. Bullshit succeeds because it imitates the structure of truth while carefully avoiding its weight.

Its language is recognisable. Sentences stretch beyond necessity. Certainty appears without evidence. Abstractions step in where specificity would expose the absence of substance. People elevate minor experiences into sweeping lessons and rely on tone to compensate for what content cannot carry.

Bullshit thrives in environments where image outruns competence and where saying something impressive matters more than saying something useful.

The conditions that enable this are systemic. Institutions reward confidence over depth. Audiences skim rather than read. Emotional resonance is valued above intellectual accuracy. In a crowded information environment, ambiguity becomes a feature rather than a flaw.

Bullshit spreads not because it persuades but because it demands very little from either the speaker or the listener.

This diffusion has consequences. Real expertise becomes harder to distinguish from imitation. Younger professionals internalise the idea that eloquence can substitute for competence. Organisations mistake polished rhetoric for strategy and gradually lose their capacity for honest internal discussion. In cultures shaped by bullshit, the signal collapses into the noise until even intelligent people begin to echo phrases that feel right rather than ideas that are right.

But if bullshit has become an art, so has the ability to recognise it. The tell-tale signs are surprisingly consistent.

How to recognise bullshit

Bullshit is not revealed by tone but by structure. Five markers expose it immediately.

First, there is the confidence evidence mismatch: bold claims supported by almost nothing. The style is assertive, the foundation fragile. When tone outruns proof, the substance is suspect.

Second, bullshit hides inside a vocabulary fog. It prefers inflated language because precise words would reveal the thinness of the underlying idea. If a sentence becomes clearer when shortened, the longer version existed to conceal, not explain.

Third, watch for lesson disproportion. A trivial event is inflated into a philosophy. A coincidence becomes a revelation. The conclusion is always larger than the experience that supposedly inspired it.

Fourth, bullshit relies on the emotional shortcut. It seeks to make you feel something quickly so you will not examine it slowly. When sentiment arrives before reasoning, scepticism is prudent.

Fifth, bullshit avoids accountability. It remains unfalsifiable. No trade-offs are acknowledged, no responsibility assigned, no scenario presented in which the claim might be wrong. It survives by never being specific enough to be challenged.

Once these patterns become visible, the spell weakens. The language stops feeling profound and starts reading like choreography. Ambiguity looks like evasion. Confidence sounds like theatre. What once felt insightful reveals itself as air.

The persistence of bullshit is often blamed on dishonesty, but insecurity is the deeper driver. Many people fear being ordinary.

Bullshit offers a shortcut to significance: a way to borrow the tone of wisdom without enduring the discipline required to become wise. In that sense, bullshit is less a cultural failure than a psychological crutch.

This comes with a quieter cost. Over time, bullshit erodes trust not only in institutions but in language itself. When words are used to impress rather than illuminate, they stop functioning as tools for understanding. They become packaging. They become costume and eventually, people stop listening.

There is a final irony: even analysing bullshit carries the danger of performing it. A piece attempting to expose the pattern can easily slip into the pattern….polished, persuasive, but not necessarily transformative. The boundary between clarity and cleverness is thinner than most writers admit.

This reflection might be an attempt at honesty, or it may simply be another carefully crafted piece of bullshit. You will judge the difference.