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An Ethics of Bullshit: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Life
January 8, 2025

An Ethics of Bullshit: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By Joshua Cruz

Bullshit has proven challenging to define. For instance,Frankfurt claims that bullshit is not so much about lying as it is a completedismissal of truth or falsity. Alternatively, Ball claims that “bullshit” may“cover misrepresentation, half-truths, and outrageous lies alike” (3). Just asdifficult to pin down as bullshit’s definition is bullshit’s ethics. Somefollow Frankfurt’s lead, casting bullshit as a damaging phenomenon (e.g.,Eubanks and Schaffer, 382); however, others suggest that bullshitting may beproductive and valuable in certain situations (e.g., Perla and Carifio;Smagorinsky et al.). Given the fact that we are surrounded by “fake news” andwe occupy an era that has been labeled “post-truth”(e.g., Ball; Davis;McComiskey; McIntyre; Skinnell)—an era defined by its bullshit— it may beprudent to land on a definition of bullshit and determine, once and for all,how we should orient ourselves toward this phenomenon.

To define bullshit, I argue that we need to look at itsrhetorical aims rather than the nature of the phenomenon itself. If that is thecase, it is prudent to ask what a bullshitter is trying to accomplish whenbullshitting. The literature provides us with a tentative consensus: Eubanksand Schaffer refer to bullshitters as constructing a “false ethos” (383), andFrankfurt himself suggests that bullshitters “try out various thoughts andattitudes in order to see how it feels...” (35). Perla and Carifio echo thissentiment, suggesting that we try to develop different personalities, oftenthose of experts, to grow as individuals. In these cases, bullshitting is aplay at being something that one is not. This provides an aim for bullshitters:to convey a certain kind of character that is, in some way, outside of one’scommonly adopted identity. Bullshit is the material that they use to do this.This does not necessarily make bullshit ethically suspect. Instead, we need toconsider why they may want to convey such a character. The rest of this paperis designed to think through the potential ethical implications of bullshit:the good, the bad, and the ugly. For the sake of simplicity, I adopt autilitarian standpoint, considering the different degrees of harm vs. benefitthat may arise from bullshitting.

The Good  

Perla and Carifio suggest that as we adopt new roles inlife, we must perform those roles to incorporate them into our identities. Ingeneral, when we take on a new role, we have a schema for what it looks like tobe such and such a person, and that schema provides us a script for certainbehaviors. We are not yet the person that we want to be; by modeling thesescripts, we get there. This is perhaps why bullshit is so often associated withpretending to know more than one does about a specific topic (Pennycook et al.552). When individuals bullshit in this way, they try to convey a self thatthey wish they had. In a similar vein, I believe this is often what happenswhen students resort to bullshitting an academic essay; the difference is thatstudents are not pretending to know so much as they may be pretending to careabout a particular subject or pretending to support a specific stance, assuggested by Smagorinsky et al. or Roberts-Miller in this volume. Say we ask astudent to write an analysis on a piece of assigned literature: how can we knowthat the student feels one way or the other or cares to analyze the literatureat all?

In some cases, I suspect, the student must pretend to care,and the essay they turn in must have the patina of caring. This kind ofbullshit, I argue, is not harmful. Indeed, those who pretend to know more thanthey do may be self-conscious enough to educate themselves in the future on specifictopics, or students may find that they do, in fact, support an argument throughtheir attempt at bullshitting one. Through the act of bullshitting, we can pushour ideas farther than we anticipated (Zavattaro) and become selves that wecould only pretend to be beforehand. At worst, this bullshit does not harm.

The Bad

However, one can use a false ethos for darker purposes. Indeed,Donald Trump is a prime example of instances when bullshit can cause harm. TheWashington Post recently reported that he has uttered over 20,000misrepresentations of truth during his four-year term in the Whitehouse(Cilliza). However, do these alleged misrepresentations constitute bullshit?Well, let us consider his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider, forinstance, the fact that on March 2nd, Trump stated that we would see a vaccine“relatively soon,” despite the fact that experts suggest no vaccine would beavailable until much later, or his statement that 99% of cases are totallyharmless; or that children are “almost” immune; the list goes on. These areadmittedly vague claims (what constitutes “harmless,” what are the limitationson “almost”?), but the point is that Trump presents himself as a kind ofmedical expert when he is not. Making confident, hope-filled claims (true,false, or vague) about this virus creates the image of one who knows how tohandle such a medical emergency. Such politics is, as Cramer acknowledges,about identities rather than facts (as cited in Guo). This bullshit personapositions Trump so that he seems more competent, knowledgeable, and powerfulthan he really is. The problem occurs when we believe and are loyal to Trump’spersona to the point where he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue andshoot somebody” without ramifications. Allowing any one person this type ofpower based on a perceived character—based on bullshit—undermines democracy,legality, and decency. It further creates docility when we should be takingaction against a global threat that has taken over a million lives.

The Ugly  

Finally, some forms of bullshit do not hold millions oflives in the balance, but their uses are still questionable. One example ofsuch ugly bullshit exists in Daniel Whitney, better known by his stage name,Larry the Cable Guy. Whitney conveys a convincing character for his standup: ablue-collar, salt-of-the-Earth redneck. The degree to which the character Larryis “real” is where we begin to see the question of bullshit emerging. On thesurface, Larry is simply a character played by an actor. However, in his book,Whitney claims that regardless of his fame, he is very much Larry, and this iswhy his fans relate to him so well (90). It seems that Whitney wants toconvince us that he and Larry are the same; indeed, the book itself is writtenby Larry, not Whitney, which may be a marketing ploy, but I suggest it is alsoabout presentation.

We develop a sense that if Whitney were not his character,Larry (or vice versa), Larry would no longer be valid in the eyes of his fans.However, Whitney, in actuality, does not have a southern accent and refers tohimself as a “linguistic chameleon”—a phrase markedly unLarry-like (Bensinger)—who is able to jump into roles quickly. Whitney is college-educated (albeit hedropped out in his junior year), a stark contrast to the anti-intellectual hetypically conveys. All actors adopt a role; the question is how much he wantsus to believe that he is Larry. This is ugly bullshit because it is notharmful, but it does, at least to a degree, take advantage of some group ofpeople; it is also ugly because it is so hard to determine the degree to whichit is untrue. After all, Whitney believes that he is Larry, even if there areso many signs that suggest the opposite. Like Tuco from The Good, the Bad, andthe Ugly, there is not anything evil happening here, but we may not like it allthe same. How might fans react to learning that he does not have a Southernaccent? How do they feel about the fact that he is college-educated? Would theybe willing to pay hundreds of dollars for his shows or shell out money for hisbook, cognizant of the fact that Larry is, in many ways, a fabrication? IsWhitney willing to admit (to his fans, to himself ) that Larry is afabrication? Here, Whitney sells a personality that his fans enjoy. However, ashe cashes in on his character Larry by blurring the lines between character andreality, one must wonder to what degree Larry the Cable Guy is a bullshitpersona—one that helps Whitney take advantage of the redneck fans with whom hesupposedly identifies.

Where Do We Go From Here?

There is no way to know the degree to which Whitneyidentifies with his character Larry, although we know that Larry is anexaggeration (Bensinger). It is difficult to prove the degree to which Trumpbelieves his medical expertise or even whether a student is genuine whenattempting to argue a specific point for a literary analysis. We must alsoconsider the fact that people maintain different identities at different times,and we perform those identities based on the company we keep. Who can say withcertainty whether one identity is bullshit? Still, Sunstein tells us that whenwe attempt to forge an identity in such a way, there is always a mark of forgery(7). This is perhaps where research on bullshit could advance; while not allbullshit is harmful, it may be beneficial to get better at sniffing it out,especially if lives are on the line. Perhaps, for instance, theories ofidentity or cognition could help us understand when someone is producing abullshit persona. Discourse analysis is especially useful for determining theways that people attempt to construct an identity for themselves, and it may beuseful as we conceptualize bullshit as a fake self. We may even look totheories of embodiment to describe when individuals truly believe that theyhave adopted a particular identity and when their statements are commensuratewith the selves they believe that they are. As we develop these theories andmethods, it will behoove us to consider what exactly individuals are trying toget away with—indeed, keeping this in mind may inform such theories andmethods—and we must also consider whether or not this “getting away with” mayultimately be beneficial to those bullshitting, detrimental to recipients ofthe bullshit, or just shitty in general.

Cruz, J. (2020). An Ethics of Bullshit : The Good, the Bad,and the Ugly. Composition Studies, 48(3), 120–124.