How To Master The Art Of Bullshit

It’s been more than a week since I last posted, marking my longest absence to date in Taggle Talk‘s brief history. I apologise. I have been terribly, terribly worried that you, my dearest reader, might have given up on me and my failed reputation as a blogger. But I see that you haven’t and that is why I love you. It’s not that I forgot about you! I’ve spent much of this week trying to come up with a special idea, just for you. I’ve tried really, really hard but…nothing. My one and only thought was to write about Sunday’s horrific hangover, but then I remembered my father’s recently expressed concern that the themes of ‘alcohol’, ‘being drunk’ and ‘being hungover’ have become much too regular a feature on Taggle Talk. Again, I apologise.

Then, just when I’d given up all hope and considered plagiarising the work of somebody else, I had a lightbulb moment: I don’t need ideas because I am a Master Bullshitter. You’re familiar with bullshitting, right? Well, I have an extraordinary ability to bullshit; to pull something from nothing, and make it work. And there it was – a simple idea to bullshit about, well, bullshit. So right here and now, I’m going to teach you. This is Bullshitting 101.

The Art of Bullshit is the art of saying something when you’ve nothing to say; the art of writing something when you’ve nothing to write. Basically, it’s a fancy way of getting away with lies and fooling people into thinking you’re intelligent. Although I’ve just indadvertedly admitted to lying on occasion, you needn’t lose faith. I have a Bachelor of Arts which is practically a Degree in Bullshit. I spent 4 years writing 3000-word essays about books I’d never heard of, let alone read, and that requires a certain level of admirable skill.

Mastering the Art of Bullshit is surprisingly easy. I’ve got one word for you: confidence. When someone asks you a difficult question, respond without even a second of hesitation. Raise your voice. Say the first thing that comes to you, and roll with it. Pluck a number from nowhere and make up supporting statistics. Make up quotes and the people who said them. Make up case studies, too. If you bullshit with confidence, those around you will be made to feel embarrassed of their lacking general knowledge. “Fred, koalas are absolutely extinct. In 2012 there remained only three in the wild, and one in captivity. All four overdosed on eucalyptus earlier this year. It was thought to have been a joint suicide pact. Don’t you read The Quarterly Journal of Australian Wildlife?”

The second secret to mastering bullshit is exaggeration. Make your made up facts and figures count. People won’t believe any number below five hundred, at least. I’ve found that numbers rounding to the nearest seven are very rarely questioned. “No Fred. Audrey Hepburn was married seventeen times. Over 37 years she was given over 567 pieces of jewellery believed to have been worth over 148.7 million dollars. As if you didn’t know that!” Never, under any circumstance, use the word “approximately”. “Approximately” suggests that you are in fact unsure of anything. “Approximately” goes against everything bullshitting stands for. Now remove it from your dictionary and replace it with “exactly”.

My only other advice is to practice. Sir Edward Smithington certainly wasn’t lying when he said “practice makes perfect” in 1547. Start bullshitting in small doses. The build-up of your bullshit must be gradual. If you jump in all too suddenly, you will give yourself away. Drop bullshit rarely and randomly. Let’s say eleven times per day, maximum. Once you’ve mastered the Art of Bullshit, never again will you be questioned by those more intelligent than you. Never again will you be left with nothing to say. Never again will you be stuck for ideas. Sit back, relax, and bullshit.

And that, my friends, is a prime example of the Art of Bullshit.