Your Information Immune System is Deficient
What ten years covering tech grifters taught me about spotting bullshit
I spent a decade as a tech journalist at a major American media company.
I interviewed hundreds of founders, covered countless product launches, and sat through more pitch meetings than I care to remember.
Somewhere in year three, I developed a sixth sense I didn't know I needed.
I could smell bullshit from across a conference room.
It wasn't magic.
It was pattern recognition earned through watching the same con play out in different costumes.
The founder with revolutionary AI that turned out to be a spreadsheet and three underpaid contractors in the Philippines.
The blockchain startup that was just a website and a whitepaper.
The health tech company with doctors on the advisory board who had never actually seen the product.
I thought everyone could do this.
I was wrong.
The Box With a Pin In It
Elizabeth Holmes understood something most people don't.
She knew that story beats substance almost every single time.
Theranos claimed it could run hundreds of blood tests from a single finger prick.
Anyone who's ever had actual bloodwork done knows this is absurd.
A standard panel requires multiple vials.
The technology to shrink that down to a drop would be Nobel Prize territory.
But Holmes didn't lead with the technology.
She led with herself.
She wore the black turtleneck.
She artificially lowered her voice to sound more authoritative.
She positioned herself as the female Steve Jobs, a woman disrupting the boys' club of Silicon Valley.
Magazines put her on covers.
Investors wrote nine-figure checks.
Respected board members lent their names and credibility.
The actual product?
A box with a pin in it.
That's all.
The pin pricked your finger.
The box did literally nothing else.
The results they sent out were often dangerously wrong, telling healthy people they might have HIV, telling sick people they were fine.
She's in prison now, but she got away with it for years because she understood the game.
Make the narrative so compelling that nobody asks to see the receipts.
Surround yourself with credible people so you inherit their credibility.
Talk in big visions and revolutionary language so you never have to get specific.
And it worked until it didn't.
The Luke Belmar Problem
Here's what I've noticed about the new generation of business gurus.
They've learned all the same tricks Elizabeth Holmes used, but they're selling them to an audience that has no immune system.
Take Luke Belmar.
I watched his content once and immediately recognized the pattern.
Lots of words that sound profound but mean nothing.
Talk about energy, vibrations, consciousness, religion.
When pressed on how he actually made his money, the answer was always vague.
Crypto.
E-commerce.
Some combination of both.
Never any evidence.
Never any specifics.
Never any proof.
Ask him to walk through his first profitable month and he'd pivot to metaphysics.
Ask to see transaction records and he'd talk about mindset.
Now Luke is in a million dollar lawsuit over claims he fabricated most of his story.
I don’t know what is and isn’t true.
Maybe he isn’t lying and is completely legitimate.
But what I do know is that this is the playbook I saw deployed in Silicon Valley daily.
When you can't show the work, you show the performance.
You dodge, deflect, and sell the dream.
But here's what scared me.
Thousands of people bought it.
Not because they were stupid, but because they'd never seen this movie before.
They didn't have the scar tissue.
They hadn't spent years watching grifters get exposed, seeing the pattern repeat.
They didn't have an information immune system.
What Journalism Teaches You
In journalism, especially tech journalism, you learn to look for specific things.
Not vibes.
Not charisma.
Not the narrative.
You learn to look for the gaps.
When someone claims they built something revolutionary, you ask to see it work.
When they say they made millions, you ask for tax returns or bank statements.
When they credit their success to a method, you ask them to walk you through the method step by step until they either explain it clearly or reveal they can't.
The grifters always fail the specificity test.
Always.
They speak in abstractions because abstractions can't be disproven.
They talk about energy and manifestation and vibrations because you can't check those things.
They avoid numbers, dates, names, and verifiable claims like vampires avoid sunlight.
And when you push them, they get defensive or philosophical or they question your mindset.
They never just show you the evidence.
The Spiritual Smokescreen
One pattern I saw over and over was the spiritual pivot.
When the business claims didn't hold up, grifters would shift into metaphysical territory.
This happened constantly in the wellness and biohacking space.
Someone would claim their supplement could cure everything.
When you asked for clinical trials, they'd start talking about Big Pharma conspiracies and how ancient wisdom doesn't need peer review.
When you asked for evidence, they'd question whether you were spiritually ready to receive the truth.
It's the same move every time.
Wrap the con in cosmic language so that skepticism becomes a character flaw rather than common sense.
This is the default method of every lifestyle influencer driving rented Lamborghinis and filming in borrowed mansions.
They sell you on the idea that if you just vibrate at the right frequency and believe hard enough, the money will come.
They never mention the Rolexes are fake, the girls are paid to be there, and the mansion is an Airbnb.
The wealth they're displaying is an illusion.
The lifestyle is a stage set.
The Credibility Hack
Elizabeth Holmes put Henry Kissinger on her board.
Not because he knew anything about blood testing, but because his name meant something.
When people saw Kissinger, they stopped asking hard questions.
They assumed someone that important wouldn't attach themselves to fraud.
This is the credibility transfer hack, and it works everywhere.
Modern gurus do the same thing.
They get one legitimate entrepreneur to appear on their podcast.
They take a photo with someone famous.
They speak at one real conference.
Then they leverage that single moment of borrowed legitimacy into a career of selling courses to people who assume the association means endorsement.
It doesn't.
Most of the time, the famous person has no idea their image is being used this way.
Or they don't care because they're selling something too.
Building Your Bullshit Detector
The good news is you can develop this skill.
You don't need a journalism degree.
You just need to start looking for patterns.
Here's what to watch for.
Check For Specificity.
When someone claims they made money doing X, ask them to explain exactly how.
If they can't or won't provide a step-by-step breakdown with numbers and timelines, that's a red flag.
Real success has details.
Fake success has affirmations.
Look at Their Background.
Do they have a track record of building anything?
Have they created products people actually use?
Have they worked in the field they're now teaching?
Watch How They Handle Questions.
Do they welcome scrutiny or deflect it?
Do they provide evidence or attack the questioner's mindset?
Legitimate experts can defend their claims with data.
Notice The Promises.
If someone guarantees you can make six figures in six months with no work, they're lying.
Real business is hard, risky, and uncertain.
And ALWAYS requires work.
Outside of savings and investments, “passive income” is a myth.
Follow The Money.
What are they actually selling?
Do they have a real product with real results?
Or are they just selling a dream to those desperate to believe it.
The Danger to Young People
What worries me most is how these grifters target younger audiences.
People in their late teens and early twenties who are anxious about their future.
Who feel left behind.
Who want a shortcut because the traditional path looks broken.
These gurus sell them a fantasy.
They say you can have everything you want with minimal effort.
They say everyone else is stupid except you.
They say the system is rigged but they've found the cheat code.
And if you just buy their ebook, join their Telegram group, adopt their mindset, you'll unlock the same success.
It's a lie.
But it's a seductive lie, especially when you're scared and don't have the experience to recognize the pattern.
The result is thousands of young people handing over money they can't afford to lose for information that's either useless or freely available.
Six months later they’ve lost time, confidence, and trust in their own judgment.
Information Warfare
We're living in an era of information warfare, and most people are walking around unarmed.
The internet has made it easier than ever for grifters to reach massive audiences with zero accountability.
They can rent the appearance of success, fabricate credentials, and disappear when the con collapses, only to reemerge under a new brand.
The platforms don't care because controversy drives engagement.
The audiences don't know how to filter because they've never had to develop the skill.
And the grifters are getting better at the game because they're learning from each other.
This is why you need an immune system.
Not to make you cynical, but to make you resilient.
To help you distinguish between someone who has something real to offer and someone who's just selling you the dream of something real.
What Comes Next
Here's what I want you to do.
Start keeping a mental file of predictions and claims.
When someone tells you they're going to do something or that something is guaranteed to work, write it down.
Then check back in six months.
Did it happen?
Did they deliver?
Or did they quietly move on to the next promise?
Stop giving people the benefit of the doubt just because they're confident or popular.
Confidence is not competence.
Followers are not proof.
Demand evidence.
If they can't provide it, walk away.
Learn to sit with uncertainty.
Grifters exploit your desire for simple answers and guaranteed outcomes.
Real growth, real business, real life is messy and uncertain.
Anyone selling you certainty is selling you a fantasy.
And most importantly, trust your gut.
If something feels off, it probably is.
That uncomfortable feeling when someone's story doesn't quite add up?
That's your immune system trying to protect you. Listen to it.
The Pattern Repeats
I've been watching this cycle for over a decade now.
A new guru emerges.
They make big claims.
They build a following.
They sell the dream.
The cracks start to show.
Someone asks the wrong question.
The evidence doesn't materialize.
The promises don't deliver.
The whole thing collapses.
And then another one emerges and the cycle starts again.
The only way to break this pattern is to stop being an easy target.
To develop the skills that help you see through the performance to the reality underneath.
To demand proof, ask hard questions, and walk away when the answers don't come.
You don't need to become a cynic.
You just need to become discerning.
The grifters are counting on you not to look too closely, not to ask too many questions, not to demand evidence.
They're betting that the story will be enough.
That the energy and the vibe and the promise will carry you past your skepticism.
Don't let them win that bet.
Your time, your money, and your trust are valuable.
Don't hand them over to someone who can't prove they've earned them.
Watch for the patterns.
Check the receipts.
Build your immune system.
Because the next Elizabeth Holmes is already out there.
And they're getting better at the game.