According to Harry Frankfurt, a bullshitter is just a liar who doesn't know what they are talking about. Also according to Frankfurt, a liar is one of the worst things that you can be. By that logic, is a bullshitter worse than a liar? I mean they seemingly do the same thing but the liar is clearly motivated by a purpose that compels them so much to tell the lie, whereas the bullshitter is just lying for the sake of lying.
What do I think?
No, they are not the same, the liar is definitively worse.
Am I biased?
Yes, because my favorite pass time is spewing bullshit to strangers for money. It's called stand-up comedy.
In stand-up comedy, 99.9% of the stories you hear from people on stage are completely false in one way or another whether it be a small detail like the name of the place they were in when the funny thing happened or something big like the whole story. I spend hours trying out different combinations of bullshit, finding the perfect amount of bullshit that will make the audience laugh. Frankfurt might see this as an egregious waste of time because in his eyes bullshitting requires no effort, but for people like me, comics, this is literally our job description.
Now based on Frankfurts’ writing, the whole field of stand-up comedy should be erased. After all, it is just a bunch of people profiting from bullshit, bullshit that doesn’t add any “value” to the receiver’s life.
I’d argue, however, that this specific brand of bullshit actually does offer something, humor. Bullshit for the purpose of making people laugh and potentially brightening someone’s day seems almost noble, doesn’t it? No one is being hurt by the bullshit itself. People get upset at the subject matter of jokes, but no one is ever hurt by the story or the punchline which is where the bullshit lives.
For someone like Frankfurt who always searches for the truth, the art still may seem flawed due to its inherent dishonesty, but I feel like the average person can recognize that bullshit is rarely found to be malicious and in most cases, even outside of stand-up, can be harmless and used for the purpose of reminding us to not always look at life with such a discerning eye.
Hi, your blog was a very interesting take on "bullshit". You did a good job deriving a new idea from the reading and connecting it to your own personal life to bring new insight. To improve, I think that you need to make a hook in the introduction paragraph rather than explaining the reading first. So possibly just move your current first paragraph down and write a new intro based solely on hooking the reader. In terms of engaging the reader, you could link to some comedy videos or add pictures of comedians. Overall, very good post!
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