Faking it
While sitting at work today, I wondered idly to myself, “How many topics can I fake being knowledgeable on enough to fool the average person?” I don’t mean to fool them in a mean way, but just enough to impress someone at a cocktail party (because I go to so many of these) or make conversation with friends of friends or coworkers, when you are done with small talk.
Mind you, I do not believe I actually know more about these things than most people I know, but I *think* I can wing it on the following topics:
- games/gaming (credit to Seppo)
- competitive mathematics (credit to most people not being interested :D)
- programming/technology/UI (ok, so maybe I wouldn’t be faking it… mostly sort of kind of)
- cars (credit to Seppo and random coworkers)
- books, reading (I have to pull out books I read more than 5 years ago because it’s mostly light reading lately) and writing (credit to NaNoWriMo)
- crafts, e.g. sewing, building (credit to many friends really into crafts)
- singing & dancing, terminology & hip hop history in particular (credit to watching too much tv & reading too many blogs about it)
- dog training (intro to psych classes, Cesar Milan, Mobi)
- food, both eating and cooking of, despite my terrible palate
- person finance (credit to reading a billion sites)
- communication, both interpersonal and professional
- grammar & etymology (even though sometimes I commit huge grammatical errors, I can usually chalk it up to speaking colloquially ;D)
What about you?
Sounds like someone has a subscription to Modern Jackass!
http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1251
😀
pop culture/current events
food/cooking/cuisine
wine (limited to CA varietals; I suck at Italian and French)
photography (but not the technical features of a camera; more as an art of visual aesthetics of)
travel (specifically US, Hawaii, Italy and Paris – but not all of France)
@Jeremy: I totally listened to that episode too! Haha. I am that. 😀
I’m not that interested in a list of topics that you are in fact not only knowledgeable on, but also interested in and have researched and/or done to a reasonable extents (all of the things you listed). I think maybe what you were shooting for was “here’s a list of things that I know a lot about, but am not expert in, but I think I could fake sounding like an expert.”
What I thought you were going to list were things that you honestly know almost nothing about, but think you might be able to fake all the same.
My list:
Fine and Modern Art
Dentistry
Tarot (I did once give a tarot card reading to a friend, totally making it up as I went along, but I did it damn convincingly)
etc (aka too tired to think of more)
The secret to my list is that there are things there that I’m not that interested in. Perhaps I have faked it enough that you think I’m proficient at all of them! 😀
I was actually talking to a friend recently about my tendency to try faking expertise in areas I know nothing about. She called me on it at one point – we were having a conversation about art movements, and about five minutes in, she said “Wait, you know _way_ less about this than I thought you did.” But unless somebody has studied a subject at the college level, I can generally fake my knowledge of it enough to fool them. I’m not sure why it fascinates me so much to attempt this fakery – I think it’s partially to find the people who really know something, as they’ll call me on my crap, and then I can learn from them. Or something.
Well you sound very smart to me! I’m pretty sure you would hold a crowd’s attention longer than my expertise in So You Think You Can Dance and how to get carrots out of a onesie. Your list is way better!
I fake just about everything people ask me about. As long as I have internet access, I have Google.
I dunno – I kinda feel like your list is half stuff you ‘fake,’ and half stuff you’re genuinely interested in, though may not have quite as much experience/info as you project.
If that’s the case, my list would range from cars to art to music to game design – I sort of feel like people give me more credit than I deserve, or presume knowledge that doesn’t exist, even when I’m not trying to pull a fast one.
What is that statement about being just smart enough to make yourself sound like an idiot? That’s me. 😀