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I dislike jaded contrarian posts in the vein of "oh sweet summer child," but I guess it's my turn to wear that hat
I'm not surprised at all by this. The older I get and the further I progress in my career, the more I find that sheet brazeness and confidence are 80% of the game. It's an eye opening discovery. Hard workers don't always win, honesty doesn't pay. Casual cheaters never prosper, but calculated and/or shameless cheaters often prosper mightily. Stated thus it sounds like I was hopefully naïve, but I'd wager that most Mottizens reading this post subconsciously subscribe to this flavor of the just world fallacy at least a bit.
You begin to realize that there is a particular kind of person who is exceptionally skilled at sniffing out particularly naive/vulnerable communities and readily able and willing to exaggerate their own accomplishments in ways that are often hard to discredit without significant effort.
And they get away with it because only someone from outside the community might be willing to call them out, and usually an outsider sees no point to expending the effort necessary to help a community they have no ties to.
Straight-up cults are merely the most blatant version of this.
In part it is explained by simple charisma, but also a level of shamelessness and willingness to fight anyone who tried to challenge their claims and bluff them into backing down.
And this type of person runs almost everything.
The observation is much older than anyone wants to give it credit for; this isn't even the first time but at least it has a catchy name.
Note that this applies to any group, importantly when it comes to "society at large".
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