Why you should say f*ck off to faking it

Today, I’ll start by giving you a choice; you can see this post as the trivial, banal waffle of a fortysomething spinster, or as a welcome distraction to the soon to be if not already 3rd world war currently monopolising every news broadcast out there. Regardless of your choice, please be aware that I will now be diving straight into a rant, in an attempt to escape the harsher realities of my own existence.

If you’d like something more palatable, I suggest you go watch this episode of Banana Man on YouTube – you can do so by clicking anywhere on this sentence. It is quite delightful. Also, made by actual human beings using their actual minds. Even the voices are real.

Or you can pass START without collecting 100 dollars and instead spend a fiver supporting the poor by clicking on this one.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘fake it until you make it’, but as dishonest as such an approach may be – at least it used to come from a place of needing to accomplish something (and more often than not, the fakery came with a valuable learning experience or two). With the rise of AI, however, the faking has become the norm, and what’s more, no one seems to see the need to learn anything, even when it comes to developing a personality. What was initially designed to be a helpful tool to help develop ideas has become the thing that surely will eradicate both art and empathy in modern society. I’m not presenting this as fact, but I’d say it’s a rational fear at the very least. By faking your way through life using nowt but shortcuts and with no desire to add to your skillset, you’re not only lying to the people that have to suffer through your incompetence – you’re lying to yourself. It’s the ultimate injustice. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself (and that this is a common trait for neurodivergent folks), it’s that I cannot stand injustice. Thus, there is no way that faking it to get ahead is the best solution for us.

To those who still don’t get it, I ask you this; what will you do once you reach the proverbial top? You’ve faked your way there and learned fuck all along the way. How the hell do you expect to carry on the charade?

I have chosen this particular topic, as I keep finding myself in positions where I am meant to pick up the ball from where one of these fakers left it, with no trace of them having done any actual work. In one such scenario, I kept asking for an overview of the processes and tasks I was to become responsible for in their absence, and was (after almost a month) presented with a list of links and a Word document with instructions for using software in which I am already proficient. Me being me, I thought I shouldn’t knock it before trying – maybe they had a better way of doing things – but I soon found myself stumped by the inaccuracy of the instructions. So, of course I asked them to clarify. (I’ve been wrong enough times in my life to know better than pretending to get it…). At which they simply replied; ‘oh, it’s easy, I just asked ChatGPT and jotted down the response for you’. No wonder the ‘quick fix’ tips did fuck all!

At least, with a paid version AI, you can get some decent guidelines, but you should probably run a few tests before listing them in an on-boarding document, eh? Also, I’d much rather do a non-assisted search to find three credible sources and take it from there, instead of having to fact-check anything generated by artificial intelligence.

I know I could’ve let this go – perhaps even should’ve, but I ended up wasting so much of my time trying to make use of the so-called instructions (and doubting myself) that I just couldn’t. It would have been better to just crack on the way I always do, and to revise my textbooks and course videos if and when I’d get stuck.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen so much of this and I’ve had enough. Why should people like me get punished for wanting to do the work and, for instance, writing my own CV and cover letter, when fakers, who’d rather sit all day and chat about what colour they’re going to paint the nursery than doing any actual work, get all the jobs they apply for because they don’t bother fact-checking the lies the AI bot has produced by creating a text out of their poorly worded bullet points? GAH.

Hear me when I say that I am quite irate. You’ve poked the bear one too many times. And this is much, much bigger than me being annoyed at lazy fakers.

Imagine, if you will, that something truly horrible happened to you – a crippling illness, or you were wrongfully accused and incarcerated for murder – would you trust a doctor or a public defender that “got “earned” their qualifications by taking shortcuts? Or, if all of the pipes in your house suddenly burst and needed replacing in the middle of winter, would you trust yourself or a partner using AI and YouTube videos to fix it over a certified plumber?

I certainly hope not.

So, what’s this to do with mental health? I hear you ask. Everything, I say.

Initially, I’d left myself a note to write and research how faking it rarely works for those with ADHD and a side of rejection and/or justice sensitivity. You can read more about this in Amelia Kelley (PhD)’s article on Psychology Today: How justice sensitivity amplifies world issues for ADHD.

I didn’t realise this was a thing until I got diagnosed – I’d just always thought I had a strong sense of justice. This helped explain a few things, but mostly why it felt so unnatural and just wrong for me to be faking anything. It’s like lying to yourself, and our need for justice will help our subconscious see through the lies, so we’ll end up feeling as if we’ve effectively tried to pull one over on ourselves. It’s like masking, but when we really don’t have to – or even should. (One could argue that you should never try to hide who you really are, but hey).

Which brings me to the scary, and most of all really quite harmful, side effect of masking: SKILL REGRESSION; defined on Psychology Today as “behavioural “backtracking” or reversion to earlier coping mechanisms that can occur as people progress through different stages of development”.

This was explained in much simpler terms in a podcast episode I listened to the other day (link at the very end of this post), as the regression of skills you learned while masking. Once you get treated for your symptoms and no longer need to mask, some of these skills may even need to be relearned and new neural pathways need to be constructed to help locate the seemingly forgotten skill. (Thank fuck for neuroplasticity, eh?). I wonder if this works for repressed memories as well. Who knows.

Anyway, I am at the end of my rope here and I need to get ready for work. I promised you a link, so enjoy this episode of Hypercast by clicking on the Spotify link below.