“
All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that's how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn't all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I've always felt like a fake human being.
”
”
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Last Night I Sang to the Monster)
“
I'll tell you the only real truth. Cunt is where it all begins and where it all ends. Cunt is the only thing worth living for. Everything else is a fake, a fraud and just shit.
”
”
Mario Puzo (Fools Die)
“
One of life’s ironies is that the more honest and vulnerable you are, the more others try to discredit you as a fraud and a fake. Shut them up by not caring.
”
”
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
“
Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.
”
”
Orson Welles
“
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
”
”
Sigmund Freud
“
All right," she said in a low, determined voice. 'I'll go along with this. But you are not, under any circumstances, to refer to me again as 'the future Mrs. Bobby Tom,' do you understand? Because if you say that just once, just once, I will personally tell the entire world that our engagement is a fraud. Furthermore, I will announce that you are-are-" Her mouth opened and closed, She's stared out strong, but now she couldn't think of anything terrible enough to throw at him.
An ax murderer?" he offered helpfully.
When she didn't reply, he tried again. " A vegetarian?"
It came to her in a flash. "Impotent!
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Heaven, Texas (Chicago Stars, #2))
“
Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.
”
”
Mark Vonnegut (The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity)
“
Hollywood was fine with fakes, but it was most definitely not okay with frauds.
”
”
Lauren Conrad (Sugar and Spice (L.A. Candy, #3))
“
The problem with wearing a facade is that sooner or later life shows up with a big pair of scissors.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
You can dress up greed, but you can’t stop the stench.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Images are deceiving. Salt and sugar look exactly the same but taste very different.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
That birthday was the day I discovered that I was a fraud. Or not a fraud, like a bad magician: a fake, like a fake antique. I was a forgery, done on purpose.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2))
“
Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx, Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds, and sharks.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
“
It’s weird because we often try to present our fake, shiny, happy selves to others and make sure we’re not wearing too-obvious pajamas at the grocery store, but really, who wants to see that level of fraud? No one. What we really want is to know we’re not alone in our terribleness. We want to appreciate the failure that makes us perfectly us and wonderfully relatable to every other person out there who is also pretending that they have their shit together and didn’t just eat that onion ring that fell on the floor. Human foibles are what make us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Broken (in the best possible way))
“
I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
When we look back from the vantage point of sobriety, many of us realize that when drinking we often felt like a fake, a fraud, and a phony. That’s because we were. – p. 74
”
”
Ray A. (Practice These Principles: Living the Spiritual Disciplines and Virtues in 12-Step Recovery to Achieve Spiritual Growth, Character Development, and Emotional Sobriety)
“
We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
Matthew kept hinting that Strike was somehow a fake. He seemed to feel that being a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tamer; that real people did not do such things.
”
”
Robert Galbraith (The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1))
“
The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.
”
”
Charles Dickens
“
Some men do not know the father of 'their' children.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay)
“
I was in the land of fakes and frauds and phonies—I felt like saying “Howdy cousin,” to everybody who walked by.
”
”
Gary Reilly (Ticket To Hollywood (Asphalt Warrior, #2))
“
After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.
”
”
Flora Rheta Schreiber (Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities)
“
Kitsch. Can't think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that's so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there's more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. "It looks like...!" Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: "The sunset looks like a painting!" Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former's beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it's related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: "classy" kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.
”
”
Hernan Diaz (Trust)
“
What is fear but that ‘thing’ that we believed to be as powerful as it pretended to be.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
When you're way too real, fake people be like: "You're a trip. I want somebody with real game (lies).
”
”
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
Reject the fake life. Reject the life of the fraud. Reject the persona life, the masked life. Stop faking it. Stop living in bad faith. Shatter the false ceiling. Become who you are. Become authentic. Get active. Get real. Get going.
”
”
Thomas Stark (The Book of Thought: Mind Matters (The Truth Series 6))
“
Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm—laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous fraud, and at the same time its perpetrators, or so I felt.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
“
That red-headed man thought she was a fraud! ‘Making assumptions about others is rude,’ Kusha read in Learn Basic Manners. Not making assumptions is a basic manner. Why would a High Grade—a war hero, the King of Mesmerizers—not know the basic manners?
How does she make such a dreadful first-impression, though? For the first time in her life, in her current memory, Kusha knows how it feels to be misunderstood by a stranger. Especially if you know the stranger so well from afar, you admire his voice, you collect his speeches, you even own all the books he wrote and all the cheap fakes of the paintings he rarely drew.
“First impression matters, sweetie. Letting people see who you are matters. Better tell the truth than a lie. And the worst is a lie that they assume from your actions, sweetie …”
Kusha closes her eyes, attempting to shut off Meera’s voice.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare.
”
”
Lewis F. Powell Jr.
“
Now I shall speak of evil as none has Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz; The white-hosed moron torturing a black Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac; Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools; Music in supermarkets; swimming pools; Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx, 930 Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
“
And what happened? Fact-checked, focus-grouped, data-driven Clinton lost to the most deranged presidential candidate ever: a clown, a fraud, a sexual predator, an inveterate liar who has faked every single thing he’s ever done—a giant cube of flesh who embodies all our vilest instincts and our ludicrous celebrity culture. She lost—the Democrats lost, the liberals lost—to him.
”
”
Chapo Trap House (The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason)
“
In their careers, they probably work harder than most people and accomplish an incredible amount, but then come back to a voice that says, “You’re just faking, you’re a fraud, it was easy, anyone could have done that.
”
”
Jackson MacKenzie (Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse)
“
the seafood industry is rife with fraud, substitution, and adulteration. Imagine if half the time you pulled into a gas station you were filling your tank with dirty water instead of gasoline. That’s the story with seafood.
”
”
Larry Olmsted (Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It)
“
We create fake confidence for the same reason we build fake self-esteem: to protect the sensitive parts of our ego and to hide our weaknesses and insecurities from the world for fear of being exposed as a fraud or as not good enough.
”
”
Steve Magness (Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness)
“
Yet being in the spotlight is also dangerous because a child's success may be construed by a narcissistic mother as competition. In self-defense, a son or daughter may insist that any achievement is a fluke, and any award is undeserved or is really a tribute to their mother. They suppress their own healthy narcissism to please a mother . . they believe any success is a mistake and at any moment they will be "found out" and identified as a fake or a fraud. The mind-set is, "I am succeeding because I can fake excellence, but inside I am not really worthy or not really able." Such self-effacement is common in people who are pressured to excel and also primed to assure others . . . that they are subservient and inferior.
”
”
Terri Apter (Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power)
“
Any diploma issued in the fields of Theology or Divinity isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, especially the PhD. Someone who holds a doctorate in Theology or Divinity won’t be given the time of day by a real academic. They are posers. Fakes. Academic frauds.
”
”
Al Stefanelli
“
European Union and the United States were presented as threats because Russian elections were faked. In winter 2011 and spring 2012, Russian television channels and newspapers generated the narrative that all who protested electoral fraud were paid by Western institutions.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America)
“
When I examined the brushstrokes, I saw that they were not painted on at all, but printed on with speckled relief, suggesting a hand without enacting the real. The relief "strokes" never cohered with their shades, so that a stroke would hold two, even three colors at once. A fake. A fraud. Which was why I loved it.
”
”
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
“
People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don’t see a thing.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
“
The place reeked of vice and corruption and the dregs of Parisian society in all its rottenness gathered there: cheats, conmen and cheap hacks rubbed shoulders with under-age dandies, old roués and rogues, sleazy underworld types once notorious for things best forgotten mingled with other small-time crooks and speculators, dabblers in dubious ventures, frauds, pimps, and racketeers. Cheap sex, both male and female, was on offer in this tawdry meat-market of a place where petty rivalries were exploited, and quarrels picked over nothing in an atmosphere of fake gallantry where swords or pistols at dawn settled matters of highly questionable honour in the first place.
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (A Parisian Affair and Other Stories)
“
Why do people have mid-life crises? It’s because they don’t know who they are. And suddenly they realise time is running out. They have to fight to be authentic, to be REAL. All the time, people are having breakdowns brought on by identity crises. They have lived their lives in bad faith. They have been fakes and phonies, frauds and impostors. They have impersonated human beings rather than actually being human beings. They have spent their whole lives in a state of alienation from themselves and from God. Isn’t it time we saved the human race from the controllers, the brainwashers, the identity constructors? People can never be free until they are free to become who they really are. As Nietzsche said, “We want to become those who we are – the new, the unique, the incomparable, those who impose on themselves their own law, those who create themselves!” Is that not the formula for a new, free world, a world of Supermen and Superwomen, a transformed world of individuals on the path to divinity? Revalue all values. Abolish Abrahamism. Abolish the control machine.
”
”
Adam Weishaupt (Jehovah: The First Nazi)
“
A study of New York City seafood done by scientists at nonprofit marine conservation group Oceana found fraud in 58 percent of retail outlets and 39 percent of restaurants. The one especially scary finding that would have my father turning over in his grave was that every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100 percent of them—served fake fish. Obviously,
”
”
Larry Olmsted (Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It)
“
People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don’t see a thing. Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby’s arm.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
“
The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 1975). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur.
”
”
Philip M. Coons
“
If you’ve ever signed up for a website and given a fake zip code or a fake birthday, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Any child under thirteen who visits newyorktimes.com violates their Terms of Service and is a criminal—not just in theory, but according to the working doctrine of the Department of Justice.1 The examples I’ve laid out are extreme, sure, but the laws involved are so broadly written as to ensure that, essentially, every Internet-using American is a tort-feasing felon on a lifelong spree of depraved web browsing.
”
”
Christian Rudder (Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves)
“
The Biblical writers not only had no knowledge of these things, but they had a perverted concept of life and the universe. Their concept was that man was a victim of blood pollution and his only salvation was by a blood atonement.
I remember once seeing a small pamphlet entitled, 'What the Bible Teaches about Morality.' On opening the little booklet, it was discovered to be nothing but blank pages! Another such pamphlet might very appropriately be published entitled, 'What the Bible Reveals about Disease, Medicine and Health,' and blank pages should be used for all the Bible contains about these vital subjects.
On the contrary, these benefits have been denounced by the believers in the Bible, and by the representatives of the Bible's deity as being contrary to 'God's Plan.' Does not the Bible plainly state that only by the sweat of his brow is man to labor for the bread he eats? Here is the exact Biblical quotation: 'In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread...' and why? Only because he sought knowledge.
And does not the Bible God place a curse upon man for the knowledge that has been such a solace and benefit to him? Here is another exact Biblical quotation: '... cursed be the ground for thy sake; in pain thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.'
The Bible is a lie.
It is a fake and a fraud.
I denounce this book and its God. I hold it in utter detestation.
Every man and woman who has contributed to the relief of the pain and suffering of humanity has been an infidel to the Bible God! Every new invention, every new discovery for the benefit of man violates these Biblical edicts!
I say, seek knowledge—defy this tyrant God—it is your only salvation.
”
”
Joseph Lewis (An Atheist Manifesto)
“
Putin casually accepted that there had been fraud; Medvedev helpfully added that all Russian elections had been fraudulent. By dismissing the principle of “one person, one vote” while insisting that elections would continue, Putin was disregarding the choices of citizens while expecting them to take part in future rituals of support. He thereby accepted Ilyin’s attitude to democracy, rejecting what Ilyin had called “blind faith in the number of votes and its political significance,” not only in deed but in word. A claim to power was staked: he who fakes wins.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America)
“
All terrorism is fake. It is a military deception practiced by the rich upon the poor in an ongoing class war. Their most important weapon in this class war are television presenters. The BBC has actually become The Ministry of Truth of George Orwell’s 1984….Why is this happening right now? It’s happening because we no longer have an enemy. We have an unprecedented situation in which there is only one super state: the Anglo-American alliance…..The ruling group maintain their position in society by controlling the masses through fear. In order to make us believe that we must live in fear, the rich had to provide us with a new foreign enemy, a “bogeyman” who wants to conquer the world. The moment you have a world at peace, the keystone in the arch of ruling class power is gone. Every year America’s oligarchs take three trillion dollars out of America’s economy. This is how the rich have rigged the system – so that it benefits them at the expense of everyone else all of the time. To keep this fraud going, the public must be convinced of the need for military expenditure, and this is where all of the phony terror attacks come in. Here is Orwell’s definition of totalitarianism: ‘ A society living by and for continuous warfare in which the ruling caste have ceased to have any real function but succeed in clinging to power through force and fraud.
”
”
Francis Richard Conolly
“
As I looked on, through prismatic layers of light, dry-lipped, focusing my lust and rocking slightly under my newspaper, I felt that my perception of her, if properly concentrated upon, might be sufficient to have me attain a beggar’s bliss immediately; but, like some predator that prefers a moving prey to a motionless one, I planned to have this pitiful attainment coincide with one of the various girlish movements she made now and then as she read, such as trying to scratch the middle of her back and revealing a stippled armpit—but fat Haze suddenly spoiled everything by turning to me and asking me for a light, and starting a make-believe conversation about a fake book by some popular fraud.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
“
There have been proven instances of vote fraud in the past, but those cases involved election officials’ wrongdoing or the manipulation of absentee ballots. The kind of voter registration fraud that seized the imagination of GOP activists, on the other hand, which is based on stealing someone’s identity or creating a fake persona to cast a ballot, thus altering the results of an election, is in fact very rare. The convoluted scheme is not used because “it is an exceedingly dumb strategy.”25 To have real impact would require an improbable conspiracy involving millions of people. Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network, notes, “You can’t steal an election one person at a time. You can by stuffing ballot boxes—but voter I.D.s won’t stop that.”26 Protecting
”
”
Carol Anderson (White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide)
“
RUNNING THE RACE The marathon is one of the most strenuous athletic events in sport. The Boston Marathon attracts the best runners in the world. The winner is automatically placed among the great athletes of our time. In the spring of 1980, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line. She had the laurel wreath placed on her head in a blaze of lights and cheering. She was completely unknown in the world of running. An incredible feat! Her first race a victory in the prestigious Boston Marathon! Then someone noticed her legs—loose flesh, cellulite. Questions were asked. No one had seen her along the 26.2-mile course. The truth came out: she had jumped into the race during the last mile. There was immediate and widespread interest in Rosie. Why would she do that when it was certain that she would be found out? Athletic performance cannot be faked. But she never admitted her fraud. She repeatedly said that she would run another marathon to validate her ability. Somehow she never did. People interviewed her, searching for a clue to her personality. One interviewer concluded that she really believed that she had run the complete Boston Marathon and won. She was analyzed as a sociopath. She lied convincingly and naturally with no sense of conscience, no sense of reality in terms of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior. She appeared bright, normal and intelligent. But there was no moral sense to give coherence to her social actions. In reading about Rosie I thought of all the people I know who want to get in on the finish but who cleverly arrange not to run the race. They appear in church on Sunday wreathed in smiles, entering into the celebration, but there is no personal life that leads up to it or out from it. Occasionally they engage in spectacular acts of love and compassion in public. We are impressed, but surprised, for they were never known to do that before.
”
”
Eugene H. Peterson (Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best)
“
And then he heard it. A loud crash. The Number 22 bus had pulled away from the stop, and another driver in a car trying to get around to turn had collided into the side of the transit vehicle. Finally, Daryl had the nerve to do what every like-minded criminal in Baltimore knows they must. Run and get on the bus for insurance claims. Get a “suitcase,” as some of the old-timer grifters still called phony neck injuries, marrying the word “suit” as in law with “case” as in court. “Suitcase,” the all-purpose secret word for fraud. Amazingly, his erection still held. It was a little painful going up those first bus steps, but so what, it felt even sexier doing a second scam before he’d completely gotten away with the first one. The lucky few passengers on board were already going into their cries of “whiplash,” holding their necks and moaning out loud. He limped to an empty seat and held his knee as if it had been painfully slammed in the impact. Even the bus driver was faking injuries as he called into his dispatcher to report the accident, exaggerating the speed he had been going to make it sound worse. Daryl knew he was surrounded by fellow swindlers and felt, for the first time, part of a community.
”
”
John Waters (Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance)
“
And then there were terrible things, like Alex’s assertion that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children was “completely fake … they clearly used actors.” Inspired by claims like this, Sandy Hook “truthers” had begun bombarding the parents of the murdered children with messages like: “You’re a fraud and an asshole. Rot in hell you fucking prick.” (That one had been sent to Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, died in the shooting.)
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Elephant in the Room)
“
Srivastava wrote in detail how some corrupt officers in the Income Tax Department hushed up the unpaid dues of NDTV and this started a most vicious and horrible persecution of an honest officer by the mischievous P Chidambaram. Srivastava alleged that Chidambaram hired the corrupt, shameless and immoral IRS officers [Shumana Sen, Ashima Neb, B K Jha, at all] and made them foist fake sexual harassment, sexual assault, molestation and repeated rape charges against S K Srivastava so that P Chidambaram could ease him out of service and thus save NDTV and Prannoy Roy.
”
”
Sree Iyer (NDTV Frauds V2.0 - The Real Culprit: A completely revamped version that shows the extent to which NDTV and a Cabal will stoop to hide a saga of Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Stock Manipulation.)
“
This is the USA, smile and be nice! You are in the land of fake!!!
”
”
Steven Magee
“
In an experiment, those who wore fake branded sunglasses as opposed to the real McCoy were more likely to cheat on a test and also judged others’ behavior as more unethical. “A product’s lack of authenticity may cause its owners to feel less authentic themselves,” the study’s authors wrote, “despite their belief that the product will actually have positive benefits . . . these feelings then cause them to behave dishonestly and to view other people’s behavior as more dishonest as well. In short, we suspect that feeling like a fraud makes people more likely to commit fraud.
”
”
Véronique Hyland (Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink)
“
During your childhood, as you grew up, the suspicion grew stronger in you that everyone else was initiated into some fundamental secret that remained closed to you. The others all knew what they were doing...Not until you reached college, where everyone started fresh, did you begin to pick up the tricks of winning friends and influencing people. Although you became adept, you also felt that you were exercising an acquired skill, something that came naturally to others, you succeeded in faking everyone out, and never quite lost the fear that you would eventually be discovered a fraud, an impostor in the social circle.
”
”
Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City)
“
AI will not replace you, but those using AI will - thus goes the AI commercial! Here's what'll actually happen, AI will not destroy the world, but frauds using AI will.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (The Humanitarian Dictator)
“
Tampa is now the national insurance-fraud champ. And one of the oldest but still effective methods is the Swoop-and-Squat. The scam artist targets a victim and tails him until conditions are optimal. Then he zooms past and cuts back in front of him and hits the brakes. It’s nearly impossible to avoid a rear-end crash. And under Florida law, the person in back is automatically at fault in the accident because theoretically the person in front has no control over someone following too close. If you’re lucky, they’ll just go for collision damage; if not, they’ll fake whiplash and jam you up for thousands in medical, pain and suffering . . . But I’ve developed a foolproof strategy to not only defeat this tactic, but punish the scofflaw and hopefully illuminate the error of his ways.” “He’s racing past us,” said Coleman. “The Swoop.” “Now he cutting back in. He’s hitting his brakes.” “The Squat.” Serge was already applying his own brakes. “Wow,” said Coleman. “You were right. He was trying to make us crash.” “The fucker,” said Serge. “It’s like Manson all over again.
”
”
Tim Dorsey (The Riptide Ultra-Glide (Serge Storms #16))
“
But I've learned that if you fake your death, don't come back. Not for your wife. Not for your girlfriend. Not for your kids. If you fake your death, don't do it at sea. Go for a hike. If you're interested in claiming a life insurance payout, don't get greedy. Keep the policy modest. Don't bother with a stand-in body and an elaborate funeral. Spend your time and money on obtaining quality authenticating documents. In your new life, commit to a disguise for your new identity and use your real first name. Don't google yourself and lead your hunters to your hideout. And for the love of God, don't drive if you're supposed to be dead. Ditch the car.
”
”
Elizabeth Greenwood
“
Ninety-one percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, and about half of this is farmed. Yet only one-thousandth of 1 percent of imports are inspected for seafood fraud. In addition,
”
”
Larry Olmsted (Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It)
“
What happened to the troubled young reporter who almost brought this magazine down The last time I talked to Stephen Glass, he was pleading with me on the phone to protect him from Charles Lane. Chuck, as we called him, was the editor of The New Republic and Steve was my colleague and very good friend, maybe something like a little brother, though we are only two years apart in age. Steve had a way of inspiring loyalty, not jealousy, in his fellow young writers, which was remarkable given how spectacularly successful he’d been in such a short time. While the rest of us were still scratching our way out of the intern pit, he was becoming a franchise, turning out bizarre and amazing stories week after week for The New Republic, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone— each one a home run. I didn’t know when he called me that he’d made up nearly all of the bizarre and amazing stories, that he was the perpetrator of probably the most elaborate fraud in journalistic history, that he would soon become famous on a whole new scale. I didn’t even know he had a dark side. It was the spring of 1998 and he was still just my hapless friend Steve, who padded into my office ten times a day in white socks and was more interested in alphabetizing beer than drinking it. When he called, I was in New York and I said I would come back to D.C. right away. I probably said something about Chuck like: “Fuck him. He can’t fire you. He can’t possibly think you would do that.” I was wrong, and Chuck, ever-resistant to Steve’s charms, was as right as he’d been in his life. The story was front-page news all over the world. The staff (me included) spent several weeks re-reporting all of Steve’s articles. It turned out that Steve had been making up characters, scenes, events, whole stories from first word to last. He made up some funny stuff—a convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia—and also some really awful stuff: racist cab drivers, sexist Republicans, desperate poor people calling in to a psychic hotline, career-damaging quotes about politicians. In fact, we eventually figured out that very few of his stories were completely true. Not only that, but he went to extreme lengths to hide his fabrications, filling notebooks with fake interview notes and creating fake business cards and fake voicemails. (Remember, this was before most people used Google. Plus, Steve had been the head of The New Republic ’s fact-checking department.) Once we knew what he’d done, I tried to call Steve, but he never called back. He just went missing, like the kids on the milk cartons. It was weird. People often ask me if I felt “betrayed,” but really I was deeply unsettled, like I’d woken up in the wrong room. I wondered whether Steve had lied to me about personal things, too. I wondered how, even after he’d been caught, he could bring himself to recruit me to defend him, knowing I’d be risking my job to do so. I wondered how I could spend more time with a person during the week than I spent with my husband and not suspect a thing. (And I didn’t. It came as a total surprise). And I wondered what else I didn’t know about people. Could my brother be a drug addict? Did my best friend actually hate me? Jon Chait, now a political writer for New York and back then the smart young wonk in our trio, was in Paris when the scandal broke. Overnight, Steve went from “being one of my best friends to someone I read about in The International Herald Tribune, ” Chait recalled. The transition was so abrupt that, for months, Jon dreamed that he’d run into him or that Steve wanted to talk to him. Then, after a while, the dreams stopped. The Monica Lewinsky scandal petered out, George W. Bush became president, we all got cell phones, laptops, spouses, children. Over the years, Steve Glass got mixed up in our minds with the fictionalized Stephen Glass from his own 2003 roman à clef, The Fabulist, or Steve Glass as played by Hayden Christiansen in the 2003
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Anonymous
“
FLATOW: So you would - how would you treat a patient like Sybil if she showed up in your office
BRAND: Well, first I would start with a very thorough assessment, using the current standardized measures that we have available to us that assess for the range of dissociative disorders but the whole range of other psychological disorders, too. I would need to know what I'm working with, and I'd be very careful and make my decisions slowly, based on data about what she has. And furthermore, with therapists who are well-trained in dissociative disorders, we do keep an eye open for suggestibility. But that research, too, is not anywhere near as strong as what the other two people in the interview are suggesting.It shows - for example, there's eight studies that have a total of 11 samples. In the three clinical samples that have looked at the correlation between dissociation and suggestibility, all three clinical samples found non-significant correlations. So it's just not as strong as what people think. That's a myth that's not backed up by science."
Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed' October 21, 2011 by Ira Flatow
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Bethany L. Brand
“
Fake seafood is not a Florida problem or a Massachusetts problem or a New York City problem - it is an everywhere problem. Oceana took its study national in 2013 and found that mislabeling in violation of FDA regulations was often much worse in the biggest cities. A summary released with the report noted that "Oceana found seafood fraud everywhere it tested, including mislabeling rates of 52 percent in Southern California, 49 percent in Austin and Houston, 48 percent in Boston, 39 percent in New York City, 38 percent in Northern California and South Florida, 32 percent in Chicago, 26 percent in Washington, DC, and 18 percent in Seattle."...
Dr. Warner's most recent project for Oceana was a global "study of studies," in which she and her colleagues did a comprehensive analysis of fake fish studies conducted by many different entities in different countries, including sixty-seven peer-reviewed studies, seven government reports, and twenty-three news articles. The results are pages and pages of more disturbing fraud information, but she was able to sum up the results for me in two sentences: "All studies that have investigated seafood fraud have found it. The take-home message is that anytime someone looks for mislabeling and species substitution in the marketplace, anywhere, they find it.
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Larry Olmsted (Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It)
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money make the world and your family turn
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Omar Hickman
“
Humanovator (The Sonnet)
Chatgpt pampers plagiarism,
Facebook pampers conspiracy.
More and more innovations are
becoming catalyst of catastrophe.
Note, I didn't mention the birdie,
Very mindful, very demure.
Facebook can still be repaired,
but once a MAGA, always a sewer.
Innovation that outlives its usefulness,
is no longer innovation but carnivoration.
Innovators not in touch with soil-n-roots,
are predators of the concrete jungle.
The golden age of startups is behind us,
today it's mostly filth, fraud and smut.
Amidst the crowd of trust fund termites,
be the humanovator to humanize the world.
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Abhijit Naskar (The Divine Refugee)
“
FAKE NEWS People say that heretofore I kept Black tenants from my door Using legal trickery, But fake news doesn’t bother me. They say that falsifying facts is How I skirted all my taxes. People call it larceny, But fake news doesn’t bother me. Constantly I’m found at fault, Charged with sexual assault, Harassment, and adultery, But fake news doesn’t bother me. Starving students, people say, Had their futures ripped away By Dumpty University, But fake news doesn’t bother me. They smear me with the vilest things Like payoffs for my casual flings From the campaign treasury, But fake news doesn’t bother me. People say I monetize All my presidential ties, Boosting my prosperity, But fake news doesn’t bother me. They say my meddling in Ukraine Left an ignominious stain Tantamount to treachery, But fake news doesn’t bother me. They say in days coronaviral I propelled our downward spiral Through my imbecility, But fake news doesn’t bother me. Notwithstanding crimes like these, I’ll continue as I please. Fake news doesn’t bother me. I’ll just rewrite history. Among other allegations, Donald Trump is said to have discriminated against African Americans as a New York real estate developer; committed tax fraud to avoid paying income tax on $50 million; engaged in sexual misconduct toward more than twenty-five women; endorsed Trump University’s fraudulent scheme to target the uneducated and the elderly; used the power of his office to attempt blackmail in Ukraine; and mishandled the government’s early response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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John Lithgow (Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age (Dumpty, #2))
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when the Cold War ended with the USSR, America would need a new enemy to continue to manufacture arms for, so a fake 'war on terror' would be created. When this was seen for the fraud that it is, the next step would be a False Flag event of a so-called "alien attack'', which could then keep the war machine going forever".
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J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Rise of the New World Order: The Culling of Man)
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Aside from the waste, fraud has a terribly demoralising effect on scientists. As we’ve seen, one reason that so many frauds manage to infiltrate the literature is that, in general, scientists are open-minded and trusting. The norm for peer reviewers is to be sceptical of how results are interpreted, but the thought that the data are fake usually couldn’t be further from their minds. The sheer prevalence of fraud, though, means that we all need to add a depressing option to our repertoire of reactions to questionable-looking papers: someone might be lying to us. Nor is it just other people’s papers that require this extra vigilance: fraud can happen on any scientist’s own doorstep. Because papers are rarely authored by lone researchers, a fraudulent co-author can sometimes tarnish the reputation of entire teams of innocent colleagues. In many cases the perpetrator is a junior lab member who drags their senior co-authors’ names through the mud, as in the case of Michael LaCour’s fake gay-marriage canvassing study. Sometimes it goes the other way, with established scientists recklessly jeopardising the careers of their subordinates (the report into Diederik Stapel’s fraud noted, for example, that no fewer than ten of his students’ PhD theses were reliant on his faked data). And we already saw the ultimate cost of reputational damage in the case of Yoshiki Sasai, who took his own life after finding himself involved in the STAP stem-cell scandal.
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Stuart Ritchie (Science Fictions)
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If you are going to engage in fraud with me, you should expect me to research your frauds.
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Steven Magee
“
Most days I felt like a total fraud and I was convinced it was only a matter of time before everyone figured it all out. Even on days when I did do my best work, I still felt like I was faking my way through it.
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Roz Weston (A Little Bit Broken: A Memoir)
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The dubious role of Minister P Chidambaram in persecuting an honest and upright IRS officer S K Srivastava for his efforts to enforce the law stands bare for anyone and everyone to see. The conduct of female IRS officers Shumana Sen (IRS 99005) and Ashima Neb (IRS 99010), who faked sexual harassment against S K Srivastava in lieu of money paid to them by NDTV is described in detail.
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Sree Iyer (NDTV Frauds V2.0 - The Real Culprit: A completely revamped version that shows the extent to which NDTV and a Cabal will stoop to hide a saga of Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Stock Manipulation.)
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Using unscrupulous individuals who were willing to play along for a few pieces of silver such as IRS officers Shuman Sen, Ashima Neb, B K Jha, etc., the promoters of NDTV Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy used every trick in the book to shame and put pressure on IRS Officer Srivastava. Nothing was beyond them (IRS officers) – even the fake sexual harassment charges against their own colleague (Srivastava). Worse their relatives were happy to collude – husband Abhisar Sharma (for Shumana Sen) and mother Neeta Neb for Ashima Neb.
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Sree Iyer (NDTV Frauds V2.0 - The Real Culprit: A completely revamped version that shows the extent to which NDTV and a Cabal will stoop to hide a saga of Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Stock Manipulation.)
“
the company also evaded taxes by bribing corrupt IRS officers such as Shumana Sen and Ashima Neb with active support from some others such as P K Mishra (IRS 1970), B K Jha (IRS 1983), S S Rana (IRS 1975), Prakash Chandra (IRS 1973), etc. This diabolical attempt failed despite fake suits of sexual harassment, molestation, sexual assault and repeated rapes by hired mercenaries Shumana Sen and Ashima Neb against S K Srivastava.
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Sree Iyer (NDTV Frauds V2.0 - The Real Culprit: A completely revamped version that shows the extent to which NDTV and a Cabal will stoop to hide a saga of Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Stock Manipulation.)
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We’ll need to mock up fake videos of our own, populate the web with obvious frauds, to make all versions suspect.
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Vincent H. O'Neil (A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation (The Unused Path))
“
To be yourself is the beauty of living free. When you fake being beautiful in your expressions to others, while feeling anger, resentment, or in any other way negative, you may be accepted by others, temporarily, however, once your lie is exposed, since you didn't pay enough attention to faking it all the time, no one needs to accept your fake-self, because you didn't, in the first place....
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Will Advise
“
Intent without action is the muse of those who wish to be the hero without stepping onto the battlefield.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Part of the intensity of her relief—she thought, as she walked silently by his side—was the shock of a contrast: she had seen, with the sudden, immediate vividness of sensory perception, an exact picture of what the code of self-sacrifice would have meant, if enacted by the three of them. Galt, giving up the woman he wanted, for the sake of his friend, faking his greatest feeling out of existence and himself out of her life, no matter what the cost to him and to her, then dragging the rest of his years through the waste of the unreached and unfulfilled—she, turning for consolation to a second choice, faking a love she did not feel, being willing to fake, since her will to self-deceit was the essential required for Galt’s self-sacrifice, then living out her years in hopeless longing, accepting, as relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection, plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on earth—Francisco, struggling in the elusive fog of a counterfeit reality, his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented substitute, half-charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becoming his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible to man—the three of them, who had had all the gifts of existence spread out before them, ending up as embittered hulks, who cry in despair that life is frustration—the frustration of not being able to make unreality real.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
Statement on Generative AI
Just like Artificial Intelligence as a whole, on the matter of Generative AI, the world is divided into two camps - one side is the ardent advocate, the other is the outspoken opposition. As for me, I am neither.
I don't have a problem with AI generated content, I have a problem when it's rooted in fraud and deception. In fact, AI generated content could open up new horizons of human creativity - but only if practiced with conscience. For example, we could set up a whole new genre of AI generated material in every field of human endeavor. We could have AI generated movies, alongside human movies - we could have AI generated music, alongside human music - we could have AI generated poetry and literature, alongside human poetry and literature - and so on. The possibilities are endless - and all above board. This way we make AI a positive part of human existence, rather than facilitating the obliteration of everything human about human life.
This of course brings up a rather existential question - how do we distinguish between AI generated content and human created material? Well, you can't - any more than you can tell the photoshop alterations on billboard models or good CGI effects in sci-fi movies. Therefore, that responsibility must be carried by experts, just like medical problems are handled by healthcare practitioners. Here I have two particular expertise in mind - one precautionary, the other counteractive.
Let's talk about the counteractive measure first - this duty falls upon the shoulders of journalists. Every viral content must be source-checked by responsible journalists, and declared publicly as fake, i.e. AI generated, unless recognized otherwise. Littlest of fake content can do great damage to society - therefore - journalists, stand guard!
Now comes the precautionary part. Precaution against AI generated content must be borne by the makers of AI, i.e. the developers. No AI model must produce any material without some form of digital signature embedded in them, that effectively makes the distinction between AI generated content and human material mainstream. If developers fail to stand accountable out of their own free will, they must be held accountable legally.
On this point, to the nations of the world I say, you can't expect backward governments like our United States to take the first step - where guns get priority over children - therefore, my brave and civilized nations of the world - you gotta set the precedent on holding tech giants accountable - without depending on morally bankrupt democratic imperialists. And remember, the idea is not to ban innovation, but to adapt it with human welfare.
All said and done, the final responsibility falls upon just one person, and one person alone - the everyday ordinary consumer. Your mind has no reason to not believe the things you find on the internet, unless you make it a habit to actively question everything - or at least, not accept anything at face value. Remember this. Just because it's viral, doesn't make it true. Just because it's popular, doesn't make it right.
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Abhijit Naskar (Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One)
“
Look. The rule of you staying in this flat is, don’t ask Jule a million questions about Immie’s private life. Or about Jule’s private life. Then we can get along. All right?” Forrest sputtered. “The rule of this flat? What are you talking about, the rule of this flat?” “Every place has rules. What you do when you come into a new place is, you figure them out. Like when you’re a guest, you learn the codes of behavior and adapt. Yes?” “Maybe that’s what you do.” “That’s what everyone does. You work out how loud you can talk, how you can sit, what things are okay to say and what’s rude. It’s called being a human in society.” “Nah.” Forrest crossed his legs in a leisurely fashion. “I’m not that fake. I just do what feels right to me. And you know what? It’s never been a problem, until now.” “Because you’re you.” “What does that mean?” “You’re a guy. You come from money, you’re white, you have really good teeth, you graduated from Yale, the list goes on.” “So?” “Other people adapt to you, asshole. You think there’s no adapting going on, but you’re fucking blind, Forrest. It’s all around you, all the time.
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E. Lockhart (Genuine Fraud)
“
if the portrait is fake, Jonson’s poem iconoclastic, and the Heminges-Condell letters unreliable, then the whole Folio presentation starts to look like a fraud.
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”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
They detect 'criminals' by reading thoughts, substances and movements. Mafias create fake situations accessing the mind just before sleep and the body through shooting the feet with secret weapons. A paid actor wrongly accuses.
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Maria Karvouni (You Are Always Innocent)
“
You know you began to hate liars, but like the rest you can’t remember when that began, either. You know only that you hate liars, you hate cheaters, you hate swindlers and fakes and frauds.
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D. Foy (Patricide)
“
The Apprentice conditioned Americans to accept fraud as entertainment, to expect the reputational rehab of ruined celebrities, and to not consider that behind the fakeness of the show lay something very dark and real. In 2015, after Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, NBC canceled The Apprentice on moral grounds. Freed from his contract, Trump continued his reality show through cable news, which lacked the fleeting fortitude of NBC. In the end, The Apprentice canceled America.
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Sarah Kendzior (Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America)
“
All social media platforms are built to reward one of the most sneaky parts of the human mind: the ego.
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Trey Ratcliff (Under the Influence - How to Fake Your Way into Getting Rich on Instagram: Influencer Fraud, Selfies, Anxiety, Ego, and Mass Delusional Behavior)
“
FRAUD! STOLE MY BOOK and BADLY TRANSLATED IT! FAKE! DO NOT BUY PERSIAN EDITION OR ANYTHING FROM THIS PERSON! COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! FRAUD!!!! YOU RUINED MY BOOK FOR A YEAR NOW!
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نجمه سالاری
“
Silicon Valley, though, has a complicated relationship with “fake demos.
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Dan Davies (Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World)
“
At the time, casting Trump as host was seen as a huge gamble. He had been labeled a “D-lister”—someone who lost all his money, a clownlike figure who couldn’t be taken seriously. Supervising editor of The Apprentice Jonathon Braun told the New Yorker, “We knew Trump was a fake… but we made him out to be the most important person in the world, making the court jester the king.
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Steven Hassan (The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control)
“
5 Thumb Rules to Follow for Outsourcing 3D Character.
Outsourcing has become one of the basic requirements of the digital industry. Be it software, websites, architecture rendering or 3D character modelling, companies look forward to outsource these tasks to reliable names. Reason is simple. When it comes to value for money, 3D Art Outsourcing Service stands to be the most viable option as setting up in-house production often isn’t considered a wise ROI choice.
But, this necessity has also given rise to possible frauds. There are countless companies waiting to gulp your money in the blink of an eye. There are many more who are ready to lure you with lucrative offers when it comes to 3D character modelling concept. Since not everyone is familiar with the technicalities of this field, companies can easily get trapped with fake promises of giving top notch services well within their reach, only to find out that the whole thing was neither worth their time nor money.
However, all the sham can be avoided if companies follow the six thumb rules while Game outsourcing character modelling tasks to animation studios as these will lead them to the right names.
1) Take a Tour of the Website
Although you will find expert comments on not to judge a company by its cover, there is no denying the fact that website plays a decisive role in company’s credibility, especially when it comes to art and animation studios. A studio that claims to offer you state-of-art results must first focus on its own. A clean, crisp website with appropriate content can actually say a lot about the studio’s work. A poor design and inappropriate content often indicate the following things:
- Outdated and poorly maintained
- Negligence towards its virtual presentation
- Unprofessionalism
- Poor marketing
A sincere design and animation studio will indeed feature a vibrant website with all its details properly included.
2) Location Matters
Location has a huge impact on hiring charges as it largely decides the price range one can expect. If you are looking forward to countries like India, you expect the range to be well within your budget chiefly because such countries have immense talent, but because of the increasing demand and competition in the field of outsourcing, hiring charges are relatively cheaper than countries like UK or USA. This means that once can get desired expertise without spending a fortune.
3) Know Your Team Inside Out
Since you will be spending your hard earned money, you have every right to know the ins and outs of your team. Getting to know the team can assist you in your decision. Do your part of homework and be ready with your queries. Starting from their names to their works, check everything you can, and if need be, go for one-to-one conversation.
This will not only help you to know them better, but will also give you an idea of their communication, their knowledge about their work and their sincerity. A dedicated one will always answer you up to the point while a confused one with fidget with words or beat around the bush.
4) Don’t Miss Out on the Portfolio
While the website of a studio is its virtual representative, it’s the portfolio which speaks about its execution. Reputed names of 3D modelling and design companies house excellent projects ranging from simple to complex ones. A solid portfolio indicates:
- commitment of the studio towards its projects
- competency of its team
- execution and precision
- status of its expertise
Apart from the portfolio, some animation studios even feature case studies and white papers in their websites which indicate their level of transparency. Make sure to go through all of them.
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Game Yan
“
There are many things that are fake in the USA, including many aspects of the corrupt corporate controlled government.
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Steven Magee
“
We’re afraid others will see our flaws, weaknesses and insecurities. We’re afraid if others really knew us, they would reject us. We feel like fakes and frauds in a world that seems to have it all together.
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Dave Earley
“
You know only that you hate liars, you hate cheaters, you hate swindlers and fakes and frauds.
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D. Foy (Patricide)
“
You can’t remember the last time you met someone who wasn’t a fake or fraud. You can’t remember the last time you felt what people call “trust.
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D. Foy (Patricide)
“
Always show me the real Gabriel from now on. No more Fraud. No more fake bullshit. I don’t care what you show other people, but you better be real with me.
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Lily White (Fraud (Antihero Inferno, #2))
“
In all of our souls, pray the awful parts call out for solace - the false and the faults, the fears and the flaws, the 'F's and the fouls, the fakes and the frauds - now facing facades, these aches will fall off; they'll break while they crawl: ailments from failures, preyed once and for all.
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Criss Jami
“
Eventually, seven independent inquiries exonerated the climate scientists, finding nothing in the e-mails to discredit their work or the larger consensus on global warming. In the meantime, though, Michael Mann’s life, along with the environmental movement, was plunged into turmoil. Mann was among the scientists most roiled by the mysterious hacking incident. Four words in the purloined e-mails were seized upon as evidence that he was a fraud. In describing his research, his colleagues had praised his use of a “trick” that had helped him “hide the decline.” Mann’s detractors leaped to the conclusion that these words proved that his research was just a “trick” to fool the public and that he had deliberately hidden an actual “decline” in twentieth-century temperatures in order to fake evidence of global warming. The facts, when fully understood, were very different. It was a British colleague, not Mann, who had written the ostensibly damning words, and when examined in context, they were utterly mundane. The “trick” referred to was just a clever technique Mann had devised in order to provide a backup data set. The “decline” in question was a reference to a decline in available information from certain kinds of tree rings after 1961, which had made it hard to have a consistent set of data. Another scientist, not Mann, had found an alternative source of data to compensate for this problem, which was what was meant by “hide the decline.” The only genuinely negative disclosure from the e-mails was that Mann and the other climatologists had agreed among themselves to withhold, rather than share, their research with some of their critics, whom they disparaged. Given the harassment they had been subjected to, their reasoning was understandable, but it violated the customary transparency expected within the scientific community. Other than that, the “Climategate” scandal was, in other words, not one.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
Nora felt something inside her all at once. A kind of fear, as real as the fear she had felt on the Arctic skerry, face to face with the polar bear.
A fear of what she was feeling.
Love.
You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.
And when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn't wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through.
Yet there, right there in that garden of Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall.
And yet she sensed deep down that it would all come to an end, soon. She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn't be fixed because the flaw was the righteousness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn't earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn't own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud. She wanted this to be her life. As in her real life. And it wasn't and she just wished she could forget that fact. She really did.
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Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
I think everyone’s a fraud,” she said. Blair blinked. “What do you mean?” “Everyone’s just faking it. Look at the prime minister. Faking it. Look at people who are in charge of things. Faking it, faking it, faking it. Of course you’re faking it. I’m faking it. I don’t know how to run a bookshop. Not the faintest clue. Mr. McCredie doesn’t either. ‘Faking it’ is just another term for being a grown-up. So . . .
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Jenny Colgan (The Christmas Bookshop (The Christmas Bookshop, #1))