Bullshyt : the religion of the 21st Century
Yeah man, the insolent poison is back to mess with you once again.
Today, we’re diving into yet another massive plague of our era—one that concerns way more people than just those dumb Gen Z debates about whether guys and girls can be friends. We're tackling something that drives me insane, so yeah, plug in your brain—and your sense of humor while you're at it. Even though truth and mischief in my articles are separate entities, they go hand in hand when delivered by a masterful hand—mine, of course. I already know this won’t sit well with a lot of people because too many have had their minds lobotomized by this new doctrine—hazy yet widespread.
Let’s talk about... bullshit.
Yep, bullshit—that way of acting, as empty as it is pompous. That lifestyle everyone has convinced themselves is how life should be lived. That pile of garbage that, over the years, has crept into our daily lives so much that people can no longer function without feeding their ego with pre-packaged assertions, utterly useless anecdotes, or inauthentic photos. Whether they truly believe in it or not, it’s a silent yet powerful comedy—so powerful that we might as well elevate it to the rank of the fourth monotheistic religion.
Admit it—you’re shook. You’re already tempted to slide into my DMs and cry about it. But deep down, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and you probably feel somewhat called out. I get it. I’m here to bring back your authenticity—but phrased in a way that won’t get me sued.
Let’s get a little serious and ask ourselves some real questions: when did this wave of inauthenticity start swallowing our lives? And more importantly, how?
Because bro, let’s be real… we didn’t just fall into bullshit overnight. It didn’t take over in one sudden wave like some passing trend. No, it’s worse. It was a slow, creeping evolution—a virus that wormed its way into every corner of our interactions, ambitions, and even our thoughts.
And maybe now you’re thinking: "Oh come on, Wilou, you’re exaggerating. It’s just harmless talk." Or maybe, "People can say and think whatever they want."
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Because bullshit isn’t just empty words. It’s a new social norm that rewards appearance over substance, pretense over authenticity. And this crap is so deeply ingrained in our society that we don’t even question it anymore. That’s why I call it a dogma.
But hold on—what exactly is bullshit?
It’s that way of speaking that sounds smart but means absolutely nothing. It’s that Insta coach telling you that "success is just about stepping out of your comfort zone"—without ever explaining how. It’s your coworkers desperately trying to get noticed on the company intranet. Even better, it’s those business school kids going full corporate on LinkedIn every chance they get—always grandiose, always convinced they’re the next business moguls. In reality, they’re either hardcore party animals or not nearly as smart as they pretend to be.
We always hear success stories from business schools, but the harsh truth? The overwhelming majority couldn’t build a business from scratch or make real money if their life depended on it. They get stuffed with vague concepts—marketing, negotiation—while having their egos inflated, and suddenly, they think they’re unstoppable. But in the end, they’re just being conditioned to accept their 2.0 wage slavery once they graduate.
And bullshit? It’s also that girl flooding Insta with inspirational quotes while her life is a complete dumpster fire. She just wants people to think she’s got it all figured out when, in reality, she’s drowning.
But we’ll get back to our education system and career paths—in a more nuanced way—in another article.
The problem is, the more we swim in bullshit, the more we consume it, the more we get used to it… until the line between authenticity and bullshit vanishes completely.
So, how did we get here?
And more importantly—is there a way out?
1) The Age of Image and Emptiness
I don’t think I’m teaching you anything new here: our era is obsessed with image, appearances, and self-staging. Whether it’s through our looks, our actions, or simply through eikona—the Greek word for public image—everything is about appearing, not necessarily being. Suggesting, through your appearance, a near-perfection or a fake sincerity, without dealing with the weight that real sincerity requires. Everything must seem polished, thought-out, coherent. Doubt, failure, approximation? Forgotten, masked under well-placed filters and carefully crafted posts.
Social media has accelerated this trend, making us more slaves to it than actual actors. The goal today is no longer to build an identity but to market it. People don’t try to be someone anymore; they try to sell someone. And if you want to sell, you have to package yourself in a pretty box with an empty but seductive promise.
LinkedIn Gurus and the "Hustle Mindset"
One of the biggest examples of this phenomenon? These LinkedIn Gurus preaching that you need to "work hard," "sacrifice your nights out," and "step out of your comfort zone" to succeed. Of course, they never explain how. Most of them have never built a viable business, but their business is precisely to make you think they know how to build one.
Their strategy is simple: flood your feed with pseudo-inspirational punchlines, sell you an ebook or a scammy course, and capitalize on your insecurities. Empty content is their business model, and their lack of real expertise is disguised by a thick layer of charisma and storytelling.
The "Mindset" in the Workplace: A Smokescreen
The bullshit doesn’t stop at social media—it seeps into the professional world, too. Colleagues and especially higher-ups throw around the word mindset like it’s some magic spell. But when it comes to actually helping, teaching a skill, or guiding a project? Gone. Their role is limited to spitting out clichés like "You need to be proactive," or "It’s all about attitude and engagement" in meetings, without ever giving clear directives.
Modern management has turned into a contest of empty quotes, where leadership is confused with language manipulation. And don’t get me started on internal communication systems. People flood the channels all day with emojis and fluffy corporate jargon—colorful language meant to mask the lack of depth and real impact.
The worst part? This behavior is rewarded. In the corporate world, it’s often not the best worker who climbs the ladder, but the one who talks best about their work. Appearance crushes substance, and actual efficiency comes second to the ability to "sell yourself" and "pitch ideas."
The Illusion of Elitism in Business Schools
Same story with students, especially in business schools, where everyone plays a giant role-playing game. And bro, sis, I went through classe préparatoire and grandes écoles, so I know exactly what I’m talking about.
On one side, you’ve got students juggling between their student associations (like Student Council), their parties, and their prestigious internships they secretly hate. On the other side, you’ve got the image they try to project: future ultra-competent leaders, destined for brilliant careers, LinkedIn children in training—or should I say, in formatting.
The reality? The vast majority of these students wouldn’t know how to build a profitable business from scratch. Why? Because they’re taught to manage a company’s image before they’re even taught to create one.
The irony? The ones who actually succeed in entrepreneurship are often those who left the system to figure things out on their own. Look at me—I spend my time writing provocative articles instead of flexing a degree from SKEMA Business School, a school I dropped out of.
By the time I was a broke teenager, I was already obsessed with figuring out how I could express myself, reach people, and monetize my skills. My activity isn’t a powerhouse yet, but spending years lurking on free trials of website editors, watching endless YouTube tutorials, failing, retrying, and iterating—that’s what allowed me to build this site that actually holds up today.
I taught myself how to:
Buy and connect a domain name,
Link it to a website and my email system,
Format eBooks and create my own designs,
Set up email campaigns and automate responses,
Code just enough to tweak the site’s appearance and functionality,
Optimize for SEO,
Connect the site to social media,
And, of course, handle all the legal and financial aspects of running a business (shoutout to my freelancing gigs that helped with that, too).
Basically, since I was 16-17, I’ve earned a Master’s in Self-Entrepreneurship & Solo Business Operations. Not entrepreneurship—because real entrepreneurship comes with other constraints (I studied law, too). This is an activity I built from nothing, with my own hands, from its core to its presentation. It came from a desire to reach others and break free from these empty, pompous creation models.
Meanwhile, the majority are formatted to become docile employees, wrapped in a sense of superiority based on… thin air. If you’ve got your brain turned on, you already know I’m not critiquing “stable jobs”—society and daily human life need some kind of structure (I always have to spell it out for some people).
PS: Entrepreneur tip—when you come up with a business name, buy the domain first. If you’re not online, you don’t exist. Forget the logo—look at me, I don’t even have one. Just a few banners as visual markers.
Politicians and Their Mastery of Bullshit
And what about politicians? They’ve turned bullshit into an art form. Their ability to talk in circles without ever saying anything is fascinating. They have an unmatched talent for stringing together words without making a single clear statement. They can talk for an hour about a subject, and by the end, no one actually knows what their plan is.
Why does it work? Because most people mistake complexity for intelligence. The vaguer a speech is, the deeper it seems. Speaking in broad, ambiguous terms prevents contradiction and gives an illusion of control—even when there is none. As a result, politics has become a spectacle where eloquence has replaced competence.
Influencers and the Illusion of Happiness
Finally, you can’t talk about the Age of Image and Emptiness without mentioning influencers—the people who understand better than anyone that what sells best is illusion. Everything is scripted, filtered, exaggerated.
Some create ultra-marketed personas tailored to a specific audience, even if it means lying about who they really are. Others flood Instagram with inspirational quotes while their real lives are a chaotic mess. Their goal isn’t to be happy—it’s to make you believe they are. And, more importantly, to make you feel like you’re not. Because as long as you feel a void, you’ll keep consuming their products, their advice, their content.
The saddest part? It’s not just influencers playing this game. We’re all becoming our own influencers. We stage our lives to make them seem more interesting, more successful, more controlled than they really are. We curate our best moments, polish reality, and as long as it impresses, it doesn’t matter if it’s true.
A Gilded Cage
We live in a time where image trumps reality, communication replaces authenticity, and bullshit has become a social norm. People don’t talk about what they do anymore; they talk about how they sell it. The illusion of competence is enough to fool people, and the illusion of success is enough to convince them.
But this game has a cost: it makes everyone miserable. Deep down, we all know this illusion is fragile, that the image we project is often far from who we really are. We become actors forced to play a role we don’t enjoy, but can’t quit—because losing face is worse than being unhappy.
So, what now? Keep playing, hoping everyone will eventually get tired of the act? Or step out, even if it makes us seem “less impressive” to others?
Bullshit has taken over because it serves a purpose: existing in a world where perceived value is more important than real value.
And that’s where your modern-day prophets come in—the self-help industry, preying on this insecurity… And from here, things only get worse.
2) Personal Development: The Prophet of Modern Times
Yeah, you read that right… Did you really think I was going to be gentle? Get out of here—this isn’t Montessori. You’re in Wilou’s space, not some fool’s paradise. Let me be blunt and blasphemous: personal development is to bullshit what prophets are to monotheism. Got it now? Good.
You’re probably wondering how I can mention such serious things while sounding like a teenager deliberately provoking people… But I’m also sure you don’t quite know how to respond, because deep down, you sense there’s more nuance and depth to my thinking than it seems. Beyond my provocative phrasing, I have more style than some whiny Twitter kid, and between us, you’re as eager to read me as you are unable to refute me—because, in your heart, there’s a part of you that knows I’m at least somewhat right.
I don’t bring up "personal development" for no reason, and certainly not in such a way by accident. You know as well as I do how much this absurdity has taken over our lives. If bullshit were a ruling entity, then personal development would be its spokesperson, its executive branch, its prime minister. You already know that all the empty quotes and phony behaviors people engage in stem from personal development and its self-proclaimed pastors and imams.
More and more vague advice, more and more empty, self-centered theories, a culture of me designed to feed your vanity rather than serve your true self—a masquerade that has numbed everyone’s critical thinking and replaced the very essence of humanity, free thought, with a new norm: the transgression of thought itself. That’s how we’ve ended up as modern slaves to an empty-headed ideology.
If bullshit is about making yourself look good in front of others, personal development provides the form and the methods—while also trying to convince yourself that you possess some kind of inner divinity. Yeah, little soul, you already know you’ve heard or read this kind of rhetoric before, and that is the core of the problem. Don’t you see where I’m going with this?
Let me break it down for you.
The Order as trenscendental rule
In the beginning, order already existed in the world. Order was part of the world—it was the world. In the beginning, humans existed within the world’s natural order. Through this order, humans accomplished everything, and nothing was done without it. In this world, there is life, and life is the light of this perfectly ordered world—a world where men once studied nature, science, and wisdom. Order reigns in the world and among most humans, though not all make good use of it.
This passage, which sounds like the first paragraph of the Holy Bible, is here to remind you that there have always been forces greater than us. The first of these forces is the cosmos, which means both “order” and “universe.” In this sense, we know that Greek philosophers—literally “lovers of wisdom”—especially the Stoics, aligned their reasoning with that of the world, acknowledging a universal order they could never surpass or control.
If you engage at least two of your 86 billion neurons, you quickly realize that the world existed long before us and will continue to exist long after us. Nature is perfect, and resisting it is pointless. Bro, the Earth wiped out the dinosaurs—you really think we are going to change anything about it? Wake up, please.
From Philosophy to Religion*
After the age of philosophy came the age of the divine—religion. Etymologically speaking, the word "religion" comes from Latin and can mean both to gather (as in an orphanage within a church) and to connect, like devout practitioners do. Whether polytheistic or monotheistic, it doesn’t matter. Religion, once again, maintains harmony among humans because it is an intersubjective belief strong enough to connect (I’m not making this up) enough people to regulate the daily life of humanity.
*of course title is what it is, but doesn’t implies that philosophy has stopped existing since then. just a transition to another major connection and wisdom-reach-to mean
It doesn’t even matter whether it’s true—that’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. That’s why we call it a belief and not knowledge. Inside the system, for a believer, it’s all true—because religion is dogmatic, and its teachings are not up for debate. But those with their brains switched on understand that it’s a framework they choose to believe in, without necessarily trying to impose it on others.
The point is, religion itself is not an absolute truth; it’s simply a powerful fiction that connects people and guides them toward virtue—flaws and all. That’s why I respect believers who fully commit to their faith, even though I don’t personally subscribe to it. It pushes them toward excellence as human beings, and no matter what people say, its ultimate goal is peace among humans.
If you’ve read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and thus, like me, have lost faith in humanity, you know what I’m talking about. And for believers or otherwise reasonable people, none of this should be surprising.
For the rest of you, let me simplify things even further: your money works exactly like religion. It exists only because it "connects human will." And here, I’m quoting Ryusui, the multi-billionaire navigator from Dr. Stone. In this sense, those virtual numbers in your bank account and that piece of paper in your pocket are just fictions that connect us—just like religious practices, which provide their own benefits and privileges.
And before you even try to argue, let’s be clear: just because we have materialized this belief in money doesn’t mean it’s real in any objective sense. Come on, you can see it follows the exact same principle as religious practices—the wine isn’t actually Jesus’ blood, but to a believer, it is. Hand a monkey a €20 bill and see how much it cares… Got it now?
And with today’s digital banking, virtual funds, and cryptocurrencies, money is more fictional than ever—so please, don’t even try to argue on this one.
But notice how this passage was longer than the one about the order of the world? That’s because it’s more relevant to your imagination.
The Evolution of Thought and the Rise of Personal Development
Over time, ideologies have evolved—through the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and now modern trends like personal development and wokeness. These intellectual movements were meant to liberate us, to expand our capacity for thought. But let’s be honest, that hasn’t always worked out for the best.
And that’s where I leave you hanging, my dear reader, as we dive deeper into the self-help scam—the illusion that’s been selling you the idea that you are the center of the universe, that you can control everything, that you are some kind of untapped divinity… while in reality, you’re just another product of the system.
Nowadays, everyone thinks for themselves. Between capitalism and its culture of immediacy, and ever-more individualistic ideologies, our world is going downhill. We used to have arranged marriages—when they weren’t forced, they carried values like family, commitment, and respect, things we don’t see at all anymore. Now, it’s "I’m getting married for me and for the cameras," and at the first argument, boom—off goes the ring… Instead of involving families, who have known each partner since birth and could help mediate disputes, no, we divorce under increasingly selfish conditions… Whatever happened to "for better or for worse"?
Today, we lack both common sense and responsibility. We used to have school for education and libraries for knowledge; now, the world is full of private institutions. We used to have school cafeterias and sports clubs; now, it’s personal chefs and private coaches—no need to socialize over shared activities or meals. The irony, considering that we ourselves turned eating—a basic need—into a social activity. And finally, we used to have religions and gods… Now, what’s slowly taking over our lives? The inner god.
Yes, this individualization of existence is chilling, and the fact that people are completely indifferent to it—or worse, fervently embracing it—is even more terrifying. We no longer live among others, with them and for interaction, but for ourselves alone. And this massive individualization of our lifestyles, this deliberate isolation and indifference to our surroundings, is precisely why our world is turning into a catastrophe, a mess, anarchy. And to make matters worse, personal development and its religiously preached words from its “coaches” are sucking neo-believers into the black hole of humanity.
These so-called “coaches”—with their sneaky little tricks and borderline occult rituals—promise, in theory (and only in theory), to help you improve your life, no matter who you are or what situation you’re in. But in reality? They’re just preying on your emotional imbalance, exploiting your vulnerability to fatten their wallets. Trust me, a self-help coach couldn’t care less about your physical or emotional well-being.
And yet, self-help has been completely normalized. Why? Because it gives you a quick, effortless, temporary sense of relief. Yeah, you’ve read that line before. And no, that’s not a coincidence.
Self-help is nothing more than a massive farce, orchestrated by the 21st-century gurus and quietly accepted by the mainstream narrative—almost like a new branch of everyday life, complete with its own “majors” and “electives.” Each practice is more hollow than the last. Though, I have to admit, they all share one particular talent: pissing me off like nothing else.
Let’s list a few, shall we?
“Self-work”—which really just means sit there and overanalyze yourself into paralysis.
“Acceptance”—aka settling for mediocrity while calling it enlightenment.
“Living in the moment”—translation: ignore reality, make impulsive choices, and call it wisdom.
“Mindset”—that buzzword so vague it’s basically a placebo.
And finally, the absolute king of bullshit: “Gratitude and manifestation”.
Because apparently, being grateful is now a full-time job. Like, you have to feel grateful—even if you don’t actually believe it—just to feel okay? And no, we’re not talking about reflecting on past experiences and learning from them. No, no, we’re talking about writing down some meaningless, forced thank-you notes, repeating empty affirmations, and pretending it’s all real. Why? Because verbalizing an illusion somehow makes it true? Because jotting down some generic “I am grateful for the sun today” nonsense magically turns you into a beacon of wisdom? Yeah, miss me with that. We’re not talking about genuine gratitude—like reflecting on something meaningful that happened in your life, something that actually shaped you. Nope. We’re talking about writing down some half-assed thank-you notes that you don’t believe in for a single damn second.
Because apparently, saying it out loud and putting it on paper is supposed to make it real? Nah. It’s just another fake-ass ritual—another mental placebo designed to keep you acting instead of thinking. A perfect little puppet, mindlessly going through the motions.
Look, I won’t drag this out. I’ve already shattered your fragile self-help bubble enough in one paragraph. And besides, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Because if you’re the sheep, then it’s time to talk about the shepherds.
Oh yeah. I’m absolutely coming for those pompous frauds who call themselves “coaches” and “masterclass” instructors.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate how ridiculous that is. Masterclass. You know what that word actually means? “The class of a master.” Already, we’ve got a problem. Just look at their job titles versus what they actually do—there’s zero consistency. They don’t even know how to define themselves. But hey, not surprising in an era where people struggle to define their own gender. (Don’t worry, I’ll be tackling that little societal phenomenon in another article.)
Now, let’s get into the self-help coach—damn, even typing those words makes my fingers itch.
It’s usually some guy in his 40s or 50s who’s seen the light. You know the type. Just an average dude, nothing particularly remarkable about him. No outstanding qualities, no deep clarity of thought—just a guy who maybe did slightly better than others in a particular subject, or had a hobby he liked but never really pursued seriously. Then, somewhere mid-career, after years of going through the motions (yes, that train metaphor is intentional), he suddenly wakes up.
And what does he do? He drops everything. Starts dedicating more time to his hobbies, his health, and—most importantly—he decides to restart his career in something he’s “truly passionate about”.
Now, on paper, this could be a noble realization. I mean, recognizing that the whole school-to-job pipeline is just mass brainwashing? Fair point.
But explain this to me—why does it always lead to self-help coaching? Like, what, they woke up one morning and thought, “Alright, time to start giving people life lessons and telling my story”?
First of all, how insanely arrogant do you have to be to suddenly decide you’re qualified to teach people how to live? You want to educate people? Then study, take exams, and become a real teacher. Or, I don’t know, at least master a real skill before you start preaching about it.
And second, let’s talk about the storytelling and the quality of their advice—because, let’s be real, it’s absolute garbage.
Over-the-top, prepackaged motivational speeches. Grandiose calls to action. All sprinkled with just enough pop culture references to seem credible. Their conferences—wait, scratch that—their shitty 2.0 church services are devoured by self-help fanatics like it’s the elixir of a brand new life.
Whether it’s about getting out of your emotional distress, making friends, or building a successful business, the personal development coach always has an answer for everything. And of course, the results are supposed to be immediate—or almost. I mean, come on, it can't be too easy either, or else the scam would be too obvious... But rest assured, there’s no way they’re letting the audience doubt the miracle methods for even a second. (Morning routine, anyone?) And yeah, these processes always come with their fancy little names : “miracle morning ; atomic habits ; the 7 habits of effective people ; encore 12 rules for life…” as if life was ruled by only 12 statements or the 12 of them were the only we need… Seriously, get a grip.
First of all, how can we even legitimize personal development coaches and their so-called advice? I mean, we live in a constantly evolving world, every one of us is different, so how can words that sound like they were spit out of a "dumb idea generator" possibly apply to everyone and yield instant results on such a massive scale?
Personal development is fundamentally absurd by its very name: you can’t apply something personal to humanity as a whole. It directly contradicts the universal principles of the world that I laid out in my previous article—what is singular can never be universal at the same time. I didn’t even need to write a dissertation for that conclusion; it’s pure mathematics. And once again, see how philosophy and mathematics keep coming back, even though I wasn’t even planning on it? That’s the thing—when the truth imposes itself, it writes itself…
(Normally, the neuron-activated readers just said period in their heads.)
So you get it now: such nonsense can’t 1) apply to everyone and 2) produce immediate and long-term results at the same time.
Another truth that personal development fanatics don’t like: you need time. And here, we hit the very heart of personal development’s biggest lie. The truth is, you can’t change overnight. You can’t bypass the principle of metamorphosis. You can’t escape the reality of time.
But in today’s world, as I briefly mentioned earlier—and largely thanks to capitalism—we’re completely disconnected from time. The notion of time, along with the unshakable principle that effort multiplied by patience leads to success, is nothing but a relic of the past, a fading memory with each passing day. And yet, the saying is still crystal clear: Rome wasn’t built in a day.
A caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly in an instant. A sequoia doesn’t reach its towering height with the flick of a magic wand. And you, an ordinary human, can’t escape this universal law: growth and progress take time, demand effort, and require monumental patience.
In our culture of instant gratification, we believe that the fastest results are the best ones. We want to consume everything, acquire everything immediately, just to satisfy an ego too weak to withstand, as the French saying goes, the test of time.
Go talk to a craftsman and ask how they got where they are. Research how medieval cathedrals or the Egyptian pyramids were built. Ask a chess champion how they became the king of the game. The answers will always be the same: it took time, patience, and insane effort. The most remarkable achievements in life are the result of repeated actions and deep study over a long period, allowing for a full understanding of all the details and nuances.
Of course, those with their brains turned on already know that I’m speaking in general terms.
By now, I think you see exactly what’s wrong with personal development, even without me diving into the dumb self-help books, the cult-like brainwashing courses, or the motivational seminars, aka pilgrimages 2.0.
Personal development is the #1 breeding ground for self-worship and the toxic culture of instant gratification. And this illusion of the present moment is deeply misleading.
That’s it for me on this topic. Yeah, I know—I just obliterated your ego. That was the goal.
With my usual provocative tone in this Pause Café section, my natural arrogance (which, for once, is fully justified by today’s topic), and a level of insolence that I fully embraced, I hope I brought you back a little closer to your authentic self.
I don’t pretend to be better than anyone else. (I just know I am—except when I pretend to be humble.)
I also don’t want you ruining your life by following a mindset that’s more about flexing in a vanity contest than about your actual impact within a social circle. This article—as provocative and critical as it is—fits perfectly within the spirit of this Pause Café section: being together, keeping it real, chilling, and having a good time.
We’re not those people flexing their MacBooks at Starbucks. No. Most students don’t even need a Mac, and Starbucks is just for clout—it’s anything but coffee. If you want to study, go to a library. Here, we’re here to vibe, laugh at everything, and never take ourselves too seriously.
That is what I call being real.
I want us to create memories, so that on our deathbeds, we’ll be glad we clowned on each other, whether it was here in Pause Café or in my future Wilou’s café—yes, the one I’m gonna open one day.
So stop the nonsense. Get all that sneaky self-help garbage out of your head and come eat some candy. It’ll rot your teeth, sure, but at least it’ll actually make you happy.
I hope you’ve snapped back to your normal state now. No need to thank me—I’m just doing my job.
Take care of yourself, and be in top shape for the next article. As always, it won’t be for everyone—some people are too bullshit-washed to get it.
Until then, stay safe. And for real this time—quit that crap once and for all.
Luv.
