The Dirty Word We Secretly Love

Bullshit occupies a strange and magical place in our culture. Depending on the setting, it's considered inappropriate, impolite, vulgar, and offensive while at other times insightful, funny, or profound. Whether it unites us or offends us, its power is embedded in our national psyche. Despite all the handwringing over its supposed indecency, we all know and use the word far more than we'll ever admit.

Grandmothers, teachers, and preachers alike use it. Maybe not publicly, maybe not from pulpits or classrooms, but privately to be sure. Everyone understands that the word no longer refers to either bulls or excrement. So, let's dispense with the pretense.

Bullshit is as common as dirt. Let's bring it up from the ditch, out of the closet, and admit our love for the word.

Bullshit is as common as dirt.

A Dirt Farmer

What Bullshit Actually Is

The dismissive types among us think bullshit is a throwaway word meaning nonsense. That view is stuck in the past. Princeton moral philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt, whose famous essay On Bullshit became an unlikely bestseller, offered several insights: a liar knows the truth and deliberately conceals it; one who tells the truth strives to describe reality accurately; to a bullshitter whether a statement is true or false is simply irrelevant.

Professor Frankfurt believed that producing bullshit requires no particular conviction about reality at all. No measure of accuracy mattered, only the impact of the statement. That's why bullshit occupies a unique category of speech somewhere between truth and lies. It is language detached from any obligation to either. And once you understand that distinction, you begin to see bullshit everywhere.

The Bullshit Detector

One of the remarkable things about bullshit is how easy it is to identify. We may struggle to verify every fact, or we may disagree about politics, religion, economics, or morality, but when we hear a certain kind of statement, something in our brains immediately raises a red flag and calls bullshit.

The late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote of obscenity, "I know it when I see it." The same principle applies here. Bullshit can be both difficult to define precisely and effortless to recognize. In this way, our collective bullshit detector may be one of the most important forms of civic intelligence we possess.

I know it when I see it.

Justice Potter Stewart

The Most Democratic Word

 There is no other word in English that reflects freedom quite like bullshit. Only in a free society can ordinary people routinely dismiss the pronouncements of politicians, executives, celebrities, religious leaders, and experts as bullshit without fear of reprisal. In this way, calling bullshit is transcendent as an observation that raises the bar of discourse.

Bullshit isn't vulgar, because vulgarity requires a lack of sophistication, like a blunt instrument. It is criticism, skepticism, and ultimately shared engagement. In many ways, the word represents democratic inquiry in its most distilled form. As discussed later, in our age of information saturation, disagreement may not matter if it's bullshit.  

Our Personal Definition

The fascinating thing about bullshit is that no two people define it the same way. It can be political spin, marketing, bureaucratic language, academic jargon, corporate mission statements, or social media posturing. Yet somehow we maintain a shared understanding.

Much like beauty, humor, or taste, bullshit exists in the eye of the beholder. And in a strong democracy built from a pluralistic people, that's perfectly fine. We don't have to agree precisely whether it's bullshit; we only have to respect one another's right to call it when we see it.

Bullshit as an Art Form

I grew up in a small working-class South Texas town. Bullshit wasn't merely tolerated; it was an art form with several recognized rules:

• Bullshit is profane indoors, but not outdoors,

• You can loudly proclaim the word when line dancing the Cotton-Eyed-Joe,

• Unless you're dancing it in a church,

• Self-deprecating bullshit is fine,

• Mean-spirited not so much.

My father was a master bullshitter. He could spin stories out of thin air with such confidence and charm that people often knew they were being bullshitted and enjoyed it anyway. The moment they realized what he was doing was the moment everyone started laughing and connections were made.

The best bullshit artists understand something that professional communicators often forget: people love stories more than facts. A gifted bullshitter like my dad could transform an awkward encounter into a friendship, a tense moment into a joke, or a room full of strangers into a community. That's why describing someone as a "bullshitter" isn't always an insult. Sometimes it's a compliment. It acknowledges creativity, imagination, humor, and social intelligence. 

Bullshitters have also been subject to portrayal in fiction, including movies. In History of the World, Part I, Mel Brooks played Comicus, a down-on-his-luck Roman who we find standing in line to apply for unemployment. When it's his turn, he is questioned by a very skeptical Bea Arthur playing a crusty bureaucrat who demands to know his occupation. When he tries to explain his job as Standup Philosopher, she snaps back, "Oh, a bullshit artist," then proceeds to ask him, "Did you bullshit last week?" and "Do you plan to bullshit this week?"

Why Bullshit Isn't a Lie

Our public discourse is often the first place where bullshit brings discomfort. For years, journalists, academics, and political observers have focused on uncovering lies. The assumption is that exposing falsehoods was the pinnacle of successful discovery of the truth. Yet we increasingly live in a world where factchecking changes nobody's mind. Truth is irrelevant because people consume information as expressions of identity, loyalty, humor, rebellion, or belonging.

Bullshit operates in a completely different realm than factual argument. People may recognize something as exaggerated, implausible, or even ridiculous while continuing to embrace it because it communicates something emotionally or culturally meaningful. We interpret something as dishonesty at our own peril.  One person's dishonesty may reflect someone else's authenticity. And beneath both perspectives lies a deeper reality: they are evaluating speech by different standards.

The Age of Industrial-Scale Bullshit

 Of course, not all bullshit is harmless. It's easy for us to lapse into bullshit as I did when I wrote the following paragraph:

 All our modern-day professions use a modicum of bullshit. Business has always contained some degree of it in the form of marketing. Politicians use it to persuade, and lawyers bullshit their way past honest arguments through use of procedural tricks, trips and traps. Every profession develops its own forms of strategic ambiguity. Over time, multiple forms of bullshit have become increasingly institutionalized.

Author Full of Bullshit

I'm glad I caught myself. The former attorney in me almost got control. It's still difficult to cut the bullshit.

We are now swimming in a torrent of meaningless half-truths, misinformation, spin, branding, messaging, narratives, influencer content, and algorithmically optimized outrage. The problem is no longer that bullshit exists. It always has. The problem is volume. We have created an information environment so saturated with competing bullshit that distinguishing what deserves our monetized attention has become exhausting.

Perhaps honing our bullshit filters can save us. Most of us have one but have forgotten about it. Every day we evaluate politicians, advertisements, news stories, social media posts, business proposals, sales pitches, promises, slogans, and personal interactions through our own bullshit filter. Behind those judgments operates a mental process so automatic that we barely notice it.

We ask ourselves simple questions that are not separate from critical thinking. They are automatic and filled with common sense. We need to acknowledge one another's bullshit filters.

It's Time to Stop the Pretentious Bullshit

Merriam-Webster includes "bullshit" in the dictionary because language belongs to people, not gatekeepers. If enough people use a word consistently over time to mean a specific thing, it's a word. The same principle should guide our discussion of the broader concept of bullshit.

Bullshit is not an aberrant fringe phenomenon or a linguistic accident. It's a permanent feature of human communication. The sooner we acknowledge that reality, the sooner we can help one another past the torrent of it all. What we need to do is talk honestly about why it exists and what role it plays in our lives. Calling something bullshit is the way to begin a conversation, not to end one. In an age with all of us drowning in information, that conversation may be more valuable than ever.

Here's the bottom line: Our refusal to recognize and question bullshit is what is undermining our public discourse. The solution isn't to pretend bullshit is a naughty word, hoping that will make it disappear. All we need do is get better at spotting it, understanding it, and, when necessary, calling it exactly what it is.

 And that ain't bullshit.

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