The American Dream is dead. Sure, unemployment looks great, but the quality of said jobs is crap. So, is it at all surprising that this generation follows in the footsteps of the most successful baby boomers that came before them? The President of the United States is a conman, grifter, white collar criminal. The CEOs of most all companies are sociopathic con artists. Finance is filled with narcissistic, sociopaths who have been extracting wealth from the middle and lower class for decades.
Even our state and federal institutions get in on the action by running lotteries (regressive taxes on poor addicts), by enabling monopolistic gambling operations, and by giving sweetheart deals to our oligarch overlords when inking tax incentives that equate to millions in tax payer dollars per job created.
We've been taught that success is wealth and wealth requires cut throat, sociopathic, conman behavior. Don't be surprised by the results. A new gilded age is upon us.
5
In my day, ads in comic books invited me to make a fortune selling Cloverine Salve! They conned me and encouraged me to con my friends, neighbors, and relatives.
Having just finished "Bad Blood," I was struck by the number of VC's and so-called intelligent people who allowed the Theranos lie to continue without ever conducting due diligence. I understand VC greed and the fact most of these people live in the bubble of Silicon Valley, however, how did it continue for so many years? Have we lost all critical thinking skills? I don't think it is a millennial problem; it's an intelligence problem.
1
I still do not understand how Elizabeth Holmes was taken seriously. Her idea was ludicrous from inception. No sympathy here for her or those who lost money.
Same with Fyre- it was just an Instagram video and those involved were naive at best.
It is fine for young people to try hard to achieve but they have to be willing to fail and they need honest advice along the way.
1
There is another excellent documentary on this subject "American Meme" on Netflix. It showcases a number of "influencers" including Paris Hilton, Kirill and several others.
In the end they hate what they do and who they are scamming.
Worth watching to see their development and eventual disillusionment.
3
Speaking of grifters...I watched the Netflix Frye docu and was amazed at the similarities between McFarland and trump. There must be some faulty switch in the brains of these people.
3
The irony is that small-time grifters go to jail. The Donnie trumps of the world go untouched. I think some severe jail time for these high-profile punks is in order. And not the country club “prisons.”
Btw, is it true that Michael Cohen is allowed to select the prison in which he will be incarcerated? Otisville?
How outrageous. No wonder these young criminals forge ahead with their scams. There’s always a movie deal to be had.
And we just can’t understand why our society is so craven.
3
Making something from nothing takes both those who create the new "things" and those who enable their success...gullible, fear-of-missing-out consumers. Where's the value assessment, skepticism, critical thinking? From YouTube to Twitter to [fill in the blank], mindless sheep lining up to make "creators" famous and then wealthy.
Investors are also easily taken in, wanting to believe what they should be questioning. It's all marketing all the time, but no there there. Starting "businesses" is now more important than what that might be and look like. They really can't all be great ideas that are destined for success.
Reality really isn't changed by wishful thinking and self-delusion. Making it up has been allowed free rein. Just look at the mental midget in the White House. Lying is still just that.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
1
Are scammers ever considered lovable after they leave the party and everyone left behind realizes they've been used and discarded? Some might get the Hollywood treatment (Wolf of Wall Street) but the only lovable scammers I can think of are the ones that can spin a story about robbing the rich to give to the poor. None are remembered solely for their charm or style.
1
According to the OED, the word "scamp" shows up first in 1753, derived from "scamper" (1687), which was derived through Dutch, French and Italian, from "discamp" or to leave camp, to desert. Etymologically, a "scamp" is a runaway. In the late 18th century it was use for a thief or robber, before the meaning was softened.
Again, according to the OED, "scam" first appears in 1963 and there is no certainty as to where is came from, but it has the meaning of "rumor" or "story" or "information" as well as "swindle" or "deceit."
Thus call "scam" the root of "scamp" is, at best, entirely backwards; and at worst ... a scam.
1
@Bejay
Moreover, the links provided in the article for "scam" and "scamp" are to the "Online Etymological Dictionary," which of course is NOT the OED to which you refer, but perhaps reflects its creator's desire to trade on the credibility of the Oxford English Dictionary, which would be another scam. So many scams!
1
Has this woman forgotten the dot com bust which pre-dated 2008. And Edison was a great inventor both as an individual and in conceiving arguably his greatest invention which was that of applying laboratory research on a large scale to solving scientific problems. He was and saw himself as such, a sort of Henry Ford of scientific discovery.
2
In the past couple of weeks, readers of the internet have witnessed a flurry of articles on Millenial Burnout, the end result of a relentless social pressure to succeed beginning at childhood. The stories recounted in this article are not obviously about burnout; the Millennials being discussed here aren't "burned out" in any obvious sense. But in a sense they are. These young people become morally and spiritually hollowed out. Honesty, hard work, creativity and personal decency have been burned out, replaced by the mantra de jour of entrepreneurial celebrity and wealth. The explanation for each is the same; they learned to worship the idol of SUCCESS. Nothing else matters.
5
Young people have seen, over the last 20-30 years, that in most cases, it is the con man/woman who gets ahead. It doesn't matter what the con is or the game, if you are a good con artist, you get promoted and provided with fabulous wealth.
Almost every CEO or top business executive is a sociopathic con artist. They sell you this, but they give you that. All the while taking care of the only person who really matters. Themselves.
Young people have seen the game, figured out how it is played, and are trying to emulate it. Change the game to one of ethical behavior, looking out for others and not just oneself, with ample amounts of economic and social reform coupled with a restoration of justice, and the young people will change too.
69
I don’t think grifting has become a millennial issue. I think millennials grew up with different tools and opportunities to steal and simply took advantage of what was available to them.
For example, 40 years ago private equity, Silicon Valley and the 24-hour media didn’t exist like they do today. There is a lot more money today seeking “the next big thing.” So into this environment walks Elizabeth Holmes, a STEM-savvy blonde dressed in her Steve Jobsian black with her Stanford (drop out) pedigree. The best and brightest got taken, like dupes in a three-card monte game.
Compare Holmes to Donald Trump, who learned his grifting the old fashioned way, without any of these tools. He convinced banks and to give him money for various projects, like real estate and casinos, by giving them outlandish financial projections. He had at least four bankruptcies and the lenders got killed. In other cases, he did “work outs” where the lenders wound up taking a haircut to at least get some of their money back. He got his money up front and then stuck the suckers with failed or failing loans. That’s the scam—he got paid and they took the risk.
And once he figured out he could use some of the new tools to con others, Trump took to it like a duck to water. Think Trump University. He paid $25 million right before he took office to settle claims that the whole thing was essentially a fraudulent on line scam. So Trump conned like a millennial. Billy McFarland has nothing on him.
70
In addition to the Silicon valley myth of the college dropout, I also blame the reality television craze. I am apoplectic when I see someone described as a "reality TV star". In my mind, the word "TV star" implies a professional actor, not someone who lets their life be televised.
Reality TV beget the "influencer" craze. Average people, with little to no talent besides self-promotion, becoming rich off of everyone else.
These influencers and reality TV "stars" begin to believe that they are truly better than everyone else.
If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. Someone's idealized life on Instagram or Cable TV is probably carefully edited and scripted.
And then we end up with what we currently have in the White House.
45
@HN It is also how we ended up with the Kardtrashians.
7
You should be just as outraged by the claim of “reality”
3
Here's a broader perspective that seems lost on a lot of people --
The internet provides connectivity in an unprecedented and mostly unregulated manner to a lot of things and a lot of information. It connects one user to an old college roommate . . . it connects another user to her grandchildren living far away . . . it connects another user to a curated selection of prostitutes . . . and it connects another user to a group in Macedonia publishing false information under the guise of "news" intended to influence his vote.
I believe the end-user bears the personal responsibility for how he interprets and uses the information he receives via the internet. Twitter and Facebook are not in the business of verifying the truth of the content their platforms distribute. They are distributors of content their users generate -- they connect people, for better or for worse. The user of the content has to hold responsibility for what impact the info has on his thoughts or actions, and whether he can trust the person on the other end providing the info.
17
@Jim O’DONNELL this might be the most insightful comment I have ever read on the Internet. In all seriousness... you have made a very influential observation! Thank you.
2
In my option, these so called "scammers" really didn't come up with anything new, in fact one might say that they plucked from the low hanging fruit of social media.
Makes you want to give props to those who could pull off the big cons - and be colorful about it. You know, Michael Milken, Charles Ponzi, Charles Keating, and of course the boys at Enron. Now those boys could swindle and bamboozle! Hood-winkers for sure!
11
Sad that this is what America represents now . We have gone from the ugly American (crude & rude) to the ugly American ripoff artist . Scammers have always been there but now it's infecting (teen boss) kids . It's fine to have ambition and honestly work towards (ex Ceo of Starbucks comes to mind) building a product and company ; but Donald Trump has set the example . Be dishonest , scam people , deny deny deny and be rude and vicious towards those that question your methods . We have raised a nation of sociopaths .
24
@sm This is not confined to these United States. China and Russia are fine examples.
6
@FJS Think I was clear when I said they have always been there . I was not addressing the World but a phenomena that seems endemic here in U.S. , especially since it seems to be targeting children too . (Teen Boss ) 101 how to teach them cheat others . That is not part of my upbringing (to admire and aspire) the crooked side of becoming a billionaire ( Elizabeth Holmes) by lying and cheating others .
1
To borrow a line from Star Wars, "Who is the bigger fool, the fool or the fool that follows them"?
12
Compared with Holmes, the other youngsters in your profile barely register with those of us who would have been their stern disciplinarians had we the chance. But Holmes is truly diabolical, given the danger of her gadget, let alone that she has rendered ludicrous and forever tarnished the credibility of those high powered testosterone titans she attracted to her board. To think that some of the smartest female M.D. clinicians and researchers in the country warned Holmes (and her board, by extension) that her toy was a crock, and dangerous - and they were ignored? That's nothing short of criminal.
In a college business course I taught last year on corporate social responsibility, I assigned the students to choose as the topic of their final paper from a list of miscreants whose deeds were, at the time, daily media fodder. Among them: Wells Fargo, Uber, Volkswagen, the NFL, Monsanto (before Bayer) - and - Theranos. The lone student who chose Theranos drew the loudest gasps of disbelief and horror when he presented his research. After that, there wasn't a single 20-year-old in that class that admired Holmes or wanted to be her or thought they could forgive her. The other brands will likely survive. If Holmes ever again lands a leadership role in American business, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
8
20th Century America:
"Fake it till you make it."
21st Century America:
"Fake it till you break it."
How about:
"Make it while you make it."
1
Like Elizabeth Holmes, I too wanted to be rich and successful when I was a kid -- and fast. So naturally I turned the back cover of comic books. Big time prizes (not billions) such as Sea Monkeys and X-ray glasses enticed kids to sell stationary to friends and family. X-ray glasses? Sign me up! So I played Mary Kay and went door-to-door selling stationary and made local calls ONLY because long distance would cost more than the prizes. It took me one dozen sales and one month to earn a Dream Machine radio alarm clock (not the one that played cassettes -- that was for big time closers). It was a great intro to entrepreneurship -- a boy's version of selling Girl Scout cookies. But the modest prize is now quaint. If you don't sell 500 boxes of cookies or achieve hockey stick returns, what's the point?
2
Don't judge the kids too harshly they are just following the example set by our Grifter-In-Chief.
10
Must every comment make a reference to Trump? I mean, how many times is the association funny?
8
@MH exactly, not the biggest POTUS fan either, but it gets old I agree.
2
Fake it till you make it.
4
Is it really a scam? These cases were so obviously untrue/delusional that I don't really think I could call them true scams. Maybe 'aggressively gullible' on the part of investors?
-Fyre festival raked in investor money claiming it could pull together a music festival in 4 months? Come on!
-Giving Holmes billions of dollars, despite her company having no board members who had any experience running medical labs? Despite what you learn in basic bio classes- blood is a suspension and one drop can't possibly be enough? Come ON!!
The coverups by Holmes and McFarland were fraudulent, and they should be punished for that, but I don't feel too bad for their willfully ignorant investors, who share blame in this as well.
6
They believe their own hype. They actually think slow mo shots of themselves looking glamorous mean the same as doing something very outdated - working.
8
The author fails to mention the greatest scam of all- the stealing of the American Presidency by Donald J. Trump.
3
Well what do you expect when you have a President elected by Americans who has a track record of a con artist bankrupting a number of companies and stiffing contractors?
5
One noteworthy non-meliniel, Bernie Madoff, was pretty successful for a while with his scam. Much like Holmes and the other younger scammers, all it requires duping enough greedy investors blinded by the promise of a big payday.
2
The Latin phrase that is fundamental to a well-functioning economy is forgotten - Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.
"A fool and his money.." "If it sounds too good.."
Lot's of old common sense seems to have escaped the teachings of these people getting scammed.
2
"Think big! Think different! Move fast and break things!" These scammers seemed instead to have a different mantra: "Fake it 'til you make it." Might want to think of trying a new one: "Make it, don't fake it."
1
Truly, I don't believe this culture is limited to the sphere of social media. Walk into the library of any elite university and look at the robust trade of "study drugs."
It is the focus on profits and outcomes rather than sincere curiosity and honest work that drives this phenomenon
4
For the scam artist to succeed, there needs to be a crowd that's eager to believe.
Theranos & Holmes had received glowing press coverage, and the Theranos board was filled with Washington VIPs.
What lessons could be learned from the massive scams of our times?
With regard to the biggest scam in history: GW Bush's case for invading Iraq -- evidently, little was learned
Some lessons should be obvious:
Skepticism, asking the unasked questions -- should not be discouraged. Logical inconsistencies should be investigated.
Confirmation bias, emotion, & complexity can impair objective analysis.
Multiple perspectives and points of view should be considered.
23
For the love of god, can we stop blaming millennials for everything? This generation is using the tools at its disposal, for both good and bad, just like the generations before it. I'm certainly not defending the actions of people grifting others, but it's a tale as old as time.
When travel became easier, salesmen started going door to door to promote snake oil remedies. Then came newspaper ads and magazines. Then the radio, television, and the internet. Now it's social media.
While there are some truly bad people out there (who should be punished criminally if appropriate), the majority of people selling things on the internet are no more harmful or annoying than Avon and Tupperware parties of the past.
18
@BB if you want to know how harmful Avon & Tupperware were and continue to be, check out The Dream podcast.
2
Scams can't go anywhere without money. More money is available for scams today than ever before. Money is available from capitalists because they have so much they don't know what to do with it all, so they invest in nearly anything. It's all play money to them anyway. Then there's direct to consumer money, through Kickstarter and GoFundMe and online merch stores.
If the money wasn't there to support the scams, they would not exist.
7
@B.
Excellent observation!
1
They've learned from the best.
Trump, Silver-spoon Bush, Tricky Dick Nixon, Kardashian, Zuck, Holmes, Lohan, etc., ad nauseum. Why the surprise.
You can also add the crews from Wells-Fargo, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Made-off, etc., ad nauseum who for the most part stole away with billions of 'little people' money and outside of Made-off, pretty much got away with all of it.
Like I said, they've learned from the best.
31
I'm genX and my kids are whatever current 12-13 year olds are considered. We are able to differentiate internet hype from reality. Being unable to tell the difference between 'seeming' and 'being' appears to be a millennial/boomer problem.
7
@jsb I'm Gen X, too, and found some of the adults around me who got lost in trying to "find themselves," joined cults, fell for scams, invested in nostalgia items of one phase or another Boomers fetishized very instructive. We came of age amid so many Afterschool Special and Very Special Episodes warning us of everything and came of age at the exact point where we were warned sex might kill us. Our generation was the last to grow up with a strong sense of authority-not necessarily at home, a lot of kids I knew including me had a parent or two wrapped up in themselves. But we had teachers, bosses, a social structure that said it was hard to succeed without an often still really antiquated and definitely pre-"me too" permission structure and we're sandwiched between some people are stubborn (some leaders have had the jobs we wanted for almost as long as we've been alive now) and past relevance in their field and young people who are told they can do anything and try to. There always seem to be very few famous and powerful people or stars in their early to mid-forties but I'd like to think we are, for our troubles, capable of being sharper judges of a fad or a scam.
2
The summer of scam just became the winter of wile. It never ends.
4
I think that you choose the wrong exemplars of your thesis. Scamming is fundamental to capitalism. See Donald Trump. Lying, cheating and stealing are acceptable tools for the creation of wealth. The only proviso is not to get caught. Perhaps that is the only differentiating factor in the characters in your story. They got caught.
15
@HT See: The Sopranos.
This whole “scam culture” fascinates this 57-year-old Baby Boomer, not so much for the moxie of the scammers (staying one step ahead of the law is a time honored American tradition) but for the “scammed”. I watched both Fyre Festival documentaries twice to try to discern how so many got duped into wanting to believe something is true because an “Instagram celebrity” or “Twitter personality” said it was. To me, it’s taking advantage of the “Fear of Missing Out” culture and combining it with a “if you do this, then you will be as popular as some celebrity” ethos. Again, a time honored tradition is to wear shoes so you can jump like Michael Jordan or drink a milkshake so you can live Oprah’s life. But, those are generally modest investments. There was even a Twitter account warning people away from Fyre Festival that went mostly ignored.
A culture of internet “influencers” — whatever that means — means there is a culture of people who want to be “influenced”. I don’t lay this completely at the feet of millennials, but they are the current crop ripe for the picking. As one of the interview subjects in one of the Fyre documentaries said, “If you don’t have a social media presence, you don’t exist”. That probably says more than anything else about where we find ourselves as pockets waiting to be picked.
18
As for Eliza Holmes
“She has shown zero sign of feeling bad, or expressing sorrow, or admitting wrongdoing, or saying sorry to the patients whose lives she endangered,”
Why? Because her SCAM worked in her community, not the technology or the business or the service to patients facing the real world.
What kind of generation have we created? Drop outs who get an inkling of how to cheat then commence to do so with lies upon lies to build up an image. It's the cultural norm embodied by our fearless sociopath of a president.
7
Shocked by this? The biggest grifter and con-artist of all time is the current President of the United States.
45
The biggest scam out there is the man who calls himself President.
31
I must admit it was fun to watch Fyre debacle documentary. Everyone there well deserved to be scammed by Billy McFarland.
7
Why the surprise ? The most successful Con Artist in American History sits in the Oval Office. Except when he's golfing or holding loyalty rallies, for an ego fix. Thanks, GOP. 2020.
15
A scammer born every minute but none bigger than the one in the whitehouse. The whitehouse and the GOP condone scamming, so why not for millennial's to.
7
Just about everyone these days has the power in the palm of their hand to create false advertising and distribute it to the world in seconds. It is the nature of Instagram and other social media apps not to take realistic snapshots of our lives, but to take something boring, imperfect, or much more complex and then alter it or sex it up through a filter. It's scary to think where humankind will take this next, but it's hard to keep it real.
2
A ten year old growing up wanting to be a billionaire says a lot. The danger of an exclusive focus on money is shallowness
Most kids grow up wanting to help and/or do something to benefit others. The reward is a rich life
12
I could not agree more. For more than a century, the U.S. economy has lurched from bubble to bubble. The complicity of modern politicians is not new and was lampooned in Mark Twain's The Gilded Age. Now with social media allowing anyone to connect, publish, and collaborate, young people can do things at a younger age than past generations. This is in many ways a blessing but there is a downside. The pressure must be intense and the understanding of the steps needed for true success -- as opposed to mere appearances -- negligible.
6
Honestly, these kinds of Instagram gurus/scammers, as the authors call them, seem to exist for two reasons
1) Photoshop/photo editing software
2) Our popular culture, especially amongst teenagers, has the collective attention span of a goldfish
If Instagram accounts promote fake stuff, no one cares. They can just keep posting to their 7-8 million followers and everyone forgets the next day when they hop on the next meme train. You can't lose a reputation when no one holds you accountable for damaging it in the first place.
9
I love the Glosssy Chinese direct to customer clothing websites all over the internet offering super cheap clothing modeled after every high end designer around only for the buyer to receive an item made in the lowest quality fabric possible in a size that would not even fit a 4 year old..
3
The biggest scam is perpetrated by Donald Trump. The others were about loss of money, which is trivial compared to what the US lost to Donald Trump and his family.
21
I think that younger adults have picked up the perception that the only way to get ahead today is by lying, cheating and stealing. And ain't it so true?
Being honest, playing by the rules, doing the right thing is for suckers. Generating large sums of instant, self gratifying cash from the gullible general public has now gone viral. By all means possible, they'll do whatever it takes to become rich. Isn't that the end goal of life in this day and age. If you step on or hurt people along the way, that's just the way it is, too bad. Grifters are very well rewarded in our society.
16
Is it only because he isn't a millennial that Donald Trump isn't mentioned for his ability to con millions into electing him POTUS with his Twitter account?
7
Yes, i felt for a while that almost everything in America is becoming a scam or an ad.
10
I enjoy the fact that the Grey Lady has such an instinctive dislike for millennials. They are just the latest in a series of imperfect grownups and yet the foibles and failures of the few are attributed to the generation.
7
To me, this article shares a theme with a recent Times piece about Manhattan hi-rise buildings skirting the intent of zoning laws by creating massive "void" stories that push a building height above its neighbors to achieve dizzying views for tenants in permanent absentia from the apartments.
The pace of all this skyscraper construction reminds me of the proliferation retail banks (WaMu anyone?) and suburban McMansions in the mid aughts. But I'm sure it will all end well because the smartest folks in finance have got it all figured out this time.
Meanwhile, the real estate developers hustle the zoning laws. The millionaire and billionaire tenants hustle LLC regulations to stash and launder money. And a generation of debt addled young people hustle each other via Instagram and Facebook to con an affluent lifestyle for themselves.
Seems like the condo towers aren't the only things with huge voids built into the middle of them.
47
In defense of millennials, I think that to a greater extent to than previous generations, there is pressure to attain success at an early age. I definitely blame the venture capital-fueled Silicon Valley culture for creating this, and for the media and society for further enabling it (see things like the Forbes 30 under 30 list). What's next, a 10 under 10 list?
Colleges and universities are complicit in this too. Look at the admissions materials highlighting students who started their own companies or non-profits in high school? I worry that we are pushing are kids to look amazing on paper at the expense of their actually being amazing people.
Like funding a startup, millenials seemed pushed to "fake it til they make it" and sell themselves as much as their ideas. Clearly some are flying too close to the sun (or just selling knock-off wax wings to others), but should we really be surprised when they've grown up in a world where success looks like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Mush and the Kardashians?
81
@Pete I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think that is worth saying that millennials, much like everyone else in previous generations, are equally susceptible to get rich quick schemes. The difference between them and the Carlton Sheets/Trump University Schemes of yesteryear, is that we have a wealth of verifiable data, as they are the generation of technology.
3
@M.F.
Equally susceptible and equally gullible as previous generations. Technology may have changed, but human nature has not.
4
We have been priming our young for this moment since the dawn of the internet, way back in late 80’s. Gordon Gekko’s, “Greed is good” credo has morphed a dozen times and sparkled in the eyes of the young who were asked in the 90’s why they hadn’t made their first million yet. Then came Alan Greenspan, hawking a future of unfettered growth. His policies of adjusting interest rates to historic lows fed a housing boom that nearly ruined the country. Then along came Steve Jobs and iPhone, and who hid the hard work and team building behind the wall of the genial huskter, “One other thing.” With that as backdrop we were all primed for believing that a great idea was enough, forgetting that Steve Jobs slaved away with Steve Wozniak to produce a computer for the sheer joy of it. And Alan Greenspan forgot that our prosperity was built on a solidly regulated banking system. Now we have work to do – to remember how businesses are actually built, and grow a skeptical eye toward the next shiny object.
33
I'm shocked that Trump wasn't mentioned in the article. He fits right in to the biggest degree possible.
65
And as a corollary, the piece explains why it's no insult to call him a con artist. Remember "con" is short for "confidence." He will falter only when the base no longer feels confident in his - well, let's just call it agency.
15
@Lorem Ipsum Thank you! I was going to point out the same thing: none of these scammers succeed --neither Trump nor the millennials--without gaining the confidence of their marks. Without that, they are nothing. And even when that confidence is won, it can easily be lost, and eventually will be lost at some point, when it's inevitably revealed that the emperor has no clothes.
4
@Adamboo
I'm relieved when Trump isn't dropped into every article that touches on dishonesty or questionable behavior. He gets too much of our attention as it is.
2
"Thomas Edison, who may have been better at cultivating his public image as an inventor than he was at actually inventing." Say what?!?
14
@HKGuy I thought the same thing-Thomas Edison may have been no stranger to self promotion but the guy real skills and accomplishments as well.
13
@HKGuy I noticed that also, and am happy to see that I wasn't the only one that was surprised by such a comment. Sure, Edison didn't invent everything his workshop produced BUT Edison actually invented things and did actual work.
6
@HKGuy yeah. I'd like to see that backed up with evidence. Sounds like fake news to me.
3