You haven’t met me. How do you know I’m not a dog? Well sure, you could check to see that someone with my name is licensed to practice law in New York, but am I that guy? The New Yorker ran a famous cartoon years ago about this.
But we’re so much smarter now, so much more sophisticated that no one could get away with creating a fictional persona online. As Dan Bauman shows at the Chronicle of Higher Education, we’re still easily fooled.
Drew Cloud is everywhere. The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC, and is a fixture in the smaller, specialized blogosphere of student debt.
Not a lawyer, but he was firmly established as a niche expert.
Drew Cloud’s story was simple: He founded the website, an “independent, authoritative news outlet” covering all things student loans, “after he had difficulty finding the most recent student loan news and information all in one place.”
There was only one problem with this guy who had so much really important information to say.
He became ubiquitous on that topic. But he’s a fiction, the invention of a student-loan refinancing company.
We’re far more accepting of the expertise of a non-existent individual than we would be of a company that sells what they’re opining about.
After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. “Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,” wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.
And it’s not just that he fooled readers of his blog, but journalists accepted his existence without question, until Dan Bauman.
Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.
While we obsess about Russian bots screwing with our heads, and debate whether reporters still report or manipulate, we focus on the potential negative outcomes rather than the medium. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. We still don’t.
For lawyers and law, this problem is greatly exacerbated. There’s the pervasive “twitter lawyer” problem of non-lawyers regurgitating ridiculous assertions about law, which may be circulated widely, influence a great many non-lawyers and be utterly wrong. But then, what of a renowned Harvard law professor spreading the same information, deliberately using his academic office to make people stupider? He may not deserve a place in the classroom if he’s that incompetent, but he can still disseminate and dissemble online.
It’s not that the problem is new, but the attention it used to receive when the interwebs were young has been displaced by inertia. The public is given legal advice from people who claim to be lawyers, but nobody knows if that’s true. Or whether they’ve been a lawyer for 20 years or 20 minutes. We take for granted that the people we come across are who they say they, or at least exist.
When self-proclaimed expert Adrianos Facchetti wrote at Blog For Profit, run by disbarred lawyer Grant Griffiths turned marketing guru, “You are what Google says you are,” the danger was obvious. Instead of heeding the call for caution, law students and young lawyers prefer to live dangerously. But isn’t the goal of every young lawyer to become internet famous? That’s all that matters.
Drew Cloud managed to become internet famous and gain the acceptance of journalists as an expert in his field. For people drowning under the weight of student loans, his words were critically important. Who’s teaching the public the law, other than Larry Tribe?
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Sorta’ like Betty Crocker. A fictional business-created character.
How can you not like it?
Exactly like Betty Crocker, or Aunt Jemimia, or any other marketing fiction. We love a face and a name we can trust. Ironic, right?
Or Cap’n Crunch (inferior to an Admiral, obviously).
He’s not really a cap’n, you know.
You know if you had looked at the box carefully, you would see he is only wearing 3 bars. In the Navy, Captains have 4 bars. At best he is a Commander.
Ex-Navy here.
Any officer of any rank who is in command of a ship uses the title of “Captain.”
I was on two ships, and both had Captains with the rank of Commander.
As an Admiral, I concur. However, Cap’n Crunch is still not really a cap’n.
I’m not sure this problem started with the internet. I’m pretty sure this has been done before.
Cite, please?
You know that I can see what you did here, right? That it was done before doesn’t bear upon the problem raised in the post, that the problem has become ubiquitous and incredibly easy to do, and that we’ve lost all skepticism about those we listen to. It used to be hard to be a decent con man. Now, anybody can do it with almost no effort at all, and nobody raises an eyebrow.
I hope you saw what I did here. The overlaps between Cloud, Bourbaki, and Publius are not so small. Like Bourbaki and Publius, Cloud is a pseudonym for a group of people who are knowledgeable about the field on which they are writing. The Cloud and Publius overlaps are even stronger, as Publius wasn’t just an independent supporter of the Constitution, he was some of the actual authors. Thus, it isn’t so obvious that Cloud is a “con”. As best I can tell, they haven’t yet been accused of anything but using a group pseudonym, which given history is not inherently nefarious. You could argue is that by hiding their identities they hid their potential biases, but the same is true of Publius, and the group pseudonym use is irrelevant to that criticism. Every journalist does it to some degree.
Your analysis is flawed. “Publius” is, by definition, a pseudonym, thus alerting anyone reading whatever “wisdom” Publius has to offer that its source is unknown. Cloud was proffered as a real person, an expert, but his “advice” routinely was to tell people to get their student loans refinanced. As it happened, Cloud was the front for a company that refinanced student loans.
When one purports to be an “expert,” others who are not experts but are interested pay attention. Cred matters. Lies matter too.
Old Nic¹ fronted² a group with a motive,
To which some still make offerings votive.
His influence has waned,
But much has been gained.³
Nic earned cred, accrued powers denotive!
FN 1: SWIDT?
FN 2: #WhiteLiesMatter
FN 3: cf: Bourbaki–Alaoglu theorem, Bourbaki–Witt theorem
I remember seeing a story in the last couple of decades where some guy in Florida got a “handicapped” hang tag for a cat named “Charles Barkley.” The cat wasn’t entirely fictional, but it was a cat (although “Barkley” seems more like a dog’s name).
Charles Meowly just have the right ring to it.
You mean I’m not really the former governor of Florida, wandering the swamps, eating roadkill and whacking bad guys? Well then, who the fuck am I?
No one is teaching the law to the public. Before online lawyers, the public went to a lawyer for answers because they knew they didn’t have the answer. Now, they think they know the answer because Twit, Esq. told them so. They were much better off when they didn’t know (there’s a Toby Keith song in there). See? The problem is they’re being taught by make-believe assholes, when they shouldn’t be taught at all. They were much safer when ignorant, just like Toby was with love.
I could probably learn how to re-lay the plumbing in my house from the famous online expert Mr. Crappy, but there would surely be a shit carnival at my house this weekend. The only thing keeping that from happening is I suspect Mr. Crappy is an asshole. Not everyone has the same suspicion, but I can do nothing about their stupidity and Mr. Crappy counts on it to play his perverse game of filling houses with shit.*
*I disavow any knowledge of Mr. Crappy, either real or fake.
On the contrary, everyone seems to be. Lawprofs use their academic cred to lie to the public. Law students “explain” law they don’t grasp. Lawyers demonstrate that it’s easy to pass the bar. And random well-intended people do their “actually” routine. Oh, the public is being taught. Just not well.
Okay: no one is teaching them “actual law,” so their houses fill with shit. Better?
SHG, you simply don’t learn. Fuck the law. All the best.
RGK
No, I simply don’t learn.
Fucking a complete stranger is risky in this day and age.
Too far.
Consider the Cosby trial. While the academics/students/others may be talking out of their ass, the judgements are delivered by people, not principles. You may call bullshit now, but what about in 5 years, 10 years? What happens when the current crop of law students graduate and become lawyers, *judges*? Today it’s shit, tomorrow it’s precedent.
You know much better than me how broken the court system is. Is there a measurable difference? Is the Fifth getting a worse treatment than the Fourth? All in the name of saving the children/believing the women/getting rid of Trump, of course.
They are changing the law the way they have power to – by convincing people. Thank you for writing this blog as at least some countermeasure to them.
I appreciate the irony of you explaining to me what I wrote to explain to you, because if you didn’t reiterate it, how would I ever know?
Dear Papa,
I have a dream that one day children will live in a internet where they will not be judged by their identity but by the content of their message.
Drew Cloud’s issue was dishonesty, not fictitiousness. Except that “Hi, I’m not a real, independent person but an amalgamation of people who work for an LLC which seeks to profit in some way by what ‘I’ say” doesn’t sound as nice. Too bad.
On the other end, greedy “experts” want what they don’t have and without working for it. Doesn’t everyone? Some just lack the moral fiber or mental tenacity to admit that’s what they want and that they really know nothing. Combined with a large microphone and a dose of self delusion, and you’re off to the rat race. Good luck chasing fame and adoration, counselors. No wonder some of them can’t even take the time to read a court order or respond to discovery.
Greed, and facebook, are obviously the true bogiemen. But then again, I might not be real. Woah, way to encourage some dissociation, Pa. I thought you said you were done paying for therapists.
Best,
PK
If only it were so. Just as a lawprof spewing insanely stupid horseshit will get his mug on TV, not because the content was accurate but because his identity gave him ascribed credibility, so too did the content of Drew Cloud take on weight because of his “attained” credibility as an expert.
Kids like to point out that their lack of experience doesn’t alter the merit of their logic, and to a small extent, that’s true. But most of the time, their argument isn’t based on logic, but arguments built on assumptions and assertions that are dependent on their personal experience and credibility. Since they believe themselves to be credible and correct, they can’t understand why others won’t just accept it because they say so. It makes them sad.
Little known fact, that New Yorker cartoon was a rip off of an earlier cartoon, which unfortunately is no longer around. I can’t find it in any of the archive sites. It said ‘On the Internet no one knows you’re a lawyer.’
If only.
https://imgur.com/ZhX5DMn
This might have been funnier if it had been a reply, but not likely.