The hidden losers

After a long time, I have found a topic I am thinking about all the time. The topic is not new. It has always been a theme running somewhere at the back of my mind.

Everyone has their own definition of losers and categories of losers. I too have mine. The ones I am going to describe in this blog are ones which are hard to identify.

Let me start by asking a few questions:

1. Have you ever met people who are super successful in their professional life?

2. Have you met people who can convince even an investment banker to put all the money in charity?

3. Have you met people who can impress one and all?

There must be many such examples. You know what, not all of them are the same. If you look at some of them closely, you will find a major difference. Many of them(I am pretty sure they are in majority) are people who have achieved something by always piggy-backing on someone else’s effort.

What skills do they have? Just one. They are good in creating a fake aura around them and making sure they mingle with the successful people(people who can give them a ride till their next big destination).

How to identify these people? Let me mention a few of their characteristics:

In Office:

1. They will have an opinion on everything, will reply to each email(preferably in flowery English, remember the only skill they have) even if they were cced because they were, in hindsight, mistakenly added in the mailing list.

2. They love giving alternatives which are “better”.

3. They will always try to correct their seniors/peers in front of senior management.

In Personal life:

1. They think they are superior because of their achievements and look down upon others.

2. They are experts in 1-2 domains (read they have crammed enough to talk inteligently) and will always try to veer a discussion in that direction and try to show-off.

3. (This is the most important one) They will always always try to correct their “friends” in front of everyone if they find some mistake(a good example is “didn’t know/didn’t knew” types). 

Why are they losers? Given that they are looked up to and have achieved so much, it is hard to imagine why I would consider them as a loser. These people will never trust anyone because they themselves must have betrayed a 100 close friends. As much as they try to pretend their friendship, deep down they hardly care about anyone who is not going to be of any importance to them. Their real definition of friends are people who worship them without ever raising their eyebrows.

Why I wrote this blog? I came to know about 1 such loser today. I know a lot of them and had done the mistake of trusting some of them. So when I saw another one, I had to release the frustration somewhere. I believe they are the real rot in our society. These people either feel satisfied in a dysfunctional group comprised of similar such people who keep praising each other. The other kind are people who are experts in pretending to be really smart and can make you believe that they are the right people to work with/be friends with. Deep down, they are as shallow as the first ones.

Why I believe they are the real rot in our society? Our society has always been swayed by people who have had great convincing powers. That is why, when such people tend to veer the opinion towards their uncompetitive belief of the society,  they usually succeed.

It is quite ironic that many of them quote books by Ayn Rand as their source of inspiration(Their facebook profiles will have quotes from her books). The only thing I can think of is a long line of Elsworth Tooheys ready to stop this world.