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This is, apparently, fake. Many of the historical and legal details are just made-up, even the ones that purportedly relate to real politicians like Keir Starmer. I didn't realize this when I first read it; like most readers it seems, I just trusted that someone who wrote with this amount of sophistication would have done the research and found real events to weave into a compelling narrative and message. But of course, doing the work is *hard*. Much easier to just *pretend* to be the sort of person who's dedicated to their craft, while actually fabricating all the evidence in an afternoon. This makes me wonder just how much of the other content I consume is fake. The guy who spent 84 days kicking a rock until it turned into a sphere. The science youtubers who show off the elaborate experiments that have taken months to come to fruition, or the complex machines they've built just because they can. The blog posts about niche topics that the author has dedicated their lives to, and now distills down into something understandable by an outsider. All of these things are beautiful not because of the words on the page or the pixels on the screen, but because of what they signify: a person who cares so deeply about a topic that they would put so much towards it; more deeply than many people ever care about anything they do. A person who has dedicated their time towards making something *real*, something challenging, something that most of us could never make ourselves. And, perhaps, who has helped others do the same. Who has contributed towards humanity's shared mission to understand the universe and all of its innumerable facets. But any time an endeavor commands respect (and money) from others, there will be grifters.

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Nicholas Decker 🏳️‍🌈

🏳️‍🌈

@captgouda24

Jul 18

This is the finest essay that I have read in years. I do not wish to spoil it — please take my word for this, you should drop everything and read it. It is that good. Link below!

3:41 PM · Jul 20, 2025

176.2K

Views

David Watson 🥑

Post your reply

To those disagreeing: Watch this video and ask yourself, would it be as meaningful if it were fake? It's an entertaining story regardless, right? Why would it matter if the speaker had totally made it up, and done no real research?

Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again.

Videos like this are only possible with your help, consider becoming a bonnie bee today! https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey## Related Videos

The Tale of Tiffa...

Scott Alexander

@slatestarcodex

This is Sam's style. It's not for everyone, but I think it has literary merit and that once you're familiar with it it's not too hard to figure out what's true and what's false (for example, Laurentius Clung is a recurring character). I would compare it to something like the

Yeah I don't have a problem with satire and this style of metaphorical writing; I think your article for Asterisk might be an even better example of it.

Deros and the Ur-Abduction—Asterisk

From asteriskmag.com

dweeb (dane garrus)

This is giving me a new appreciation for the LW old guard who start every post with an “epidemic status” disclaimer (which could be “epidemic status: fiction”) If there’s one thing “the rationalists” should stand for, it’s caring about the truth value of what they post!

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Nicholas Decker 🏳️‍🌈

🏳️‍🌈

@captgouda24

Jul 20

Replying to @IsaacKing314

It transcends mere fact.

Epidemic status: 345 deaths, vaccine in early stages of development

Lots of motivated reasoning in these comments. Even if mixing fact and fiction isn't done maliciously, it means any informative value it might have is outweighed by the time wasted to fact check every claim. Unlabeled fiction makes the work only valuable as fiction.

Yeah, I thought I was getting an actually interesting critique of UK speech policy.

@ModeledBehavior

Is the guy kicking the rock fake??

I have no reason to believe it is? But who can know.

@halogen1048576

that's extremely funny and I've caught Kriss doing that before (he conflated game theory with anti communism and neoliberal economics in a way that made clear he's unaware of its mathematical and deductive nature)

Have a link?

Zoomer Alcibiades

Sir, this essay is literary fiction. I assume you’d also fault Dante for his failure to cite the cite the location of Hell and its depth and magnitude?

If people at the time were likely to believe he was telling the truth, yes

hmm well i didnt read it before encountering the controversy about its "fakeness," but id like to think id have noticed something was fishy when it quotes the patriot act: > Section 1956(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended—(1) by redesignating paragraphs (1) and (2)

Yeah I found that part a little odd as well, but shrugged and chalked it up to the same insane process that gave us the Frankenstein veto.

Nicholas Decker

🏳️‍🌈

It transcends mere fact.

Hmm, I had hoped you were also taken in by it. Look, I have no problem with fictional writing, including fiction that's presented in a realistic fashion. The problem is when it's written such that the reader *actually believes* it's real.

Jared Henderson

Kriss blends fact and fiction in his writing. It’s part of his craft. To put that under the category of ‘grifter’ is laughable.

He is freeloading off of people who actually *do* do lots of research in order to create some entertaining piece of content. He wishes to convey the same sense of dedication and discovery, without actually exhibiting it himself.

@elralfchristian

That it's hosted on substack says everything you need to know

Substack is the home of much if not most great writing nowadays

ChatGPTification knows no bounds.

I highly doubt ChatGPT was involved in writing this, but I agree it's conceptually a similar form of slop. Imitating words without the traditional meaning behind them.

You thought something titled “a secret societies, civil wars, Palestine Action, and the word of God” would not be bullshitty? The meter’s going through the roof.

So this is obviously fiction too, right?

Deros and the Ur-Abduction—Asterisk

From asteriskmag.com

on one hand, I love mixed fiction/non-fiction as a genre, I think it's cool and ppl should write more of it on the other hand, it wasn't clear to me until a good way through that this essay might be that, and probably to many wasn't clear at all...

I liked this one. It was clearly fiction. samkriss.substack.com/p/a-truly-fore

the author's response

Thanks, I hadn't seen that. Seems to confirm Sam is operating in bad faith then. To my knowledge Eliezer is generally quite clear when he's making a factual claim vs. writing fiction, and also this is whataboutism anyway.

If you're curious, he replied to EY's comment on his substack here:

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Isaac King

@IsaacKing314

22h

Replying to @BenShindel

Thanks, I hadn't seen that. Seems to confirm Sam is operating in bad faith then. To my knowledge Eliezer is generally quite clear when he's making a factual claim vs. writing fiction, and also this is whataboutism anyway.

I mean idk man but I looked up the theologian story and immediately found it was made up but still found it supremely entertaining. Populating a semi-plausible fake historical account to tell a moral story is an extremely common writing technique.

Sure, it was also very easy to fact-check the claim that Haitians were eating cats, but that doesn't make it ok to lie about.

@everettbranches

The first claim (and seemingly main claim) about Keir Starmer appears to be true:

Keir Starmer used to stand up for the kinds of protesters he now labels as terrorists

From independent.co.uk

Yeah this is the one that I think is fake. Which is particularly egregious given the explicit claims that he did real historical research into the subject.

Sebastian Ballister

@rakishromantic

I think Nile Red, other chemistrytubers, and the dudes who machine little engines for their various RC devices are mostly all legit I haven't ever seen an engineer saying Stuff Made Here isn't cool as hell or that the projects he's doing aren't extremely difficult

Yeah, I would be pretty surprised if any of those were fake. And feel very betrayed, even if the naive entertainment value of the videos has not changed with the revelation!

What parts about Keir Starmer are false? This part was true.

Municipal Orrery

@MunicipleOrrery

The first time I encountered Sam Kriss was when Scott linked to "The Secret History of Wakanda", so by default I kinda assume anything he writes is fiction, although some rants on modern politics seem to be real. (This is awesome and you should read it.) samkriss.substack.com/p/the-secret-h

Yeah this one starts as a rant on (real) politics, and then transitions into making stuff up, which is the problem.

@bubbling_creek

Sam Kriss isn’t trying to trick anyone, it’s intended as a mix of serious and fiction as the funny names demonstrate

Generally when I'm not trying to trick anyone, I don't tell them "I really did try to research this but the evidence was scant" when in fact there was no research whatsoever, and the person in question didn't exist.

Abuse allegation behind paywall

@tacticalapology

I think in this case the fictional part is subtly signalled as fictional and I think anyone who is familiar with Kriss’s writing would know his shtick, but I agree that it’s potentially misleading

What would you consider to be the subtle signals? It's easy to say that in retrospect, not so easy to reliably notice them beforehand!

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autumn

@adrusi

Jul 20

Replying to @IsaacKing314

hmm well i didnt read it before encountering the controversy about its "fakeness," but id like to think id have noticed something was fishy when it quotes the patriot act: > Section 1956(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended—(1) by redesignating paragraphs (1) and (2)

Adversus Nihilismus

Am I the only person who finds this style of writing to be very smarmy and off-putting? It's so condescending lol it's not straightforward at all!

My writing? Or Sam's?

hilarious move from a guy who previously condemned *all fiction* as timewasting. ragebaiting is all he’s good at

I think Nicholas has many positive qualities, and I agree with most of his takes. I don't think I've ever seen him really "ragebait", though he certainly says controversial things. But I think he nearly always believes what he's saying.

mtoq is lean between 1 and 11000

I was also very annoyed for falling for it. And according to some responses, im stupid too because of it.

Yeah I would guess that many of those people have never read *actual* nonfiction writing as good as this is trying to be. Their only experience with nonfiction is something boring that's forced upon you in school.

Have you read any of his other posts? His genre is (sort of) historical fiction. A brilliant writer, one of the few people doing truly unique and interesting craft.

I have; I quite liked A Truly Foreign Language when I came across it a few weeks ago. It is very clearly fiction. samkriss.substack.com/p/a-truly-fore

Guilherme Carvalho

@strivingpolymat

It's somehow sickening to put such effort into pure lies, it's a sort of perverse pollution, one that pretends to delight by adding value when in fact it poisons you

I think this particular type of effort could be used to create some very high-quality fiction. All Sam needed to do was present it as such, but instead he chose to make it out as though it were real research, which is what I object to.

Light Rail Avenger

Kinda going crazy at how many of the replies from rationalists are "you thought this crazy thing mentioned was true???" like yeah, crazy things are true all the time

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "rationalist" but I get the impression that most of the people calling me stupid over this post would not fit under that label.

@overaesthetized

I haven't read it yet, and this doesn't really affect how good the piece is But knowing Sam Kriss I'm quite confident the fake stuff is not the result of lazyness He does research some subjects deeply, and when he invents stories it's very deliberate

I'm getting that impression yeah. Though, if he could find a real example to tell a similar story, I think he likely would have?

Tony Williams deathspace

@Optical_systems

God forbid a piece of writing be good “because of the words on the page”

I believe you have failed to understand my claim. If a piece of writing is good intrinsically, then there's no reason not to label it as fiction.

Andrés Cifuentes

¿Habrá usted leído Ficciones de Borges? ¿O El Quijote de Cervantes? ¿O Guerra y Paz de Tolstoi?

No

It's obviously fake! That's part of the purpose of the essay.

Not obvious to me or the dozens of other people who thought it was real. It's *explicitly* presented as a true summary of the laws and history.

I'm not trying to insult your intelligence or excuse the liars for lying, but if you're taking stuff like this at face value and not even trying to look for more info or verify their claims... That's kinda on you at that point. The Internet has always been like this.

Sure, just like if you walk through a dark alley in a bad part of town and get mugged, that's kind of on you for making that choice. Doesn't mean we can't also hold that the mugger has done something morally wrong, and try to prevent it in the future.

@CorporalCrunch1

"I can't believe Jonathan Swift thinks we should eat babies"

If you can't recognize the difference between things that are obviously satire and things that are masquerading as actual informative writing, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Hate to break this news but it is legal to play with literary form. It is ok for it to break the brain sometimes. You'll be fine.

Hate to break this news but some people have moral systems past "if it's legal it's ok".

Harrison Bergeron

Same with "passerby" videos like "we asked Harvard students to name the first president" or stuff like 'see New Yorkers oppose Obamacare but support the ACA' I know a producer of some of those videos and his are completely fake - literally hired actors. His justification: We

Think it's important to label things like this fiction, and I downgraded my standing of Decker for posting how much he hates fiction, writing this was the BEST essay, and then not clarifying. I appreciated you clarifying this for me!

Nuño Sempere bumbling around the US!

I got taken in btw

So you were “duped” into thinking a guy who Kriss claimed wrote a treatise called “Against the foul, abominable lies of shit-dwelling Melanchthon” was a real person?

There are also malicious actors that make up stories on the fly to mess with you in a specific way that will benefit them. Sad world, really

jacob meyer cohen

@ConfluxConflux

It doesn't seem like "fake" is entirely the right word - it seems more like "nonfiction drifting into fiction," which is part of Sam Kriss's style. I agree that it will confuse people though.

wrangle enjoyer (

I liked the essay, briefly considered its historicity, and thought that, if it was fake, someone would notice lmao thought it was a bit convenient of him seemingly only blaming Keir Starmer when Tories have been in power for much longer but alas. maybe i'm projecting my bias too

The models for those renaissance statues probably weren't actually that physically perfect but any accuracy those statues sacrifice is more than worth it for the increase of beauty in the world.

This Tweet Is Not Me, This Tweet Is Not Mine

Glad I'm not the only one who found it a little gross.

@dumb__official

I had the same thought:

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Xam

@dumb__official

Jul 19

Replying to @captgouda24

It’s fake in an uninteresting way

Here’s what I think is needed for an effective “truth” system: - Effortless sourcing - Ring signatures of real identities vouching for pseudonymous identities and content - Effortless viewing of “web of trust” endorsements

saddening and sickening. his response just makes it worse. shame. he's really a good writer too.

“guy who spent 84 days kicking a rock until it turned into a sphere”

se non e vero, e ben trovato

You have to be impressively stupid to not realize this is fiction.

G. Željko Tonklin

kriss is a well known bullshit artist