Life is a Game of Bullshit. This is How You Win: Genevieve Gregorich (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript and summary of Genevieve Gregorich’s talk titled “Life is a Game of Bullshit. This is How You Win” at TEDxColumbiaUniversity conference.

In this TEDx talk, social scientist Genevieve Gregorich discusses her experiences with gossip and lies in high school and her approach to playing the game of deception. She argues that life can look like a game of deception, but winning requires an active and creative search for experiences, knowledge, and personal growth. The speaker suggests calling bullshitting early and often, and emphasizes the importance of preparation in improving outcomes in the game.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

So there was this girl on my high school basketball team, Sadie, who bred half-moon betta fish in her garage. And we’ll come back to this later, but for now I just need us to agree on something. This is a very strange thing for a high school girl to do. And I was the only one on the basketball team who knew about it.

Sadie and I were on the varsity team at my high school, and I’d prepared my whole life to make that team. Starting around age four, I practiced pretty much every chance I got. I even remember when I was little, falling asleep in my sneakers under the covers to mental replays of NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal slam dunking. That was the energy I wanted to bring to every game.

And it all paid off. I made the varsity team as a freshman, but as the youngest player on a team dominated by seniors, that quickly became more of a nightmare. They wanted nothing to do with me, and I felt like an outcast from day one.