For heaven’s sake! Fake women event speakers? Fake articles by fake writers in Sports Illustrated? Meeting professionals: this is a golden opportunity! We need to think bigger! Yes, friends, it’s now obvious that what our industry needs is…fake events!
Think about it for a moment.
Fake speakers
Creating fake women speakers is just one tiny step in the right direction. Think big! How hard is it to make all your speakers fake? OK, so some intrepid journalists took the time to discover that a few women speakers featured on a conference website don’t exist. Well, no one’s going to bother to do that for your male speakers, because everyone expects that men will be the vast majority of your headliners. So you have nothing to lose! Make all your speakers fake!
Fake attendees
The next logical step: create fake attendees! Lots of them! We are all impressed by those huge events that everyone who is everyone has to attend for FOMO. And getting people to register and actually attend events these days is a ton of work. Hard work! Instead, simply have ChatGPT generate a long list of impressive attendees. Be sure to ask for a good mix of ethnic names, genders, and geographical regions, together with impressive job titles at big-name companies. Ten minutes work, tops! Your event is already a success! And it hasn’t even happened yet!
Fake events
At this point, the final step should be obvious. Putting together a successful event, in-person, online, or, heaven-forbid, hybrid is HARD! It takes time. It costs money!
Give yourself a break! Stop running yourself ragged designing, preparing, and running real events.
Instead, create fake events!
Here are some of the advantages of fake events over real ones.
- No pesky people to hire, fire, and pay!
- Ditto, contractors! Goodbye, logistics! No more negotiating with F&B suppliers, transportation services, in-house production, etc. (Don’t get me started on in-house production.)
- Zero expenses! The only tool you need is ChatGPT—and it’s free! (For now.)
- High status! Post about your well-attended and prestigious fake events on X and LinkedIn and see your stature in the #eventprofs community soar! Don’t forget to have your fake attendees rave about their experiences (again, think ChatGPT) too!
It’s a no-brainer—right?!
A final word
If everything I’ve said still hasn’t convinced you to sit down at your computer, or even your phone, and start pumping out fake events, here’s one more point to bear in mind.
We may all be living in a simulation! Yes, I know it sure seems like we’ve been laboriously creating amazing events for years. But what if we’re just ones and zeros in a supercomputer, programmed by some teenage wunderalien who has nothing better to do?
In other words, you may have been designing, preparing, and running fake events your whole (simulated) life!
Now you’re aware of this, is there any reason not to create fake events?
Unless of course you, dear reader, are fake too.
Hello? Is there anybody there?
Hello?
Hmmmm… aren’t there already “fake attendees”? I signed up for an industry meeting under the badly written post by a speaker that the session, in which I was interested, was going to be simulcast. Since there was not charge to attend this hosted-buyer event, my name then went on the reg list. It’s a bit like organizations touting their ‘reach’ v. membership. Reach includes those who access their websites or are on their e-mail or mailing lists. Organizations that use stock photos to market isn’t new. They imply that the speakers will be diverse and if one doesn’t a) read the list or b) know who they are, it’s all what’s ever been.
If people would hold anyone accountable, it might change. Will that change?
It probably won’t change. But the report of conference organizers creating fake women speakers with fake credentials—a step beyond stock photos— spurred me to take “fake” to the ultimate conclusion.