The Cargo Cult (or you are not a watch)

World War II. American troops needed military bases in the Pacific to attack Japan, mainly. So the US started building installations on small islands that were used as logistical resupply points for the troops.

But those islands weren't uninhabited. There were entire populations who watched the "white man" arrive with a lot of technology for the time. Planes, ships, tanks, cars, everything that was unthinkable to them showed up out of nowhere in their small communities.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", quoting Arthur C. Clarke and his third law. And those planes, ships, tanks and cars were magic from the Gods for those inhabitants.

A parenthesis here, because I can't talk about Clarke without quoting the 3 laws, which are a work of art and a delight to think about:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

But let's get back to World War II. The indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia started seeing those American soldiers riding steel horses and flying through the air in iron birds. And those iron birds had a singular characteristic - they would fly over the island and, opening their bellies, drop cargo full of food that was picked up by the soldiers and also by the inhabitants who by then were already collaborating with the army. It was the army's resupply logistics working....

To the natives, the iron birds gifted the people with food, which came in boxes and landed softly out of the air, held up by parachutes. And they started learning the customs of those white men. They would stand facing each other and salute. They mimicked the radio operators talking from their towers. They followed the rituals believing that was what made the magic happen.

Then the war ends. And the white man leaves the islands, back to America, as fast as they arrived...

We move a bit further in time and decades later, when a white man returns to one of those islands he witnesses a rather curious thing - the local inhabitants had built planes out of bamboo. They marched, in a formation similar to a troop. They worshipped a God who, one day, would go back to sending iron birds full of food (cargo) to them.

They waited for the birds to come back, but they never came again...

They were doing everything right. The salutes, the marches, but the result didn't seem to be the same. The cargo never came down from the skies for them again.

You've probably seen this image a few dozen times. Steve Jobs, pensive, with his glasses, his black turtleneck, his jeans. Always the same outfit. Always the same genius, launching disruptive products that changed our lives.

And how do you become a genius like Jobs? Maybe by being obsessive, controlling about the product creation process? Maybe by completely ignoring users because they didn't know what they wanted? Or maybe by treating your people in a, let's say, particular way?

• "You're a bozo/idiot." A recurring insult for people he considered incompetent.
• "Everything you've done in your life is shit; so why don't you come work with me?" Attributed to the invitation made to Bob Belleville.
• "The only problem with Microsoft is that it has no taste."

Cut to 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, 19 years old, drops out of Stanford and founds Theranos. The pitch was that with a small blood sample (a small drop, to be more precise), a machine would be able to run hundreds of medical tests. In 2014 Theranos had a valuation of US$10bn and Elizabeth became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

Everything went wrong for Theranos. Unfortunately, to humanity's sorrow, the product didn't work. Elizabeth was charged with fraud in one of the most notorious corporate scandals in modern history.

But it was all there. Elizabeth copied the entire formula:

• Dropped out of college (like Jobs);
• Vision of an impossible product (like the iPhone);
• The magnetism in the presentations (Apple's incredible presentations);
• The secrecy around the product being developed (secrecy until the last second is an Apple trademark);
• Even the black turtleneck!

Theranos' magic machine never worked. The employees who challenged the CEO's results were fired and silenced. The founder's dictatorship inside the company took her, in the end, to prison for fraud.

The curious thing is that a few dozen venture capital funds, family offices and large retailers poured mountains of money into Theranos, ignoring every obvious sign that the business wouldn't work.

Maybe those funds, and Elizabeth herself, were praying to bamboo planes that would never deliver the cargo. Just like saluting and praying to bamboo planes doesn't make food arrive by magic, copying Jobs' style doesn't make you a genius who's going to build the next iPhone.

Cut again, now to 2026.

That "successful" influencer shows up in your timeline, with a luxury watch, selling a financial success mentorship or teaching you how to succeed as an entrepreneur.

A parenthesis here is that he was probably never successful in his own business, but became a reference in teaching others how to do what he never did.

The straw plane on the wrist works as a validation proxy - in a feed video or photo, waving the wrist with a hand on the steering wheel replaces audited balance sheets, income statements or business references. The watch works as a visual stamp that the method works.

Spending on a watch isn't seen by these operators as luxury consumption, but as an investment in sales machinery: it's the tool that makes the unsuspecting audience buy US$997 courses on how to get rich working less.

Yes, Yes, Yes. Rolex, Rolex, Rolex.

You are not a watch. And a watch is not going to make you different.

And the bamboo planes are still on the ground.