LAWS OF HYPE
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Quick Reference Guide to the Laws


There are four phases of a hype campaign, each consisting of 12 Laws of Hype. 

Phase 1: Build a base. This consist of Laws #1-12.

Law #1: Fool Yourself to Fool Others: You must first delude yourself before you try and fool other people.

Law #2: Choose an Industry with a Large Total Addressable Market: It is paramount you choose a hype-vehicle that has limited (or no) current revenue and has an unproven business model, but has seemingly large revenue potential. 

Law #3: Stand for an Ideal: Pick a fight seemingly based on moral terms, creating a false "us versus them" dynamic.

Law #4: Tell a Really Big Lie: Simplify your story down to one lie and keep repeating it ad nauseum until it is the prevailing consensus mythology and most everyone accepts it as fact.

Law #5: Emphasize Meaningless Metrics: Condition investors to focus on metrics that are unrelated to value creation or true fundamentals like cash flow. 

Law #6: Obscure Data: Maintain flexibility to shuffle things around between segments when things turn ugly, only use selective transparency when the metrics are in your favor. 

Law #7: Give Un-falsifiable Forecasts: Increase the dependence of your investment thesis on "unfalsifiable" beliefs through vague, far-off forecasts.

Law #8: Paint a Rosy Picture: Pretend it is all positive, regardless of the actual outcomes you should eternally forecast rainbows and puppy dogs. 

Law #9: Blitzkrieg News Cycle: In the early stages of your hype campaign, increase the frequency of your press releases. 

Law #10: Spoon Feed the Sell Side: Take advantage of the sell side's feeble minds and spoon feed them whatever talking points you want parroted to the broader investment community. 

Law #11: Simplify Your Narrative: Weave such a simple narrative that every idiot can regurgitate it and force them to unknowingly disregard any empirical evidence; he who tells the simplest story wins the hype.

Law #12: Downplay Competitors: Downplay all legitimate competition or avoid 
mentioning it...ever. 

Phase 2: Escalate the Hype. Laws #13-24

Law #13: Blame Unverifiable Exogenous Factors: Utilize exogenous macro forces or unnamed third parties as foolproof and unverifiable scapegoats for your own idiosyncratic operating performance weakness. 

Law #14: Minimize Disclosure: Do not disclose terms of partnerships, M&A deals, or even operational results. 

Law #15: Give Non-answer Answers: Do not answer tough questions directly, instead ramble on about unrelated issues, or answer the question that you wished you were asked.

Law #16: All that is Old is New Again: Take key phrases from other cult leaders and hype masters verbatim and make them your own. 

Law #17: Maximize Use of Superlatives and Exciting Exaggerations: Fill your speech with superlatives, exaggerations, rhetorical devices, and poetical excitement. 

Law #18: Maintain a Sense of Momentum: Keep hyping something new that is always just beyond the point of visibility. 

Law #19: Befriend the Bankers: Maximize the number of investment banks covering your stock. 

Law #20: Conquer the Conference Circuit:  Attend as many Wall Street sponsored conferences as possible, if you are not a good public speaker or are uncomfortable lying in person, send a surrogate. 

Law #21: Compare Apples to Oranges: Make bogus comparisons between your company and your product to extremely successful outliers. 

Law #22: Bedeck the Banal: Embellish descriptions and phrasing of even the most mundane of products, services and metrics you discuss. 


Law #23: Create Pseudo-Events: Plant news stories with a primary purpose of being reported on. 


Law #24: Send False Signals: Make a small token purchase of your company's shares as a psychological gesture that gives the lemmings fodder for more blind purchases. 

Phase 3: Laws #24-36

Law #25: Always Take Credit: Take credit for good things you don't cause. Put out a well-timed press release that can be generally vague about anything that can be perceived as a positive business development right around the time your stock price is surging from a short squeeze.

Law #26: Let Their Imaginations Run Wild: Tease your following with something distant and abstract, yet positive sounding. 

Law #27: When the Spell Breaks, Go Nuclear: If people start to snap out of their hypnotic trance and your power to control the stock begins to fade you must Go Nuclear. 





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