The rise of the fake humble, woke liberals and pretend socialist on this forum and in finance

I'm not sure how you guys will perceive this post but please hear me out.

As a person working in IB/Restructuring, I have always felt that us finance people are better off as the villains or anti-heroes of society. No matter what we do, society will always see us as the bad guys - greedy, privileged and arrogant.

I am perfectly fine with this and we should embrace the anti-hero role because that is our true nature/intention. We went into finance not to make the world a better place but to make a lot of MONEY! 

However, recently I have noticed especially on this forum, a lot of "liberals" who go on about how we need higher taxes, more regulation, more diversity, help the poor and all those other socialist leaning views. Also, many banks are now promoting liberal causes like diversity hiring and posting BLM content on their social media. This got me thinking.

Is the world of finance changing? Are we finally shifting away from that Ivy League, Wolf of Wall Street and Finance Hardo elitist attitude? Are bankers finally growing some empathy for others?

After a while of thinking, I have come to the conclusion that NO nothing has changed, we are still the same - greedy, egotistic and elitist. The only thing that changed is how we behave on the outside to appease others but nothing has changed inside. This has led to something I call "fake humble" and "woke rich privileged liberals".

For example, I know many people in the industry who are epic douchebags. They treat their team like trash and abuse co-workers but guess what, they also happen to be on the board of some charity organization. It is pretty clear that these people are padding their resume to hide the fact that they are awful people deep down. This got me thinking about Adolf Hitler. He was evil yet in contrast, he seem to really care about animals and was a vegetarian.

Here's another example, some one I know is a millionaire who supports higher taxes despite the fact that he pays his accountant heaps to help lower his taxable income to as little as possible. So essentially, he is implying that everyone should pay higher taxes except him. In fact, this is very common among liberals who support higher taxes until they have to pay it.

So, I continued looking into why people behave this way. Why seek a prestigious and elitist career path like IB but also trying to spread liberal ideologies which contrasts your career. It finally hit me. A lot of people on this forum are trying to look HUMBLE and come across as being the GOOD GUYS in society. Well it is clearly all FAKE and people in society sees right through you. Why do you think people refused to listen to the media, corporations and celebrities in the 2016 election? 

I can tell by the tone in which you people on this forum write that it is clear a lot of you guys come from wealthy families and are trying desperately to hide this. That is why you support these woke ideologies, to overcompensate and make it look as if you worked hard to get here. Chances are, your father works in finance; he bought you a home, paid for your education and was your referral when you were recruiting but he worked long hours and was never really present in your life. Because of this, you become rebellious and tried to seek a different path but failed miserably hence you end up in finance just like him. You resent your family so you try to be different hence you adopt this fake liberal personality to show that you are different and "not like the other bankers". In reality this is a coping mechanism in your mind to help you deal with all the stress of life and trying to be better than your parents who had lots of money but never really spent any time with you.

Also, it seems like a lot of males in finance are being liberal/supporting Democrats only to impress women in the hopes of getting laid. Unfortunately, due to working long hours, most of you guys have not had the time to develop your personality, your game and have gotten fat. Do you really think earning a lot of money means you are a High Value Male? Yes earning a lot of money is key to being high value but it is not everything. There is more to a High value Male than just money. Most chicks only date us bankers because of our money; they don't really respect or understand our work because it is both complicated and boring. They would rather date pro-athletes because they are more cool and are more fun to hang out with. This sad realization leads the modern day banker to become a "simp". He knows he can't compete for women against the alpha-male athlete, hence he makes an attempt to relate to her by adopting a liberal political view; the good old "if I be nice to her, maybe she'll touch it". Hence, your girlfriend probably resents you the same way you resent your father for being boring and never present (despite the fact that he paid for your education and helped you land that IB internship).

As a whole, what I'm trying to say is that I feel a lot of people on this forum are trying to look unique and special hence why you support these liberal ideologies. You want to stand out from your fellow colleagues because in reality most of us bankers are boring robots who wear the same looking outfits, talk the same, act the same and spend countless hours doing meaningless work which means we have no hobbies and no personality.

My final message is to stop being fake. Everybody sees through your fake persona. Just watch the scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman pretends to be a liberal by talking about ending Apartheid, promoting equal rights for women and helping the poor. He delivers this line in such a fake manner, and it is very clear to the audience that he doesn't really care about these causes. That is how I see most of you people.

At the end of the day, I work in finance (Restructuring) and I am perfectly fine with society seeing me as a greedy super villain who only cares about money. Society's perspective on Wall Street will never change. So, in response, we should embrace the villain/anti-hero role. We need to go back to the good old Wolf of Wall Street days where bankers were proud to be rich and willing to flaunt their wealth. Who cares what society thinks. Most people are mediocre and remain poor no matter how much the government spends on welfare and education. 

Well that is the end of my rant. I genuinely would like to see your perspective on this.

 
Most Helpful

You think you know a lot. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'm not sure how you guys will perceive this post but please hear me out.

As a person working in IB/Restructuring, I have always felt that us finance people are better off as the villains or anti-heroes of society. No matter what we do, society will always see us as the bad guys - greedy, privileged and arrogant.

I am perfectly fine with this and we should embrace the anti-hero role because that is our true nature/intention. We went into finance not to make the world a better place but to make a lot of MONEY! 

However, recently I have noticed especially on this forum, a lot of "liberals" who go on about how we need higher taxes, more regulation, more diversity, help the poor and all those other socialist leaning views. Also, many banks are now promoting liberal causes like diversity hiring and posting BLM content on their social media. This got me thinking.

Is the world of finance changing? Are we finally shifting away from that Ivy League, Wolf of Wall Street and Finance Hardo elitist attitude? Are bankers finally growing some empathy for others?

After a while of thinking, I have come to the conclusion that NO nothing has changed, we are still the same - greedy, egotistic and elitist. The only thing that changed is how we behave on the outside to appease others but nothing has changed inside. This has led to something I call "fake humble" and "woke rich privileged liberals".

For example, I know many people in the industry who are epic douchebags. They treat their team like trash and abuse co-workers but guess what, they also happen to be on the board of some charity organization. It is pretty clear that these people are padding their resume to hide the fact that they are awful people deep down. This got me thinking about Adolf Hitler. He was evil yet in contrast, he seem to really care about animals and was a vegetarian.

Here's another example, some one I know is a millionaire who supports higher taxes despite the fact that he pays his accountant heaps to help lower his taxable income to as little as possible. So essentially, he is implying that everyone should pay higher taxes except him. In fact, this is very common among liberals who support higher taxes until they have to pay it.

So, I continued looking into why people behave this way. Why seek a prestigious and elitist career path like IB but also trying to spread liberal ideologies which contrasts your career. It finally hit me. A lot of people on this forum are trying to look HUMBLE and come across as being the GOOD GUYS in society. Well it is clearly all FAKE and people in society sees right through you. Why do you think people refused to listen to the media, corporations and celebrities in the 2016 election? 

I can tell by the tone in which you people on this forum write that it is clear a lot of you guys come from wealthy families and are trying desperately to hide this. That is why you support these woke ideologies, to overcompensate and make it look as if you worked hard to get here. Chances are, your father works in finance; he bought you a home, paid for your education and was your referral when you were recruiting but he worked long hours and was never really present in your life. Because of this, you become rebellious and tried to seek a different path but failed miserably hence you end up in finance just like him. You resent your family so you try to be different hence you adopt this fake liberal personality to show that you are different and "not like the other bankers". In reality this is a coping mechanism in your mind to help you deal with all the stress of life and trying to be better than your parents who had lots of money but never really spent any time with you.

Also, it seems like a lot of males in finance are being liberal/supporting Democrats only to impress women in the hopes of getting laid. Unfortunately, due to working long hours, most of you guys have not had the time to develop your personality, your game and have gotten fat. Do you really think earning a lot of money means you are a High Value Male? Yes earning a lot of money is key to being high value but it is not everything. There is more to a High value Male than just money. Most chicks only date us bankers because of our money; they don't really respect or understand our work because it is both complicated and boring. They would rather date pro-athletes because they are more cool and are more fun to hang out with. This sad realization leads the modern day banker to become a "simp". He knows he can't compete for women against the alpha-male athlete, hence he makes an attempt to relate to her by adopting a liberal political view; the good old "if I be nice to her, maybe she'll touch it". Hence, your girlfriend probably resents you the same way you resent your father for being boring and never present (despite the fact that he paid for your education and helped you land that IB internship).

As a whole, what I'm trying to say is that I feel a lot of people on this forum are trying to look unique and special hence why you support these liberal ideologies. You want to stand out from your fellow colleagues because in reality most of us bankers are boring robots who wear the same looking outfits, talk the same, act the same and spend countless hours doing meaningless work which means we have no hobbies and no personality.

My final message is to stop being fake. Everybody sees through your fake persona. Just watch the scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman pretends to be a liberal by talking about ending Apartheid, promoting equal rights for women and helping the poor. He delivers this line in such a fake manner, and it is very clear to the audience that he doesn't really care about these causes. That is how I see most of you people.

At the end of the day, I work in finance (Restructuring) and I am perfectly fine with society seeing me as a greedy super villain who only cares about money. Society's perspective on Wall Street will never change. So, in response, we should embrace the villain/anti-hero role. We need to go back to the good old Wolf of Wall Street days where bankers were proud to be rich and willing to flaunt their wealth. Who cares what society thinks. Most people are mediocre and remain poor no matter how much the government spends on welfare and education. 

Well that is the end of my rant. I genuinely would like to see your perspective on this.

I have no shame admitting I like smelling my own farts as much as the next guy but even I gotta say this is a bit much. You're not completely wrong though.

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly" - Robert A. Wilson | "If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

Here I am back on the toilet looking for interesting WSO content. This has some aspects of interesting discussion, but there are way too many over generalizations and just idk... weirdness?

This idea about shitty people overcompensating though... incredibly true. Just because someone is evil doesn’t mean they can’t do things that are ‘nice’ or good, or further things that seem so.

Abusers who put on a fake charm or try to get people to like them, etc. I think people who are kind and genuine are easy to spot because they stick out so much and are rare. Like 5% of people are like that and it fucking sucks because I thought intelligent people would understand what life is really about (what you make of it, and being happy and content with what you have in the moment ‘more’ than your ambitions or chase for things you don’t have).

Idk; this still rung some notes for me that I want to think about too. What’s the chase for, and how we can be more genuinely benevolent or kind. There’s 1 thing that I do that people think I’m weird (it’s like a practice of selflessness) that I can’t say without revealing identity but it’s my one way to show I do things that are genuinely kind helpful or good to society even if no one cares. And even that can be considered stroking my ego. This is fucked. What’s the difference between good ego and bad ego?

 
undefined:

There really is only o.e difference btw modern day "liberals" and "conservatives".

"Conservatives" are assholes and they don't hide it. "Liberals" are assholes too but they pretend not to be.

This.

I’d much rather work and live with transparent assholes. At least that way you have as much information as possible to make appropriate decisions.

 

I truly don't care how society perceives me, and certainly couldn't give a fuck how people feel about other people in finance. Anyone who see's you as a villain is delusional, and most people genuinely don't ever even think about you. Most people I grew up around who know what I do and understand that I will make a lot of money are happy for me. Not everyone is a dick, and people had every right to be pissed during the recession a decade ago. No offense but like you're not important. Jamie Dimon is. Like you are a fucking analyst, you're not in the mob. And even fuckin capos help people out. Like when did helping people poorer and less fortunate than us become bad? I work at the vets center a lot when I can--am I doing this to overcompensate for a fucking small dick or something? Or am I just doing this because I think that we should treat our vets better in this country. There are flaws in the VA that could be fixed with increased funding, and I'd be more than happy to pay like a couple buck more in tax to help that. I really don't understand why you needed to make this post, and I think it doesn't make a lot of sense. Like we get it--you saw American psycho and want to be like that. Well then go for it. There is absolutely no problem with being proud of your accomplishments and reveling in it. But you call people fake for caring about social issues while this entire post screams fake. I just don't get it.

Dayman?
 

How many liberal topics do you see on this site?  Some of the most vocal liberal voices on here are people like like Alt-ctr-left and Cre who are former republicans.  Not one liberal voice on this site supports socialism, including me. 

 

That's because most "liberals" are fake liberals are either 1) who resort to calling someone racist when that person doesn't agree with them or 2) who just virtue signals to somehow convince themselves they're better than others.

 

You must think that the "liberals" are lying when expose certain views.  You might want to consider the following: some people have a different view from you   I do not say anything here that I do not believe.  I do not create topics to get SBs and I do not care about MS.   I know that my view might be unpopular here but that is okay with me. 

 

I think he’s deducing that from the four people whose posts suggest that they won’t be voting for Trump. 
 

I hold, and have always held, fiscally conservative and socially moderate views. Those are important to me, but not as important as acknowledging that the current President is a classist and racist buffoon who does not know the first thing about empathy. There is absolutely no reason for him to want to run a country whose citizens he largely hates other than to cater to his fragile ego and/or avoid prosecution. And even though I fall into his model demographic, it would be morally reprehensible of me to turn a blind eye on the reality for those less fortunate. I can’t, in good conscience, support whatever the hell that circus is right now. 
 

Policies extend beyond taxes and welfare. Being concerned about the plights of other people who don’t resemble myself does not make me a virtue signaling socialist. Decrying the current administration and acknowledging that racism is alive and well doesn’t mean that I am a bleeding heart liberal, it just means that I am a logical human being who believes in ethics and, ya know, democracy. Perhaps you will one day grow up and realize that

 

With all due respect, Trump has denounced White Nationalists dozens of times. You can find YouTube and Twitter videos of this pretty easily. 2019 was also the best year of wage growth in recorded history, and disproportionally so for women, minorities, and the poorly educated.

Even if he is racist, his economic policies sure don't seem to have racist effects. And though he is poorly spoken, he has done more for the Middle East than any president in recent memory... Just some thoughts.

 

TL:DR - "Is Finance / Wall Street actually becoming more Liberal or is it mainly just Conservatives "acting" liberal to alter people's perception of them. OP thinks it's the latter"

Funny because I'm willing to bet if you went around asking everyone about this 99% of them wouldn't give a flying fuck what the rest of society "viewed" them as for working in Finance.

 

This post is basically saying you can’t work in Finance and care about having a better, more equitable world. Which is wrong. Coming from a poor background, Finance is a means to an end. I need to have a career in the beginning that will support my family at home and bring stability but I ultimately want to move out of banking into a career that more directly impacts the world positively. Also, as much as banking negatively affects society, it is also an industry that helps the world develop. It is very possible for a real liberal to rationalize being a banker. Liberals can also value getting rich btw. One can be liberal without agreeing with all liberal values. It all lies on a spectrum.

 
Controversial

There's an easy way to spot the hypocrite. When you have a white liberal going on his usual rant about needing more URM in C-Suites, tell him: ''why don't you step aside and make room for them?''.

Liberals have notoriously no skin in the game. Everything they preach has downsides on the rest of society, never on them personally. They reject the concept of personal responsibility in favor of those of systemic oppression. Why? Because if you grew up in a wealthy family in San Francisco, you had a free ride in life, did everything right, schools, jobs etc., however you look around you and the system that you benefit from ultimately cripples a large section of society. You are keeping down the poor, while benefiting inherited wealth and parental social connections. So, how do you sleep well at night? That's where the woke cult comes into place. Benefiting from a high status is not enough for a liberal. He wants the benefit and the praise. He wants to feel he deserves that. He wants to be hailed as the one whose expertise makes the world a better place. 

For the upper class white liberal, it's all a matter of narcissism and ego. This is why they eagerly embrace green agenda. They pick a cause that's basically good on paper, set themselves as moral arbiters and then demand everyone else to be on par with standards that the liberals themselves don't really keep up with. E.g. reducing animal meat from human diets (guess who will afford it? The upper class white liberal), net zero carbon emission economies (except for those white libs who fly in jets), diversity-equity-inclusion, #me too. Has anyone ever noticed how consistent sexual scandals are in uber-liberal fields like entertainment? Or how many sexual offenders are among ''antifa''?

It's all about looking good on their own media, earn the praise of their own social class because that allows advancement through scoring social points, while everything else behind the facade is a pile of fuming shit and the suburbs are on fire. 

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Spot on. The wokes do not care about actually being virtuous. That they appear virtuous to others is what matters.

 

Most people are too weak to form their own opinions based on logic and fact and must succumb to the group think of their idiotic peers and liberal professors. A lot of these woke people should go observe the DNC’s platform at work in Venezuela to see if that’s what they want for the future.

 

It’s so funny when conservatives think their opinions are airtight arguments composed of pure “facts and logic”, when literally all human beings operate first by feelings/subconscious intuition and then rationalizing. The intellectual arrogance is actually grotesque and childlike

 

I’m not sure if you’ve witnessed riots similar to some of the instances related to BLM demonstrations, but I saw them in person while visiting downtown Baltimore in 2015. It is scary shit. The cops we spoke to all were disgusted with the Mayor because the Mayor told them to stand down and basically let the rioters destroy as much of Baltimore as they want. People were ripped out of cars and beaten/robbed a street over from us when we were trying to escape the mayhem.

That same Mayor went on to help lead the DNC. She did so well she got promoted by her handlers.

Call me ignorant if you want. I don’t give a shit. I live in a safe red suburb area outside of a major city. You and your friends can die in what unfolds in your neighborhood that Democrats turn into Mogandishu and I’ll just watch that shit like reality tv :). That is “Change You Can Believe In!”

 

I agree with the majority of your points but somehow you still sound like a weirdo throughout this. Try being less bitter about it, and laugh at the absurdity instead. It's a lot more fun that way imo

 

This post is whack but I will say that there are tons of people who fake being liberal because they are scared of their own reputation being permanently damaged. At least in college, if you express even a slightly conservative viewpoint during a discussion in a club or in class, you get absolutely chewed out. That shit is scary, and I've faked liberal in public situations just to make sure my world doesn't collapse.

 

Yeah, younger people are more liberal than the older generations and schools in big cities are going to be more liberal than schools in the south and mid west.  You have three choices:

1 Defend your positions

2. Go to a school in a rural area in the south or midwest

3. STFU

There is nothing wrong with having a view that is different from those of other people unless it is something that is completely bat shit crazy, and even then, we do have freedom of speech.   

 

I go to a school in the south and it’s still very woke outside of the business school. 

 

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