Skip Navigation

Is there a term for something like Imposter Syndrome, but instead feeling like it’s other people conspiring to give you an illusory taste of success with intent to pull it away and screw you over?

It’s like feeling as if you’re in the Always Sunny episode “The Gang Broke Dee”, wherein the gang go to great lengths to trick Dee into thinking that she is a successful and respected comedienne, only for them to reveal that it was all a charade to belittle her more.

9 comments
  • I guess that sounds like trust issues with some paranoid tendencies?

  • It almost sounds like a kind of social paranoia. Pretty common among kids that get bullied a lot (when another well-meaning kid is nice, the bullied kid responds aggressively, assuming the nice kid is trying to set them up). Not sure if there's a more specific term though.

  • I think that's just called capitalism.

    For an actual answer, I'd turn to the idiom of dangling a carrot which evokes the idea of an animal chasing a carrot being held out in front of it on a stick by its own rider, unable to reach the carrot since it moves forward as they do, but it swings momentarily towards them creating the illusion of progress, so they continue chasing it forward anyway.

    Edit: not to be confused with the very similar sounding idiom of "carrot and stick" in which the stick implies punishment.

9 comments