Bamsthetics Design

Fake it until you make it. I woke up this morning to an insane design twitter drama. I follow many designers for inspiration but I severely underutilize X so I didn’t know who this guy was. A few days ago @nicogarcia popped up on my timeline for the first time after his account blew up when he posted a $28,000 payout from X. Something that would certainly be @0x45o’s wet dream. His profile had all the “ingredients:” ✅ SF lore ✅ Former Meta designer ✅ Posting job offers, his comments filled with jr designers hungry for work ✅ Sharing five digit earnings Then this morning @i_amnajaved called him out for not paying her. He then posted a screenshot of a $100 payment for a responsive site with a caption that enraged everyone “I was so mesmerized by her great work I forgot to pay her.” All sorts of designers came out with receipts of the dude not paying and hustling designers for lower rates. Offering $250 for a full responsive site with 6 pages (like whaaat?!). Then a quick look at his Linkedin and previous posts and all the dots get connected: 👎 He’s not based in SF. I’m in LA and he offers discovery calls at 4am my time… 👎 His big $ payments seem to actually be Uruguayan Pesos (same $ symbol) $1 USD = $40 Uruguayan Pesos 👎 He farms engagement through job offers he doesn’t follow through. 👎 Exploits young designers from other foreign countries. 👎 His work at @Meta is unverifiable. But he lists working at FB 2013-14 and Whatsapp 2022-23 both positions in Latin America. What’s icky is they were a decade apart. Why am I posting this? As a reminder to myself that anyone can manufacture an online identity. Use the right keywords, farm engagement, and build your status. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. You have to be completely delusional to succeed. Faking it until you make it is not an option, you have to believe the life you want. The problem comes when people don’t come through. When what they’re doing is try to cheat their way to success by not putting in the hours or not developing the talent. Be careful out there, designers. Let’s take care of each other and lead with respect for ourselves and the craft.