I am leaning against a sticky granite countertop, swirling a gin and tonic that tastes mostly like flat tonic and regret, when the person to my left leans in. The music is loud enough to vibrate the ice cubes in my glass, but not loud enough to drown out the inevitable opening gambit of the professional class. ‘So,’ they shout over a remix of a song I didn’t like in 2001, ‘what do you do?’ I feel that familiar, sharp twitch in my upper back-the one Grace M., a body language coach I met at a seminar years ago, would describe as a ‘defensive micro-shrug.’

I tell them I am a Digital Prophet. Their eyes widen. They look impressed, perhaps even a little intimidated, and they spend the next 41 seconds nodding as if they’ve just met a secular saint. I spend the rest of the night nursing my drink and praying to a god I don’t believe in that they don’t ask what a Digital Prophet actually does. Because the truth is, I’m not entirely sure myself, and my daily routine consists primarily of formatting spreadsheets and deleting 511 unread emails from recruiters who think I’m a wizard.

The Language of Obscuration

There is a specific kind of vertigo that comes with having a job title that sounds like it was generated by a malfunctioning AI programmed solely on self-help books and LinkedIn thought-leadership posts. We live in an era where ‘Growth Strategist’ is just code for ‘I send cold emails until my soul feels like a raisin,’ and ‘Customer Success Guru’ is a polite way of saying ‘I apologize to angry people on the phone for 41 hours a week.’

This isn’t just a quirk of the tech industry; it’s a systemic rebranding of labor designed to obscure the reality of the work being performed. If we called the roles what they actually were-‘Database Janitor,’ ‘Schedule Coordinator,’ or ‘Professional Apologist’-the prestige would evaporate. And with that prestige goes the ability for companies to underpay us while making us feel like we are part of a revolutionary vanguard.

The Physical Toll of the Lie

I remember Grace M. telling me that the body never lies, even when the business card does. She pointed out that when people describe their inflated titles, they often touch their necks or adjust their collars, a subconscious reaction to the literal weight of the lie.

Last week, I spent 31 minutes trying to explain the mechanics of cryptocurrency to my uncle, diving into the weeds of decentralized ledgers and proof-of-work protocols, only to realize halfway through that I was just using complex jargon to hide the fact that I don’t actually understand why a digital picture of a monkey is worth more than a house. It’s the same energy. We use these titles to bridge the gap between our desire for significance and the mundane nature of our actual tasks. We want to be prophets; we are actually just data entry clerks with better dental plans.

“The body instinctively guards against perceived threat. Inflated titles create psychic dissonance-the body recognizes the mismatch between the label and the reality, resulting in chronic, low-grade tension.”

The Director Deluge

This disconnect creates a peculiar kind of organizational chaos. When titles are untethered from function, it becomes impossible to understand who is actually responsible for anything. I once worked in an office with 11 different ‘Directors’ in a department of 21 people.

When everyone is a leader, no one is a doer. This ambiguity hinders collaboration because you spend more time navigating the ego-landmines of someone’s ‘Principal’ designation than actually solving the problem at hand.

The Price of Perceived Status

I’ll admit, I’ve played the game too. I once argued for 61 minutes with a HR manager to change my title from ‘Content Writer’ to ‘Narrative Designer’ because I thought it would help me get a car loan. I criticized the system while actively leveraging it for a tiny slice of perceived status. We are all complicit in this semantic fraud.

The Cost of Hyper-Specialization

Grace M. once observed that the most confident people in any room are usually the ones with the simplest titles. The ‘Plumber,’ the ‘Surgeon,’ the ‘Pilot.’ They don’t need to wrap their labor in layers of conceptual fluff because their value is self-evident. There is, however, a massive amount of guesswork in what an ‘Engagement Ninja’ does when your quarterly revenue is tanking.

When every role must be ‘Senior’ or ‘Lead’ or ‘Specialist,’ we lose the ability to just be ‘Good.’ We are forced into narrow silos of fabricated expertise. The title demands a level of performance that the actual work cannot sustain.

The Quiet Power of Accuracy

We need to demand roles that are defined by what we do, not how we want to be perceived. If my job is to update spreadsheets and send emails, then let me be an ‘Email and Spreadsheet Coordinator.’ There is a quiet, honest power in that.

It allows for real career progression because you can actually measure growth when the starting point isn’t a nebulous cloud of buzzwords. And maybe, just maybe, it allows us to answer that dreaded party question without the micro-shrug and the gin-soaked anxiety.