Brandolini's Law

Brandolini's Law (the "bullshit asymmetry principle") states that the amount of energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude larger than the energy needed to produce it. A false claim takes seconds to make; debunking it requires evidence, context, and effort — and even then, the correction rarely travels as far as the original claim. For founders, this applies to misinformation about your company, bad-faith criticism, competitors' misleading claims, and internal rumours. The asymmetry means you can't win by refuting everything. You need a strategy for when to engage, when to ignore, and how to make truth travel faster than noise.

Accept the asymmetry and plan around it. Don't try to refute every false claim — you'll exhaust yourself and amplify the noise. Instead: build a strong default narrative (proactive truth), pick battles where correction has high leverage (material claims, key audiences), and create systems that make truth travel fast (trusted channels, pre-built responses). On defence, make the cost of producing nonsense higher by demanding evidence and holding bad actors accountable.

Brandolini's Law: misinformation is cheap to produce and expensive to refute. Don't try to debunk everything. Build proactive narrative, pick high-leverage battles, and invest in channels that make truth travel faster than noise.