It has been revealed that a student, herein referred to as John Doe, previously presumed to be “artsy” and “hip,” is, in fact, a budding venture capitalist.
Doe had been frequently spotted around campus holding, in an attempt to pass as an art student and gain creative clout, a bag emblazoned with the Rhode Island School of Design logo. Observers noted that he often went so far as to also wear Doc Martens and turtlenecks, cart around large-scale drawing pads, and mumble moodily about his ongoing “masterwork.”
Doe was able to maintain appearances for the first few weeks of classes, though people noted how careful he was to always have the logo on the RISD bag facing outward. Suspicions began to arise when peers discovered he had both never heard of the RISD Museum and failed to understand that “canvas” could refer to something besides the Instructure grading platform.
“At first I thought it was weird that I had never seen him go down College Hill, but I figured maybe he was just interested in RISD and VISA classes and hadn’t taken any yet,” one confused classmate said. “But then I asked him if he wanted to go over to List with me, and, in response, he showed me his to-do list. And all the tasks on it were, like, ‘create hedge fund’ and ‘research quant internships’.”
“I personally had my suspicions early on, but when he confused a tube of paint for a tube of toothpaste, I knew for sure something was off,” said one insider, who resides in the same residence hall as Doe and is also an APMA-Econ concentrator. “His attempts at acting artsy just didn’t hold up,” they continued. “When I ran into him in the laundry room, he was holding a textbook about ordinary differential equations. I had to investigate. I asked him his thoughts on Surrealism, and he just responded by talking about how surreal it was how great his stocks were doing that week!”
Now that Doe’s true leanings have been revealed, the question of his motivation remains. Observers can merely speculate, though one expert encourages sympathy: “It can be hard at a place like Brown, where people are so creative and idealistic, to admit that your biggest goal in life is to meet the guy from The Wolf of Wall Street. I think we should feel bad for Doe; this is a classic case of peer pressure.”
So, there you have it: take care to pity the starving artist, as long as they’re an artist of disguise.
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