THE EXPOSURE OF frauds and “overreaching entrepreneurs” keeps unfolding with dizzying speed, only outpaced perhaps by our own role as an eager audience. Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, the “Tinder Swindler,” Billy McFarland, and socialite scammer Anna “Delvey” Sorokin have been given dramatic treatments in podcasts, series, and movies their real-life protagonists could only imagine in their most fevered dreams. Yet we are also more than just sideline spectators: none of their schemes could exist without us. In trying to understand where their cases lie on a continuum of self-promotion and outright fraud, we also have to evaluate their performative role and its reliance on us.