Posted: 7/14/2025
I got into accounting thinking it was the language of truth. A system of checks and balances. Add up the debits, match the credits, and you get reality.
But that was before I realized how many of those checks bounce when power gets involved.
Here’s the part they don’t tell you when you’re studying for your CPA: the numbers might be accurate, but the story behind them is bought and sold. Materiality isn’t an objective threshold. It’s a moving target. A weapon. A blanket to smother truth when it’s inconvenient.
T-Mobile charges you for services they don’t deliver and calls it a billing cycle. Forward-billing and no refund? That’s not just customer abuse — that’s premature revenue recognition, underreported liabilities, and false operating cash flow. But because it’s “policy,” they get away with it.
Policy, like materiality, is just another word for “we made this up and you can’t stop us.”
And the worst part? You know it. I know it. The SEC knows it. The Big Four definitely know it. But unless it threatens shareholder returns or causes a public stink, it gets swept under the rug like last quarter’s ghost assets.
So yeah, I’m pissed. Not because the ledger is broken — but because it’s precise and misleading. Because I was taught this system would bring order. And all it’s done is give me a front-row seat to how the powerful tilt the table and dare us to call it level.
Accounting could be sacred. But in practice, it’s a costume. A pantomime of fairness stitched together with loopholes and half-truths. And every time we shrug and say “that’s just how it works,” we become part of the lie.
Well, fuck that. I still believe in numbers. But I believe in truth more.
Unravel the thread.