[astrange]

If you’re actually good I don’t think you can be called a snake oil salesman exactly.

We have people who really do amazing things but make up wild claims about how it works - magicians.

I guess if a magician actually believed what they were saying was true, that’d be some third thing.

[randomswede]

If you are selling A as A-prime, you can be a snake-oil salesman even if you are supremely skilled at A.

In Lars' case, he is from what I can see a supremely skilled instinctive archer. There are some historical documentation, from some regions ,documenting feats that Lars is capable of doing.

But, "feating" and "combat skills" are very different things (well, they are for sword disciplines, I will blithely assert the same is true in archery). Yes, both require skill. Yes, training one discipline can improve the other. but they're not the same. Just like how writing Haskell (or Lisp) can make you a better C programmer.

[isitmadeofglass]

> If you’re actually good I don’t think you can be called a snake oil salesman exactly.

Of cause you can. Every single social media body builder who’s obviously on Steroids but is claiming they got to they are by eating whatever the latest marketable product they come across(see referral link in bio) is, are snake oil salesmen’s, even if they are objectively and impossible as muscular as their viewers want to be.

Lars got really good at archery doing what every other archer does… the big dumb secret you ask? He practiced. But it’s difficult to sell pratice, even expensive one on one tutoring only gets you so far. So he invented a narrative where “Big Archery” has been conspirering since the Dark Ages to teach archery wrong, but if you follow his cult of the true archery (click link for details on the subscription pricing), then you too will instantly become an archer supreme, capable of firing several arrows through keyholes!