Hang Sheep's Head, Sell Dog Meat

CORE DEFINITION

The phrase describes advertising one thing and delivering another. As an analytical lens it asks what a business actually monetizes, separating the attention-grabbing offering from the one that produces revenue. The core claim is that when the label and the substance diverge, trust is being arbitraged: the seller converts reputation into short-term margin, and the buyer pays for a promise that was never intended to be kept. The qualification is that divergence is not always fraud. A platform may legitimately give away one product to sell another, and the test is whether the buyer understands the arrangement.