The Wizard of Oz
The all-powerful authority who turns out to be an ordinary man working levers behind a curtain.
Origin
From L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel and the 1939 MGM film. Dorothy and her friends โ the Scarecrow (no brain), the Tin Man (no heart), the Cowardly Lion (no courage) โ travel the yellow brick road to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard for what they think they lack. The Wizard turns out to be a Nebraska conman with a smoke machine. 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' is the line that escaped the film into universal use.
Modern usage
'The man behind the curtain' is now the standard phrase for the unimpressive reality behind a powerful facade โ magic tricks, market manipulators, AI demos, anything where someone wants you to look at the projection and not the operator.
In the wild
Pull back the curtain and the algorithm is a guy in Manila tagging photos.โ tech criticism
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