Social media has taught millions of kids to “fake it till they make it.” What nobody told them is that most people never make it. The result is an army of 14-year-olds pretending to be experts on fitness, crypto, politics, and life without having any knowledge or experience.

Influencers have learned that being early matters far more than being right, because algorithms reward novelty and anything that saturates a new niche. If you post a video about a rising shitcoin today, you’ll get more views than if you post about it next week—when its price has inevitably crashed back to near zero. Remember NFTs? All these NFT gurus have disappeared because the money flow has long dried up and with it: they hype.

Problem is: People love the hype.

So, in the race for views, jumping on hype trains becomes the bread and butter of anyone trying to blow up online as fast as possible.

But here’s the catch: you only have one reputation to lose. Once it’s gone, you’ll never get it back—just ask Jack Murphy.

The sad part is that some people really do succeed by faking it. There are those infamous twin influencers who’ve been riding the wave of low-IQ hype content since they were teenagers. And other 14-year-olds see this as a blueprint, because that one example turned into millions of dollars and supermodel girlfriends.

What they don’t see are the countless others who try the same thing, fail, and permanently stain their names in the process.

If you want real advice from someone who spent six years on YouTube just to reach 10K subscribers: be real, be honest, and never fake it. Real growth takes time. A few people blow up overnight—some are even handpicked by the powers that be. But for most of us, it takes years of daily work and authenticity to build even a small audience. And you rarely hear about that, because most people aren’t willing to stick it out for that long.

But if you are willing, you’ll be on the safe side. No one will dig up dirt on you. No one will uncover lies or fakery, because you built everything slowly, organically, and truthfully without dirt and fakes involved.

That’s exactly how I intend to handle my writing project.

So far, I’ve sold fewer than 100 copies of my personal “best-selling” novel Forever. By most standards, it’s a failure—for now. But that’s how things really work online: you’re a failure for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

Until one day, finally, you’ve turned into a success.