The Prequel For The Influencer

Justin wanted to earn a living. He did not try to learn a tangible skill or anything like that but decided to pursue a shady online course that randomly grabbed his attention and promised to make him earn a six-digit income without sweating. He learned how to make people make curious and click on something. He also upsold himself to buy other unreasonably costly courses that promised more income than the ones previously promised. At the end of the learning streak, He had gained three skills.

• How to gain an online presence for himself.
• How to make people curious about something.
• Your beliefs are unfalsifiable by yourself. So, never give up.

The last one may sound like it would take a lot of willpower but nope. While pursuing a physically or cognitively demanding skill, we will encounter many scenarios that ask us to give up enduring the pain. But, It is not only not hard but also very convenient not to give up something like smoking. Especially when we unfalsifiably believe that smoking is good.

Initial failures

He tried creating content that promotes the online course for commission. He created posts, videos, posters, etc. Every day he was able to create about 5 posters. But he often loses interest by not only the lack of response but also from the rude comments he gets for his posts. It pushed him to make more but he felt he needs more motivation to pursue his path. He bought another course that taught him how to listen only to the people who support us. That helped him a lot. While reading any comments that asked him to do something important or anything constructive like that, he trained himself to trash them without any guilt. His teacher famously said,

What is a constructive opinion? There are only two types of comments, supportive and unsupportive.

He lost most of the money buying courses and shady online businesses that did not sell anything. He got into debt from his family and friends.

First Trick

He wanted to get into the business called Trap Them All. It asked for $500 which he did not have. He tried saving that amount but he could not. He decided to email that fraudster instead.

I’m very eager to join your business. But I can’t find myself saving $500. If you have any work for me. I’m willing to do it for free.

He got a reply in two days.

I’m looking for an assistant. Come meet me in Lorem Ipsum coffee shop.

He was so excited. At last, he got a response from a guy who was able to set up a website and a business. He believed he will get some deep insights working for this guy.

The guy was waiting in the coffee shop as told. He had a laptop.

‘Show me your typing speed.’ He pushed the laptop to Justin.

‘I’m not very good at typing.’

‘So, you quit?’

‘No, I will give it a try.’

Justin scored 42 words per minute.

‘Poor. Come back tomorrow.’ The guy immersed himself back into his laptop.

‘Tomorrow the same test?’

‘…’ He was busy again inside the laptop.

‘Should I practice typing?’ Justin asked again.

‘…’ The guy never replied after that.

Justin practiced typing all day. He finished typing tests. He went up to 80 wpm. The next day he came back. The person was sitting there. Justin quietly sat in front of him and waited. The guy after some ten minutes pushed the laptop towards Justin. It had the typing speed tester open. Justin gave his best. He scored 72 wpm.

‘I want more than 100 wpm. You think you can do that?’ The guy asked.

‘I can.’

‘I will give you 3 attempts. Get me 100 wpm or more.’

Justin felt pressured. He gave his best. He scored the maximum of 82 wpm. The guy got back the laptop.

‘Give me one more chance. Please.’ Justin asked. The guy did not reply. ‘I’ll come tomorrow. I can get there. You can see the improvement right? I went from 40 wpm to 82 in one day!’ The guy kept looking at his laptop.

Justin left the place. He practiced the whole day. By night he was able to achieve 100wpm a few times.

He came to the coffee shop the next day. The guy was not there. He waited. He felt hungry but had no money to buy anything. He waited till afternoon doing a type speed test. He took the screenshot of him scoring 106 wpm. He kept refreshing the mail list. He received one or two fraud marketing emails from time to time but did not receive anything from the ‘Trap Them All’ company. He left with disappointment.

He sent the screenshot of him scoring 106, 112 and then kept sending each high score for the next four days. Then he got a reply.

‘Create 100 email accounts with convincing ids and names. Get naturally looking at random profile images with their details and send them all to me within this evening.’ Justin was surprised by the email. He looked at the time. He had 6 hours to evening. Justin gave his best. He created 100 email accounts and sent them with credentials. He immediately got back a response.

‘Not good enough. But will do. Now create accounts in all-important social media sites with those 100 email ids and start posting random motivational quotes every day.’

‘Thank you. I will :)’ Justin replied and he was not new to motivational stuff. He maintained a hundred accounts. He even commented on random posts.

After a week, He got the next email.

‘I’m pissed. Why are all a hundred people talking like you? Can’t you roleplay? Your hundred are going to have all sorts of people. The caring ones, the rude ones, the helping ones, the naive, the strong, the young, the very old, etc. If I see Justin in any one of those accounts, I will never contact you again.’

Justin immediately understood. He started reading different people’s posts and comments and categorized them. He created some more accounts. He started posing more content. He lived like a hundred people. There was a cross-fit enthusiast, a global warming advocate, and really a wide range of variety. He started getting likes, supportive comments, friend requests from people. He could not say if they are real people who are being managed by a limited number of people. He did not care.

‘Learn everything about this product.’ The email linked to an MLM product. Justin read everything he came across about the product. He found that the product is facing huge resistance from the ex-purchasers who had lost so much money.

‘Post good things about the product. Find trashy comments about the product all over the internet and reply to them like a hundred people. Be nice, be rude, be anything but make a point. Refer to the below spreadsheet for FAQs.’ The email attachment had a huge list of complaints and answers to the complaints.

Justin went on to reply to hundreds of comments a day. People even commented on his posts too. He replied accordingly. He liked the job. The accounts were getting some attention. Some characters got more followers than others. One rude cross-fit enthusiast account, in particular, got into memes and got popular because of the hideous stuff it posts. He liked doing the work. He asked for some money and help from the guy. He did not respond to those requests.

Hunger

One day he got a message asking to promote a product. They asked to quote an amount for promoting 10 times per 365 days. Justin told them he would come up with a quote. He mailed the mystery man about this.

‘That account, I will take over. Maintain the other ones.’ the reply said.

Justin tried to log in to that account but he could not. He felt disappointed and very hungry. He logged into the other accounts and deleted them one by one. He finished deleting them and emailed the mystery man with some offensive words which the man never replied.

Motivation Feeds

Justin sketched ten different characters he liked to play from the previous job. He created accounts for them and started posing motivation stuff. Why the motivation stuff? Because that is widely available. And if we write anything with the words Hustle, Don’t give up, Don’t sleep, etc, people are going to like them. He did very well this time. He started getting offers to promote from the shady companies. He did. He made a living. He worked very hard day after day and did not take leave. He could make a decent living like a man who works two jobs in a bakery as well as night security.

He continued doing that work for 12 years. He did improvise using AI, automated text generation, etc. but could not progress well. He started a shady business as well to acquire people to acquire people to acquire people for his business. Which did well.

He created his own persona in social media and started a shady business that wanted to acquire more people to acquire more people to acquire more people. The business did okay. But he had to spend all the money in going to exotic places to fake how he lives. He rents Bentley cars and takes pictures required for at least a year. He rented a standing private jet for a photoshoot and took pictures and videos of him wandering in and around the flight with some paid actors in different attires. He rents hotel rooms and shoots videos for multiple days. He eats at costly restaurants and photographs them. He sneaks pictures of other food in his feed too.

He finally died at the age of 34. He had $55k left in the bank. The accounts he maintained collectively had about a million users who longed for motivation and positivity every day. The accounts stopped operating immediately. He had no one to inform the followers about his death. He had no one to say goodbye. He had no one to sort things out. The death was not immediate. It was rather a boring one for him. After calling the ambulance, he had a whole chunk of minutes to spare. He was sitting with the doors open looking at the entrance. His neighbors went past the door. He waited peacefully. He felt relieved from all the work he had lined up for the day and for the rest of the life. He felt happy that he did not want to create and post that daily motivational poster. He did not want to do that video. He did not want to read any more motivational books. He did not want to come up with quotes.

He died in peace.