Part I – The Theatre of Connection
I scroll the way most people breathe. Without thinking.
A thumb flick here, a soft double-tap there. Smiling faces. Clean fonts. Motivational captions about “growth.” Everyone seems to be building something. A business. A brand. A dream.
At first, it feels harmless. A chorus of people doing what they love and telling you how you can do the same. Until you start to notice the pattern hiding beneath the brightness. The smiles are rehearsed. The vulnerability is edited. Every confession is a setup for a sale.
Someone posts about a hard year. They lost a job, found purpose, and now they teach “how to turn pain into income.” Another talks about burnout and how they learned to “monetize rest.” The words are tender. The lighting perfect. The comments full of gratitude. But look closely. There is always a link waiting at the end. A call to subscribe, sign up, or book a call.
This is what the new marketplace looks like. It has no stalls, no shouting traders, no physical goods. Just human emotion carefully bottled, captioned, and priced.
The old merchants sold spices and fabrics. The new ones sell belonging. They promise proximity to success, a community of winners, the feeling of progress. You do not buy a product. You buy the sense that you are not alone in wanting more.
They call it social selling.
A gentle phrase that sounds almost friendly, like a conversation over coffee. It is, in truth, theatre.
Each performer learns the same choreography. Start with a story of failure, end with a lesson of triumph. Show a little sadness but never despair. Be raw but not rough. Share enough to appear human but never enough to lose control of the narrative.
The audience claps with hearts and likes, feeding the algorithm that feeds the performer. And somewhere in that applause, a line disappears. The line between authenticity and acting. Between friendship and funnel. Between person and persona.
What was once social connection is now a commercial script.
You can almost hear the cues:
“Tell them how you started.”
“Show the behind-the-scenes.”
“Add something inspirational at the end.”
It works because people want to believe in stories more than they want to check facts. Hope sells better than honesty.
The tragedy is not that people are selling. It is that they are selling themselves—their mornings, their moods, their marriages, their grief—packaged for consumption. Every life becomes a limited-time offer. Every moment a potential hook.
The platform rewards those who perform sincerity best.
And when performance becomes habit, sincerity dies quietly.
What used to be friendship has turned into audience management. Replies are timed. Smiles rehearsed. Even gratitude becomes strategy. You thank people not because you feel thankful, but because the algorithm likes engagement.
We live inside a loop of visibility and validation.
To disappear is to die professionally.
To rest is to risk irrelevance.
So the performance never ends.
The curtain closes at night only for it to rise again in the morning. The same actors. The same poses. The same scripts slightly rewritten to appear spontaneous.
Somewhere behind those glowing screens, there are real people who once believed in what they did. People who wanted to help, to teach, to share. But the system rewards the loud, not the thoughtful. The polished, not the patient. So they adapt. One compromise at a time until the craft becomes content and content becomes currency.
Social selling promises connection, yet breeds isolation.
Because the more you curate yourself, the less of you remains.
By the time the day ends, the smile that once felt natural now feels like a logo.
The post that once came from joy now feels like a job.
The person behind the screen now feels like a brand trying to remember their own name.
And still, the show goes on.
The lights stay bright. The followers grow. The applause continues.
But somewhere, beneath the soft music of likes and hearts, a quiet violin begins to play. A warning note.
Something about all this feels wrong.
Something about all this feels too perfect.
Maybe connection should not feel like performance.
Maybe authenticity should not need a strategy.
Maybe the moment we began to monetize attention was the moment we lost intimacy.
The feed keeps moving. Another smile. Another story. Another pitch disguised as purpose.
And I keep scrolling, half-curious, half-nauseated, wondering when we all agreed that friendship must now come with a price tag.
.
Part II – The Factory of Fabricated Expertise
It starts small. Someone shares a thread on how they made five hundred dollars writing online. A week later, the thread becomes a course. A month later, the course becomes a coaching program. The program turns into a brand. And before you can blink, they are teaching “how to build your own writing business.”
This is how it spreads. Not like wildfire, but like perfume. Pleasant at first, until you realise it clings to everything.
The digital age made one discovery that changed everything. You no longer need mastery to appear competent. You only need sequence. If you can arrange borrowed insights in the right order, people will assume you know what you are talking about.
That is how the factories of expertise were built.
Assembly lines of half-knowledge, producing perfect illusions.
People teaching what they barely understand.
People selling maps of places they have never visited.
They call themselves ghostwriters, strategists, consultants, creators. They fill their pages with phrases like “value,” “systems,” “clarity.” They speak in frameworks and funnels. They show you screenshots of their dashboards. They tell you how they grew.
But look closely. Their “growth” is often the echo of someone else’s work. Their “results” are borrowed testimonies. Their “authority” is manufactured in Canva.
They live in a loop of borrowed brilliance.
Take a quote from a book. Add a moral lesson. Write in short lines.
Say something about failure, consistency, gratitude.
End with a question: “What do you think?”
It looks profound. It feels true. It sells.
The moment they discover that attention pays, everything becomes content. Books become captions. Ideas become snippets. Deep thought becomes snackable insight.
When AI entered the scene, the charade became easier. The machine could now imitate what they already imitated. Perfect symmetry. Perfect shallowness. The computer did not need conviction, only command. And most of them never had conviction to begin with.
Now they sell prompts.
“How to make ChatGPT write like a pro.”
“How to build an empire with five tools.”
“How to automate your expertise.”
The irony writes itself. They are using a tool that mimics thought to teach people how to mimic thinking.
It is the great recycling plant of the internet. Every mediocre idea is melted down, reheated, and sold again.
Real writers know better. Writing is thinking.
It is not decoration. It is excavation.
It demands you wrestle with chaos until something coherent appears.
That is why most of these online “ghostwriters” never write past five lines. Depth exposes what polish hides. Long form reveals if you can actually reason.
True copywriting moves like music. It leads you through curiosity, fear, desire, relief. It speaks to the invisible. It understands timing, silence, contradiction. It knows how to create an ache before offering comfort.
But these new-age writers have no patience for such craft. They do not lead readers through a dance. They perform stunts.
You can see the difference in the texture of the words. Real writing leaves fingerprints. Synthetic writing leaves gloss.
And yet, they sell courses about storytelling.
They quote Hemingway, Halbert, Ogilvy.
They speak of hooks and human psychology as if repeating the names grants them power.
The more they teach, the less they learn. Because learning requires humility, and humility does not trend.
Soon, the air becomes heavy with performance. Everyone is a teacher now. Everyone has a toolkit, a cheat sheet, a framework that “worked for me.”
They build pyramids of illusion where the only thing being sold is the idea of selling.
The top teaches the middle how to teach the bottom.
And the bottom dreams of climbing high enough to start teaching too.
It is a self-feeding myth.
No one stops to ask, “What have we actually built?”
We are producing a generation of creators who cannot create, writers who cannot think, and marketers who cannot sell unless the script is written for them.
AI has only made it look cleaner.
Now the mediocrity comes formatted, proofread, and polite.
The tragedy is not that the machine replaced human skill.
The tragedy is that it replaced the need for human effort.
There was a time when writing meant solitude, silence, and sweat. When words had to earn their weight. Now a click delivers a paragraph that sounds impressive enough to fool both writer and reader.
This is how truth erodes quietly.
Not by censorship. By convenience.
Every time someone says, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just post,” a small part of craftsmanship dies. Every time someone praises output over thought, language loses another shade.
We are drowning in content and starving for substance.
The saddest part is that most of these people started sincerely. They wanted to learn, to share, to belong. But the machine rewards speed, not sincerity. And the moment you slow down to think, it leaves you behind.
So they adapt. They simplify. They automate.
They teach what they barely know.
They fake what they cannot feel.
Until one day, they forget that they ever loved the craft.
What remains is noise with rhythm, colour without depth, praise without meaning.
A factory that keeps running even after the lights of curiosity have gone out.
The feed scrolls on.
Another expert. Another course. Another promise of shortcuts.
And beneath it all, a quiet irritation begins to rise.
You can feel it in your chest.
The sense that everything looks polished, yet nothing feels alive.
That is where the violin grows louder, joined by drums.
Because now, you see it clearly.
It is not a community of learners.
It is a production line of pretenders.
Part III – The Collapse of Depth
There was a time when silence meant thought.
Now silence means the algorithm forgot you.
The modern world does not reward patience. It rewards presence.
To stay visible, you must keep talking.
To stay relevant, you must keep producing.
Even when you have nothing to say, you must find something to post.
Depth has become a liability.
Because depth takes time, and time no longer pays.
The result is a world full of words with no weight. Advice without anchor. Ideas without lineage.
The rhythm of creation has been replaced by the tempo of performance.
We used to wait for meaning to form.
Now we copy and paste the outline of someone else’s revelation and call it ours.
The marketplace of mirrors keeps expanding.
Everyone reflecting everyone else’s tone, everyone learning how to “sound” authentic.
Soon you cannot tell who started what. You only know that you have heard it before.
The tragedy is that the audience does not mind. They are tired too.
They no longer seek originality; they seek familiarity. Something that sounds like something they once believed.
So the cycle continues.
Creators copy creators.
Audiences echo audiences.
And meaning dissolves into repetition.
The great deception is that it all looks alive.
Feeds full of motion. Videos full of smiles. Words full of certainty.
But listen closely and you will hear the emptiness humming underneath.
The noise has tone but no tune.
Every post screams “look at me,” yet no one is really looking.
Every story promises truth, yet nothing feels true.
And when one of these manufactured experts finally faces doubt, they do not question the system. They question themselves.
They say, “Maybe I am not consistent enough.”
“Maybe I need a better hook.”
“Maybe I am doing it wrong.”
The system has them exactly where it wants them—believing that failure is proof of not believing enough.
It is the same script bad religion uses.
Doubt is not a warning sign; it is sin.
Questioning the preacher means you have weak faith.
And so the victims defend the deceivers.
They repost the same quotes, attend the same webinars, buy the same courses hoping that this one will finally unlock something real.
But nothing real can be unlocked by imitation.
Truth is not a trend.
It is a discipline.
Real creation comes from the quiet space between curiosity and conviction.
That space has been traded for the applause of immediacy.
Yet somewhere beneath the noise, a few people still work the old way.
They build quietly. They write slowly. They think before they teach.
Their proofs are not screenshots. Their success is not noise.
They measure worth by impact, not impressions.
They are the last artisans in an age of automation.
And they are ignored because silence does not sell.
But they are the ones who will outlast the noise.
Because truth, even whispered, travels farther than lies shouted through microphones.
The crowd will always chase spectacle, but wisdom does not need an audience.
It only needs a mind willing to stay long enough to understand.
Maybe that is the real rebellion now—to do things thoroughly.
To think until you understand.
To write until the words feel alive.
To care even when no one is watching.
That kind of rebellion will not trend.
But it will endure.
Because what the half-skilled cannot fake is continuity.
They can imitate tone. They can borrow style.
But they cannot sustain sincerity.
Eventually the gloss fades. The shortcuts collapse. The borrowed voices start to sound the same.
And the audience, tired of noise, will start to listen again—for something that feels human.
Maybe that is where the cycle ends.
Not with a new platform or another algorithm, but with fatigue.
A collective exhaustion that forces people to crave honesty again.
When that happens, the stage lights will dim.
The filters will crack.
And in that dimness, the real will stand quietly, waiting.
The violin returns now, softer than before.
It plays not of anger, but of mourning.
Because we have lost something we once had.
We traded craft for convenience, mastery for marketing, and conversation for performance.
The screen keeps glowing. The feed keeps rolling.
The actors keep smiling because they must.
But if you look closely, you can see it in their eyes—the fatigue, the ache, the small question they no longer dare to ask:
“When did I stop meaning what I say?”