Faking fame is an effective strategy because perceived success attracts real success

Evidence

Meanwhile, Instagram’s quantification of fame in follower counts and “engagement” (numbers of likes, comments, and reposts) created a veneer of objectivity for tracking fame—and new avenues for deceit. Bot farms in Indonesia and China offered thousands of fake followers for a small fee. This led to the December 2014 “Instagram rapture,” in which the site deleted a massive number of fraudulent accounts. Justin Bieber alone lost three million “followers” in one day. The broader problem remained, however, that posing as a successful influencer was an effective means of becoming one—“fake it till you make it” was a core technique in influencer circles. This spawned new businesses such as Private Jet Studio in Moscow, which charged five thousand rubles an hour to take photos in a Gulfstream G650 private jet parked on the runway. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 553

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A full self-reinforcing loop: quantified fame signals attract followers/success, so faking the signal is rational and even productive. This is a genuine mechanism worth sitting with — a signaling system that rewards pure deception.
• SEED: Angle: ‘When does fake-it-till-you-make-it stop being deception and become legitimate strategy?’ — the private jet photo studio as the purest expression of status-as-performance.