The ABCs of Grifting

26 Rules for Building a Monument No One Will Visit

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Above: The patron saint of today’s influencers.

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The more things change the more they stay the same.

Every era has its snake oil salesmen.

Every snake oil salesman claims this time is different.

Sure, the costumes, the rigmarole, and the platforms change.

The scams get slicker, better lit, and algorithmically assisted.

But the underlying con remains stubbornly intact: confusing signals for substance, motion for progress, the map for the territory, attention for achievement.

So let’s clear the fog of the feed and lay out the playbook.

A — Audience over adoration

B — Buzz over buyers

C — Clout over cash

D — Distribution over demand

E — Engagement over esteem

F — Followers over free cash flow

G — Growth over greatness

H — Hype over heft

I — Influence over income

J — Jargon over judgment

K — KPIs over knowledge

L — Loudness over longevity

M — Momentum over merit

N — Noise over nuance

O — Optics over outcomes

P — Popularity over proof

Q — Quotes over quality

R — Retweets over revenue

S — Signals over substance

T — Trends over truth

U — Urgency over usefulness

V — Virality over value

W — Winning over worth

X — Exposure over excellence

Y — Yelling over yield

Z — Zeitgeist over zeal

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Endurance is quiet.

Competence is boring.

Real work resists screenshots.

The internet is a fickle mistress; an attention whore that rewards what spreads, not what lasts.

So people optimize for spread.

They buy attention.

They rent credibility.

They manufacture consensus with carefully timed “organic” reactions—a burst here, a quote-tweet there—that together contribute to the illusion of inevitability forming in real time.

A product launches.

A narrative “emerges.”

Everyone pretends to have discovered it independently.

This isn’t new media. It’s old propaganda with better analytics.

And just like before, most of it won’t survive. Because time is an auditor that doesn’t accept vibes as collateral.

But sure, go ahead.

Follow every letter.

Build the brand.

Raise the pedestal.

Carve your name.

The sands of time will do the rest.

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Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share in a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on X.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom