In the vast, buzzing hive of fiber optics,
where every question is a baited hook,
there stands a line of eager volunteers,
ready to hand you a pre-packaged life
wrapped in the cellophane of absolute certainty.
They do not wish to give you the bricks
to build your own house of judgment;
they would rather sell you the keys
to a mansion built of their own assumptions.

Enter the digital town square of Reddit,
where the Dunning-Kruger effect
is not a psychological observation
but a mandatory admission requirement.
Here, a man who cannot boil an egg
will explain, with terrifying confidence,
the thermal dynamics of a nuclear reactor.
He has read a three-paragraph summary
on a website with neon green text,
and now he is the high priest of physics,
casting down lightning bolts of correction
upon anyone with a Master’s degree.
He is the king of the “Actually” brigade,
ruling from a throne of unwashed laundry,
convinced his three minutes of scrolling
outweighs a decade of focused study.

Then we find the masters of the hustle,
the architects of the “Passive Income” dream,
who spend forty hours a week
telling you how to work only four.
If their systems for wealth were so robust,
if their drop-shipping empires were real,
they would be silent on a private beach,
sipping drinks that cost more than your rent.
Instead, they are chasing digital clout,
begging for likes, shares, and subscriptions,
because the “clout” is the only currency
that keeps their imaginary bank accounts afloat.
A true practitioner is busy practicing;
a true expert is usually tired of talking.
But the internet advisor is a perpetual motion machine,
fueled by the desperate need to be seen
as the smartest person in the empty room.

Consider the neighborhood chiropractor,
a man who knows a lot about vertebrae
but suddenly feels qualified to discuss
the intricacies of your endocrine system.
You go in for a quick “crack” of the neck
and leave with a lecture on immunology,
delivered with the solemnity of a surgeon.
“Your spleen is just out of alignment,”
he says, while waving a crystal or a laser,
offering the kind of diagnostic depth
one usually expects from a person
who has actually looked at a blood panel.
He bypasses the face-to-face visit
with an actual Doctor of Medicine,
because why bother with a stethoscope
when you have the power of “wellness”
and a very persuasive Instagram aesthetic?

Shift your gaze to the financial wizards,
the men in slim-fit suits and ring lights,
who want to guide your hard-earned gold
into the pockets of a very specific fund.
They speak of “diversification” and “growth,”
of “beating the market” and “crypto-moons,”
omitting the tiny, microscopic detail
that your investment is their commission.
They are not fiduciary guardians;
they are salesmen in sheep’s clothing,
shearing the flock while claiming
to protect them from the winter cold.
They don’t want you to learn the charts;
they want you to trust the “vibes”
and the referral link in their bio.

The internet has killed the nuance
of “Here is the data, you decide.”
That takes too long for the algorithm.
The algorithm demands a “Top Ten List,”
a “Life Hack” that fixes the unfixable,
and a person shouting into a microphone
about why your current life is a failure.
They rob you of the dignity of choice,
treating your brain like a hungry bird
waiting for pre-chewed worms of wisdom.

They offer “blueprints” and “roadmaps,”
as if human existence were a flat IKEA kit
and not a tangled forest of variables.
They tell you what to eat, how to sleep,
whom to date, and which stocks to short,
never once pausing to admit the truth:
“I don’t know your life, and I might be wrong.”
That sentence is the death of engagement.
That sentence doesn’t get a “Save” or a “Follow.”
So instead, they double down on the dogma,
becoming gurus of the mundane,
dictating the terms of your own happiness
as if they held the copyright to joy.

It is a circus of self-appointed gods,
each one screaming a different gospel.
The fitness influencer with the filter
telling you to “grind” until you break.
The life coach who is on their third divorce
explaining the “secret” to a lasting union.
The “tech evangelist” who can’t code
predicting the end of the human soul.
They all share one common thread:
an allergy to your personal autonomy.
If you make your own choices,
they lose their power to command.
If you look at the evidence yourself,
you might see the strings on the puppets.

So we wander through the digital fog,
stepping over the “hot takes”
and the “unpopular opinions”
that are actually just loud mistakes.
We look for a signal in the noise,
longing for a person who will say,
“Here are the facts as I found them,
do with them what you will.”
But that person is quiet,
probably reading a book in the corner,
while the advisors are on the main stage,
juggling flaming chainsaws of nonsense
and charging you for the privilege
of watching them drop every single one.

They treat your curiosity like a target.
They see your doubt as a market gap.
In the kingdom of the blind,
the man with the loudest megaphone
is the one who claims to have 20/20 vision,
even if he’s wearing two eyepatches
and walking directly into a brick wall.
The tragedy is not the bad advice;
it is the slow erosion of the “Self”
that used to look at a fork in the road
and feel capable of choosing a path
without checking a comment section first.

We are becoming a species of followers,
not because we lack the intellect,
but because the noise is so heavy
it feels easier to let someone else
carry the burden of a decision.
But the chiropractor isn’t feeling your pain,
and the Reddit expert isn’t paying your bills,
and the “influencer” isn’t living your life.
They are just voices in a black box,
hoping that if they talk fast enough,
you won’t notice they’re standing
on the same shaky ground as you.