There is a certain type of person everywhere now, especially online.
He consumes endless information every day: philosophy, psychology, productivity, spirituality, neuroscience, business, self-improvement, history.
He knows a little about everything and deeply experiences almost nothing.
His entire identity becomes built around understanding instead of living.
He watches videos about confidence instead of speaking confidently. Reads about discipline instead of becoming disciplined. Studies relationships instead of learning how to love. Consumes motivational content instead of taking action.
He feels intelligent because he is constantly mentally stimulated. But stimulation is not transformation.
Most of the time, knowledge becomes emotional protection. Reality is unpredictable. Reality humiliates. Reality exposes weakness. Books and ideas do not.
Inside information, he can continue imagining himself as intelligent, deep, insightful, different from ordinary people. So he remains trapped in preparation.
He constantly feels as if he is "becoming" someone, while his real life remains strangely untouched. He develops sophisticated language for problems he never confronts directly. He can explain human behavior beautifully while being unable to handle ordinary discomfort, rejection, uncertainty, loneliness, or risk.
He slowly turns life into observation instead of participation.
The internet rewards this personality heavily. He receives validation for sounding aware rather than becoming capable.
Eventually, he begins confusing self-analysis with growth and information with wisdom.
But beneath the intelligence usually exists the same thing: fear. Fear of failure. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of reality answering back.
Because action destroys fantasy. The moment he truly acts, he can no longer hide inside potential.
The person who figures out how to sell identity to people who hate themselves is going to be worth more than every info product guru on earth combined and nobody is framing the opportunity correctly…
Every purchase over $50 is an identity purchase. Nobody buys a $200 skincare routine because they ran the clinical data. They buy it because they want to be the type of person who has a $200 skincare routine. The product is proof of who they're becoming
This applies to everything. A trading course isn't education. It's a costume change. The buyer wakes up Monday morning and they're "a trader" now. A fitness program isn't a workout plan. It's permission to call yourself disciplined. A paid community isn't access to information. It's a membership card to an identity they couldn't get into before
The markets printing the hardest right now all exploit this at the core:
Carnivore diet stuff converts 4-5x higher than generic fitness. Not because the product is better. Because the buyer's identity is welded to the philosophy. Returning the product means abandoning who they decided to be. The psychology won't let them
Looksmaxxing went from incel niche to mainstream in 18 months because it gave young men an identity framework. You're not buying jawline gum. You're buying entry into a transformation arc where you're the protagonist
"Clean living" products aimed at women 35-55 charge 3-5x more than identical products without the belief layer. Because buying "organic" isn't a product decision. It's a statement about what kind of mother you are
The deeper play nobody's running yet: most identity products are selling TO an existing identity. "You're a trader, here's trader stuff." That's level one
Level two is CREATING the identity and then selling everything inside it. You don't sell a course about making money online. You create an archetype, build an entire worldview around it, and then everything from the $47 ebook to the $5,000 mastermind is just gear for playing that character
Every religion understood this. Every luxury brand understands this. Every political movement understands this. The info product industry is still selling features and benefits like it's 2014
the products with the lowest refund rates on earth are the ones where returning the product means killing a version of yourself. build that and you never have to "sell" again
something to think about
@TayeOlusola You can definitely make something that sounds good in 3 months thanks to the availability of plugins that come with loops and samples built in, but if you never go deeper you just become a producer who needs pre-existing musical elements made for you to produce anything
whoever started the ‘AI consumes absurd amounts of water’ narrative ended up creating one of the most persistently damaging misconceptions that the public has internalized
@RenPheonix@swamisound Pull up musical typing/keyboard and play notes until you find the ones that don’t sound off key, then match the keys you can play exactly with autotune plugin, cycling through keys until you find one that contains all the playable notes how to do it with 0 theory knowledge
@matthiasellis We’re about 2 years away from ChatGPT not giving you the best answer when prompted for something and instead suggesting you a product because another company paid them to do so.