Breaking the Myth

I don’t remember the exact moment I gave up on writing from my heart.

Maybe it was the third week of silence, when I posted something raw and honest and no one responded. No likes, no comments — just empty.

Maybe it was the fifteenth morning of waking up to see the same number: 14 views. As if my words had been whispered into a void, and only the echo came back to me.

Maybe it was when someone told me, “Write something marketable.”
As if art needed a brand strategy.
As if feelings needed formatting.
As if I hadn’t already been trying to turn blood into ink.

Or maybe it was after a conversation with a friend who had just signed with a publishing agency. He talked about his success like it was inevitable, like it had always been coming. Then he casually mentioned spending a few thousand on promotion — like it was the natural next step. And now his novel was climbing the ranks, not because it was necessarily better, but because it was visible. Loud. Paid for.

And me? I kept typing and trying, hoping something honest might still find a place in a world that rewards packaging over passion.

Whatever it was, something broke.

Not with a bang. Not with a meltdown. Just a slow, almost invisible fracture — like a hairline crack in a glass that spreads every time you fill it with something warm.

I don’t even remember the exact moment. Maybe that’s what hurts the most. That there was no grand turning point — just a thousand little concessions that piled up until I didn’t recognize the shape of what I was making anymore.

I stopped chasing meaning.

I started chasing clicks.

I told myself it was just temporary. That I could bend a little. Adjust. Learn how the game was played. That once I had enough eyes on my work, I’d go back to writing from the heart.

But I never did.

No more titles that whispered something fragile.
No more quiet, aching prose that tried to say what I couldn’t say out loud. No more characters that reminded me of people I loved — or people I lost.

Instead—I traded them in.

“The OP Hero’s Rebirth”
“System of the Dead”
“The Vampire School”

Quick reads. High stakes. Hook in the first five seconds or lose the reader.

No space for subtlety. No time for soul.

And the worst part? It works. It works. The views climb. The comments roll in. People call me "underrated" or “next level,” and all I can think is: You should’ve seen me before I gave up.

Before I learned how to play dead on the page.

I wake up sometimes and stare at my drafts — the ones I haven’t touched in months. The ones that still feel like me. I read a few lines and I ache. Not because they’re perfect. But because they’re honest.

And I wonder if I’ll ever be brave enough to write like that again.

Or if I’ve gone too far chasing noise to ever find my way back to the quiet.

Because the truth is — noise works.

Empty calories.

That’s what the words started to feel like. Quick to consume, quick to forget. Stories that filled a scroll, not a soul. They tasted like cardboard, but at least people were biting.

And when you’ve been starving for attention, even cardboard starts to feel like a feast.

My views went up.
14 became 78.
78 became 200.

It was something. A spark. A flicker of the recognition I used to dream about.

Then... nothing.

Flatline.

Again.

Just like before — only this time, I couldn’t even lie to myself and say it was because I was writing from the heart. No, this time I was doing everything right. All the formulas, all the tropes, all the cliffhangers. I gave them exactly what they wanted.

And still... nothing.

I stared at the screen. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

But I wasn’t surprised. Not anymore. Disappointed? Sure. Hollowed out? Absolutely. But not surprised.

Because the internet doesn’t reward effort. It doesn’t reward truth. It doesn’t even reward consistency.

It rewards noise.

Then I remembered my friend’s words.
The one who just signed with a studio.
He told me, straight-faced, like it was just part of the process — “You have to invest in yourself.”
Translation: drop a few thousand to promote your work, push it to the front page, buy your way into visibility.

And maybe he’s right.
Maybe that’s how the game is played now.
But I can’t do that.
I don’t have that kind of money.
I’m running out of reasons to convince myself any of this is still worth it.

Still… something in me clicked.

Somehow, I made up my mind.

I told myself: If not this, then maybe the next one. Or the next.
But deep down, I knew — there is no next. Not when the last of me is already gone, spent on a mirage I thought was worth it.

There’s nothing left.

The only option?

Act famous.
Fake it. Fake the image. Fake the hype.
Wear the brand before anyone offers it to you.

Prove the concept.
Make them believe it’s already working.
Then maybe — maybe — someone will open the door.

Sign up with a studio.
Smile. Shake hands. Deliver clean drafts and polished nonsense.

Then — maybe — then I can act real again.

Act from the soul.

Maybe that's the only way to be honest now — after lying my way to the platform.

Maybe that's the cost of being heard.

So I started to make my own noise.
Not art. Not expression. Just noise.
Because silence doesn’t sell.

I promoted my work myself — because no one else would.
No team. No agent. No hype machine.
Just me, sitting behind a screen, trying to convince the world that what I made was worth noticing.

Do you know what it feels like to talk about your own work with strangers in web novel communities?

We don’t use real names there.
We use burner accounts.
Alts with vague usernames and blank avatars.

And then you start discussing your own story — pretending to be someone else.
One account says, “This new novel’s actually kind of different.”
Another responds, “Yeah, I heard the pacing gets good around Chapter 6.”
You plant the seed. You reply to your own comments. You upvote your own posts.
You play the crowd that isn’t even there yet.

You split yourself into fragments, into voices, into fake readers — hoping that eventually, real ones might show up.

It’s humiliating.

It’s exhausting.

But you do it anyway.
Because if you don’t scream for yourself, no one will.
Because everyone else is screaming, and you're just trying not to disappear beneath the noise.

So I screamed. Quietly. Strategically. From five different usernames and ten different forums.

And for a second, it looked like it might be working.

But I couldn’t help but wonder — if they ever did show up…
Would they be clapping for me?

Or for the mask I made to get here?

That question kept me up at night.
Not the stats. Not the comments. Not the algorithm.
Just that one thought, playing on repeat like a bad song:

What if I’m only worth reading when I’m not being myself?

And god — that thought wrecked me.

Because I used to write like I was bleeding into the keys.
I used to mean every sentence. Every hesitation. Every space between two lines of dialogue where the silence said more than the words.
I used to believe writing could save me.

Now it just feels like another performance.
Another feed to refresh.
Another lie to maintain.

And still, I kept going.

I kept logging into those fake accounts.
Kept pretending to be a fan of my own work, because I thought maybe, if I clapped loud enough, the world would start clapping with me.

It’s funny, isn’t it?

How much of this job — this dream — is pretending.

Pretending you’re doing fine.
Pretending the numbers don’t affect you.
Pretending you're not jealous of the people who got lucky — or who had money, or connections, or just better timing.

Pretending this isn’t breaking something in you.

And worst of all — pretending the version of you that gets attention is the version that matters.

But it’s not.
I know it’s not.

Because when everything goes quiet again — when the numbers stall, when the buzz dies — the only thing left is you.

And I look at myself in the mirror some days and I don’t recognize the writer staring back.

Just someone who got tired of being invisible.

Just someone who finally learned how to shout.

But this low buzz? It's not enough to climb the ranks.
So I just want to try something—something new. And then—

I made it—
I never imagined what I studied would actually help me now.
You know what it feels like?

Using tech to finally make some noise.

So I opened my IDE.
No, not to write.
To code.

Python. AutoIt. AHK.
The languages I never thought I’d use for storytelling —
now the only tools that made me feel seen.

I whispered to myself:
“If no one will believe in my story’s potential, I’ll fake it.”

I built a bot — my own little ghost in the machine.
A digital accomplice to amplify my voice when I couldn’t do it alone.
I used TOR to keep myself untracked, invisible even to myself, for this lethal move.

I didn’t hesitate.
I just made it.

Because sometimes, when the world refuses to listen, you don’t ask for permission.
You create the noise yourself.

So I did.

Views started climbing.
Slowly at first — 12, 27, 40…
Then faster.

Click.

Thousands of fake users.
Dummy accounts.
Automating, scroll simulators, comment bots.

Each one programmed to make my story look alive.

They liked every chapter.
Scrolled every pixel.
Left copy-pasted comments like:

“This is fire!”
“Please update soon!”
“Why isn’t this viral yet?”

I watched it happen like a ghost haunting my own work.

And it’s enough to trigger curiosity.
Enough to trick the algorithm into thinking something real was happening.

And once the algorithm believes, others start to believe too.

It was surreal — watching strangers show up to something I’d built out of silence and desperation.
They didn’t know the applause was seeded.
They didn’t know the first cheers were echoes I planted myself.

But they stayed.

And for a while, I told myself it was fine.
That I was just leveling the playing field.
That this was no different from what studios do with ads and hype and influencer campaigns.
Only I didn’t have any of that.

Just lines of code.
A borrowed network.
And the pain to be seen.

I told myself:
“I’m not breaking rules — I’m bending them to stay alive.”

It’s just about staying in the game. Maybe it’s not the cleanest way — but it’s the only way left.

But then came the guilt — slow, creeping, soft at first, like a draft under a locked door.

Because every new reader, every real comment, every compliment…
I didn’t know if they were clapping for the story —
or just responding to the illusion I’d created.

Was it good?
Or did it just look like it was?

And the more they praised me, the more I doubted.

Because I hadn’t just gamed the system —
I’d betrayed the version of me who used to write in the dark, quietly, honestly, without needing the noise.

But that version of me?
He starved.

This version?
He survived.

And maybe, right now, that’s the only difference that matters.

You know the fun fact?
Someone commented:

“I found this through trending — it’s actually really good!”

I wanted to feel proud.

Instead, I felt… hollow.

People came.

Real ones.

They saw the numbers and followed the crowd.

I kept going.
Posted more cliché chapters.
More power fantasy.
More empty victories.

The algorithm loved it.
The crowd grew.

And somewhere in all of it —
I forgot how my real story even sounded.

I stopped being a writer.

I became a magician.

One night, I couldn’t sleep.

Not because I missed writing for my soul.
But because I realized something terrifying.

The system wasn’t broken.

It was working perfectly.

It just wasn’t built for people like me.

They say fake it till you make it.

But no one tells you what happens
when you do make it…
and still feel fake.

I looked at the numbers again.

They didn’t feel like mine.
The success wasn’t real.

But it had done something important.
It had created a door.
A loud, flashy door.
And suddenly… I had a thought.
What if I walked my real story through that door?

What if I used this noise…
to carry something honest?
Could I cheat the system —
not just to win,
but to bring something real with me?

That night, for the first time in weeks,
I opened a blank page.
Not to write a trend.
Not to build a lie.

But to find my voice again.