The Grift Generation

𝑰𝒏 𝑻𝒐𝒅𝒂𝒚'𝒔 𝑾𝒂𝒗𝒆:

📦 When 15 million sellers have nothing to sell but sob stories
💰 Why the backstory became the business model
🎭 Fake entrepreneurs, real Lamborghinis (rented), zero profit
🔮 What happens when even the experts get grifted

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒉𝒊𝒇𝒕

A TikTok seller goes live. "Buy this so I can pay rent," they say, holding up a generic phone case that sells on Amazon for $3. Listed at $18. Same product as 50 other sellers. Same supplier. Same markup.

The only difference? The story.

People aren't buying products anymore. They're buying the struggle.

I'm calling this shift "The Grift Generation" - when commoditized goods force sellers to compete on narrative instead of quality. The more saturated the market, the more extreme the story tends to be.

The product is secondary. The performance is what sells.

𝑾𝒉𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒘?

Three forces converged:

1. Market saturation killed differentiation. When everyone can dropship, manufacture overseas, and launch in 48 hours, story becomes the only moat.

2. Platform economics reward emotion over quality. TikTok's algorithm doesn't care if your product works. It cares if your video makes people feel something. Struggle stories drive engagement. Engagement drives sales.

3. Authenticity became a performance. Consumers wanted transparency. They got weaponized vulnerability instead. "Support my dream" replaced "buy my product" because it converts better.

𝑬𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 𝑺𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒔

Manufacturing Sympathy
The playbook is everywhere now. "No one showed up to my book signing." Photo of an empty table, stacks of books, sad face. "My grandpa made these blankets but nobody wants them" with stolen footage. Mind you, here’s the real creator of that blanket lol. The posts go viral. Strangers flood the comments with support, guilt, promises to buy. The item sells out, but the followers don’t stick around for more than that one viral video, typically unfollowing weeks later. The sadness doesn't need to be real. It just needs to convert.

Fake Entrepreneur Gurus
Young entrepreneurs rent Lamborghinis, pose with private jets, and photoshop penthouse apartments. The lifestyle is fake, but the courses are real - $500 to $10,000 teaching dropshipping to followers who believe the rented Lambo is proof it works. Here's the grift: these gurus don't make money from dropshipping. They make money selling courses about dropshipping. Income screenshots are photoshopped or cropped to hide ad spend. They're not teaching success. They're selling the performance of it.

Desperation as Differentiator
Fifteen million sellers on TikTok Shop. Most selling identical goods from AliExpress marked up 300%. The pitch isn't about the product - it's about the person. "Buy this so I can pay rent." "Sale ends now or she'll get fired." Manufactured urgency wrapped in performed struggle. When the products are interchangeable, desperation becomes the differentiator.

𝑭𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝑰𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔

• Credibility becomes the con. The most effective grifts come from inside. Former employees. Verified accounts. Grading companies. When institutions meant to protect buyers become complicit, skepticism becomes the default.

• Struggle scales better than quality. Brands will retire the romanticized founder story. Performance and product-market fit will matter more for lasting success. But short-term? Tragedy, whether real or fake, still converts.

• AI industrializes the grift. Generative tools can now fabricate backstories, create fake "candid" photos, and A/B test which sob story converts best. The performance scales without the person.

The product opens the door. The story closes the sale.

𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑻𝒊𝒑𝒔

🔍 Verify before you buy. Reverse image search products you’re interested in buying. Look for independent reviews outside the seller's ecosystem.

⚠️ Watch for emotional manipulation. If the pitch leads with struggle and ends with urgency, you're being sold a story, not a product. "Buy now or I lose my apartment" is a tactic, not transparency.

💰 Follow the money. If someone's selling a course on how to get rich, ask why they're not too busy being rich to sell courses. Real entrepreneurs build. Grifters teach.

𝑵𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑾𝒂𝒗𝒆

See you next week, same time, same place.

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Stay wavey,

Haley