YouTuber Comment & View Count Manipulation Case
Fraudulent scheme starting with 'deception'
Leading to a method that promises salvation
A way of making money by exploiting anxieties

“I was a poor loser. But now I'm successful, living in a Gangnam apartment with a Porsche at the age of 30. If you just follow me, anyone can make 10 million won a month.”

So-called ‘success sellers’ YouTubers who have been selling lectures and consulting by delivering such messages are facing a crisis. 'Success sellers' are people who sell lectures, e-books, etc. by exaggerating or fabricating their own success stories.

The reason for their crisis was ‘inflated or unverified numbers’. Some people asked for Hometax verification of unverified numbers such as '10 million won a month, 50 million won net profit, 20 billion won sale'. The incident began when they did not respond to these requests and testimonies began to emerge that these numbers were false.

A YouTuber who mainly talked about the success story of self-employment also became a fuel for the fire with the 'Naver Cafe Comment & View Count Manipulation' case. He was known as the ‘Baek Jong-won of the YouTuber world’ among successful YouTubers, and his credibility seemed clear as he appeared on a broadcast program. However, the case revealed that he had inflated the sales amount and manipulated ‘Naver Cafe comments & view counts’, leading to a collapse in overall trust in this type of YouTubers.

Not all YouTubers related to success are problematic. However, the problematic YouTubers gathered people using the trigger of 'money', but the problem is that the 'money' they talked about was fake. It can be called fraud.

The first step of fraud always begins with ‘deception’, as always.

Deception usually involves 'images' of things like good houses and good cars that look like they are successful. These are usually not their own property. They usually use 'short-term rentals or leases' to manipulate images and deceive people.

And they promise 'salvation' in their own unique way. In the case of success selling, they whisper sweetly that anyone can achieve success by reading e-books, listening to consulting, and doing & practicing certain actions every day.

Like cult religions, there are followers who follow them. What is the psychology of people who buy ‘success sellers’ content that is more expensive than the books of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, who are considered the most successful?

First, these people have a 'desperate desire for easy and quick success'. If you are desperate for success, you inevitably want it to happen 'quickly'. Success selling YouTubers talk about quick achievement like, 'I guarantee 10 million won a month in 3 months', so it looks easy and makes you feel like you can do it too.

If you are desperate, you are easily exploited. The 10 million won a month in 3 months they talk about is not a 'sustainable' income. They use a number that can be achieved occasionally to deceive desperate people and make them pay a high price.

Another psychology of people who follow success sellers is the 'anxiety of not knowing where to go'. Success selling defines success simply as money. And it says that is the solution to everything. For those who are anxious about not knowing where to go, the easy and quick solution of can be attractive.

I believe that the message of that ‘success sellers’ have can be harmful to our society. Of course, money can be a measure of success. But we need to be wary of the message that defines 'success' only in terms of 'money'.

Success can be defined in various ways depending on each person's values and goals. Generally, it is defined as achieving a goal or obtaining a desired result, but this can vary from person to person.

For some people, professional achievement can be success, while for others, maintaining a happy family relationship can be considered success. Living a life where you maximize your talents to serve others can also be a form of success.

Success can be interpreted differently depending on individual values and goals. However, most success-selling content defines success only as 'money' and classifies those who haven't achieved it as 'failures', which can be problematic.

If 10-20 year olds who are forming their values are exposed to the message that success is only money and poverty is failure as they enter society, that society will be truly sick.

In 2021, Pew Research Center, a U.S. public opinion research organization, surveyed 19,000 adults in 17 developed countries, including South Korea, on "What makes life meaningful?". In 14 of the 17 countries surveyed, 'family and children' were chosen as the top priority. The countries that did not choose family as the top priority were Spain, Taiwan, and South Korea, with Spain choosing health, Taiwan choosing society, and South Korea choosing 'material abundance' as the top priority.

South Korea was the only country that chose material abundance as the top priority. This survey suggests that our society is excessively focused on financial success rather than the desire for 'family' or 'personal achievement or self-realization'.

The culture of considering 'money' as the only measure of success, along with the elimination of diverse values, is partly responsible for South Korea being ranked first in suicide rates and last in birth rates among OECD major developed countries.

What are people's reactions to the 'collapse of success selling'? Looking at the comments, there were many opinions that 'the greatest harm is the devaluation of labor'.

Another opinion was 'it's just an issue, not a collapse', and the most surprising answer was 'success-selling snipers are also quite vicious'. He pointed out that 'they intentionally provoke success sellers to attract views, create extremely stimulating content, and justify their actions as doing righteous things'.

While we can point fingers at their actions of manipulating numbers and deceiving consumers, publicly disclosing their personal information in violation of their portrait rights or driving them to ruin is not a good solution.

Even if snipers try to snipe and take them down, ‘success selling’ will not disappear. This is because our desire to 'make money quickly and easily' will not disappear. There will be no shortage of supply because there is plenty of demand.

It is time to define the meaning of success in various ways according to our own values and goals. I would like to suggest one thing to the readers of this article. It is to define 'your own success' not based on standards set by others or money.

To me, success is "doing what I love with the people I love, feeling healthy and abundant. Being satisfied with life, feeling joy every day, and having a life with my own story."

Let's think about what kind of life we really want to live and what values we want to pursue, and define 'our own success'.

※ The author is myself, andit is a repost from an article published in WomanEconomy News..