Writers Are Faking Their Success
These are five techniques they use to mislead readers.
Last month, I wrote an article called Writers Are Lying To You About Their Earnings. It’s about all of the hoops that writers jump through to give a misleading representation of how much they’re earning — from hiding behind claims of “satire” to outright lying.
That article did unexpectedly well, so — God forgive me — I’ve decided to be a hack and write this follow-up. Since the first article already covers the main rhetorical devices that writers use to exaggerate earnings, in this article I’m going to shift the focus to the technical ways that writers use to provide fake “proof” that they are successful.
Photoshopping Screenshots
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to photoshop screenshots so that they display different numbers than they originally did. For example, a writer might receive an email stating that they’ve earned $500, but then edit in an extra zero so it looks like they earned $5,000.
Sloppy photoshops are easy to spot, but when they’re done well, they’re virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. No matter how many screenshots an author provides, they haven’t proven anything.
