Self Help - Self Harm

Here, this will cure your exhaustion, you have to believe positive vibes!

I agree with what Seth said back in 2010, generally. A good self-help book is not what's within the category. Becoming a great book, that all other books share with.

Yet there's some bad advice that truly share the cynicism that the critics give it. That really give justification of the genre and make it a worse place. These should be called self-harm books.

These are the books that can kill, which is tasteful curation, curation that is needed.

Some red flags.

• Burning the candle at both ends as the secret of success, of making a hit that will provide a good living. There is no evidence for this, if they'd do it they'd suffer from Kuroshi. Many artists have created hits without burning the candle at both ends, there are many examples.
• Hackneyed clickbait production, searching for scant memoirs to provide life lessons over the most mundane things. Making everything a moralizing syllabus and secret unveiling. Oversharing family stuff like kids. Navel-gazing education.
• Being unrelatable, one is using their lifestyle as a way of influencing others. Showing its useless by being unrelatable is career suicide.
• Is what an influencer selling Sui generis? Or not?
• Questionable: fake authority. Even if they do have authority, the first three should invalidate it.
• Lifestyle schedule incompatibility.

These tropes may be repackaged and reused.

There is no secret, read a lot, write a lot and draw a lot. That has worked. Half keeping the door shut and the door open for revision.

Doubt that these grifters will fully go away, due to this being an industry now. They will still have their 1000 true fans as it were. It's best to simply clear away.

Out of touch self help gurus, video game management and entrepreneurs will continue to advocate for it. I doubt that this rant or any other rant on social media will make the industry complex hear it. They'd probably hire hacks to fill the gaps and continue it.

 So this dinosaur advice will continue to be churned out.