Social Media Fantasy vs. Real-World Substance
BY Hiran de Silva
Over the past decade, Excel has evolved at breathtaking speed.
Dynamic arrays.
XLOOKUP.
Power Query.
LAMBDA.
Collaborative tables.
Cloud integration.
The technical progress is undeniable. The feature set is spectacular. And social media has responded accordingly.
We now live in what might be called the Modern Excel Era — a vast, highly populated online universe where every week brings a new breakthrough demo, a new viral trick, a new must-learn function.
But a serious question has quietly emerged:
Is this the real world?
Or is it a social-media-constructed reality?
The Social Media Selection Effect
Social media does not promote what is most useful.
It promotes what is most shareable.
What triggers engagement.
What looks impressive in 30 seconds.
What feels clever.
What flatters the viewer.
What can be packaged.
Algorithms reward cosmetics, novelty, and virality — not necessarily durability, scalability, or enterprise robustness.
This is not unique to Excel. It is how social platforms work.
And so the Excel conversation has gradually shifted.
The dominant narrative now distinguishes between “old Excel” and “modern Excel,” implying that power lies primarily in the new surface-visible features.
But real business systems do not live on social media.
They live in hospitals.
In manufacturing groups.
In finance departments.
In multinational consolidations.
In operations that scale.
And scale changes everything.
When Spreadsheets Grow Up
Every serious spreadsheet story begins innocently.
One person.
One workbook.
One task.
Excel is perfect for this. It always has been. Its brilliance lies in its accessibility. If you can organize information on paper, you can build it in Excel.
But here is what happens in real organisations:
- John builds a useful spreadsheet.
- Sarah adopts it.
- Jim adapts it.
- Departments replicate it.
- Enhancements diverge.
- Management wants aggregation.
- Links are created.
- More links.
- More versions.
- Consolidation layers.
- Hundreds of workbooks.
- Thousands of users.
What began as a tidy worksheet becomes a fragile house of cards.
Links break.
Files lock.
Versions conflict.
Consolidations fail.
No one knows which number is authoritative.
Everyone has seen this.
This is not hypothetical. It is routine.
The Call Handler Challenge
To examine the gap between social media narrative and real-world need, a controlled challenge was introduced.
The scenario:
- 100 call handlers
- 20 warehouses
- 20 stock lists
- Each call handler must check availability across all warehouses in real time
This is not exotic. It mirrors countless operational environments.
The question was simple:
How should this scale using Excel?
The challenge was placed directly into the social-media Excel sphere — where modern features are heavily promoted.
Expectation:
Surely those who continually demonstrate the power of modern Excel would step forward and show how these celebrated tools transform this system.
Reality:
Silence.
Or worse:
This is not a job for Excel.
That response is extraordinary.
Because many of the same voices frequently argue that Excel is more powerful than ever. That if you are not using Power Query, your skills are obsolete. That dynamic arrays are revolutionary. That XLOOKUP changes everything.
Yet when confronted with a real scaling problem — the kind that organisations actually face — the conclusion suddenly shifts:
Excel cannot do this.
That is a pivotal moment.
Enter the Snake Oil
The analogy is uncomfortable, but clarifying.
Snake oil historically worked as a business model not because it cured snake bites — but because most snake bites are non-fatal.
If 75% of victims survive anyway, the ointment appears effective.
The sales model thrives.
The salesman knows the risk.
But ask him to prove the product on himself — to apply it before a verified venomous bite — and the enthusiasm evaporates.
That is the critical test.
The Call Handler Challenge functioned as exactly that.
If the promoted techniques truly scale, demonstrate them.
Instead, the proponents declined the test.
And that refusal is the most telling data point of all.
The Scientific Control
But the experiment did not end there.
Because there is a solution.
Excel can solve the Call Handler Challenge — decisively, cleanly, scalably.
But not through the techniques dominating social media feeds.
The solution lies in architecture.
Separation of data and interface.
Client-server structure.
Controlled centralisation.
Database-backed logic.
Disciplined workflow design.
In other words: enterprise thinking.
When this approach was demonstrated, the reaction was revealing:
- No rebuttal.
- No counter-demonstration.
- No alternative scaling proposal.
- No attempt to defend the previously promoted tools in this context.
Instead, continued promotion of the same social-media-friendly features.
The snake oil business continued as normal.
Two Meanings of “Does It Work?”
This is the crucial distinction.
Does it work — meaning:
- Does it protect against the real venom?
- Does it survive real enterprise scale?
- Does it remove fragility?
- Does it hold under growth?
Or does it work — meaning:
- Does it generate engagement?
- Does it grow followers?
- Does it monetize attention?
- Does it satisfy the algorithm?
Both can “work.”
But they are not the same thing.
And confusing the two creates a dangerous illusion.
The Deeper Irony
The Excel replacement industry — ERP vendors, planning platforms, enterprise SaaS — frequently claim that Excel cannot scale.
Ironically, the social media Excel influencers inadvertently support that narrative when they retreat from real-world scaling challenges.
Yet Excel itself is not the limitation.
The limitation is the level of thinking applied to it.
Excel is far more powerful than social media suggests.
But the deeper capabilities are not:
- Visually flashy.
- Algorithm-friendly.
- Easily demoed in 60 seconds.
They require architectural understanding.
And architecture is not viral.
What This Means
This study — because that is what it was — reveals something profound.
- Social media visibility does not equal enterprise validity.
- Popularity does not equal scalability.
- The loudest advocates are not necessarily the most tested practitioners.
- Excel’s true power is underrepresented online.
Most importantly:
Excel is capable of solving the very problems for which it is routinely dismissed — but only when approached scientifically, architecturally, and with lived enterprise experience.
The Call Handler Challenge remains open.
Anyone is welcome to demonstrate how the trending, celebrated, highly publicised modern techniques solve it cleanly at scale.
So far, no one has.
That absence speaks louder than any viral demo ever could.
The Final Observation
Snake oil salesmen can roam indefinitely.
As long as the product is not subjected to controlled testing, the business thrives.
But once you introduce a scientific comparison — once you ask:
Show us under real conditions.
Show us at real scale.
Show us with real consequences.
Then the difference between performance and packaging becomes unmistakable.
And when that happens, one truth stands clear:
Excel is more powerful than social media tells us.
The real danger is not Excel’s limitation.
It is mistaking the algorithm’s reality for the real world.
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