By Hiran de Silva
There is a video.
It has been watched more than 250,000 times.
It has thousands of likes.
It has hundreds of comments — almost all congratulatory.
It looks authoritative.
It feels authoritative.
It has already been socially approved.
And yet —
It does not work.
Not slightly flawed.
Not sub-optimal.
Not inelegant.
It does not work.
It will never work.
And that is precisely why this matters.
The Most Dangerous Assumption on the Internet
We have quietly adopted a modern equation:
High views + high likes + positive comments = correctness.
But that equation has never been tested.
Because views measure attention.
Likes measure appreciation.
Comments measure emotion.
None of those measure operational truth.
The Thought Experiment Anyone Can Run
You do not need insider knowledge.
You do not need advanced Excel skills.
You do not need to know which video I’m referring to.
You simply need intellectual honesty.
Here is the experiment:
- Take any Excel tutorial with serious traction — 200,000+ views, thousands of likes, hundreds of glowing comments.
- Ignore the presenter’s reputation, production quality, subscriber count and brand.
- Rebuild exactly what is shown.
- Apply it to real data.
- Attempt to use it in a real-world scenario.
Then ask one brutally simple question:
Does it work outside the video?
What Actually Happens
Viewers divide into two completely different populations.
Group One: The Implementers
They try it.
They push it.
They scale it.
They introduce messy, real data.
And they discover:
- It breaks.
- It doesn’t scale.
- It requires manual intervention.
- It cannot survive collaboration.
- It cannot run unattended.
- It cannot support enterprise reality.
In other words:
It was a demonstration of a feature.
Not a solution to a problem.
They learn something valuable.
They learn the difference between performance and proof.
Group Two: The Audience
They never try it.
They watch.
They admire.
They appreciate the clarity.
They leave positive comments.
They click Like.
When asked whether it works, their response is telling:
“I assume it works.”
Why?
Because 250,000 people watched it.
Because thousands liked it.
Because the comments are glowing.
Social proof replaces verification.
Here Is the Uncomfortable Proof
If even a modest percentage of 250,000 viewers had attempted to deploy that technique in real-world conditions — and it failed — the comments section would look very different.
You would see:
- “This breaks under scale.”
- “Doesn’t work with real data.”
- “Causes errors.”
- “Not practical in production.”
- “Needs redesign.”
But you don’t.
You see applause.
Why?
Because the majority are consuming content, not solving problems.
That is not an accusation.
It is a behavioural observation.
The Social Media Paradox
Social media rewards:
- Charisma
- Clarity
- Consistency
- Production quality
- Relatability
It does not reward:
- Architectural correctness
- Scalability
- Automation
- Enterprise robustness
- Deployment resilience
A tutorial can therefore become wildly successful while remaining operationally useless.
This is not fraud.
It is misalignment.
Two Economies Are Operating at Once
There is the Attention Economy.
And there is the Results Economy.
The Attention Economy rewards visibility.
The Results Economy rewards functionality.
When these two diverge, popularity becomes a very poor proxy for truth.
And that divergence is precisely what this experiment exposes.
Why This Matters
Because this is no longer about AI avatars versus human presenters.
It is about something much deeper.
It is about how we evaluate knowledge.
In the experiment I described, the audience split evenly between a human influencer video and an AI avatar alternative.
On the surface, nothing dramatic.
But when we examined why people chose what they chose, a pattern emerged:
The group that chose the AI version did so because they tested it — and it worked.
The group that chose the human version preferred the personality, the familiarity, the consistency of delivery — but they had not tested the technique.
They were engaged with the presenter.
Not the outcome.
And that distinction changes everything.
The Ultimate Challenge
Take any highly viewed Excel tutorial.
Including mine.
Watch it.
Rebuild it.
Apply it to your actual work.
Push it beyond the curated example.
Introduce scale.
Introduce collaboration.
Introduce real constraints.
Then ask yourself:
- Does this solve my actual problem?
- Would I stake a deadline on this?
- Could someone else maintain it?
- Would my boss’s boss care about the outcome?
- Could this run without me babysitting it?
If the answer is no —
Then the 250,000 views were never proof.
They were only signals of attention.
The Line That Changes Everything
A video watched 250,000 times can still be wrong.
Because views measure interest.
Not truth.
And once you understand that, the real question shifts.
You stop asking:
Who said this?
And you start asking:
Does it work?
That question alone separates spectators from professionals.
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