I’ve been avoiding writing this because it hurts. One of life’s purest pleasures is inspiring people—watching someone absorb what you’ve learned, seeing them grow from your guidance, even when it happens silently, from afar. It’s a high that tops any personal achievement. We like to pretend our good deeds are purely altruistic, that we’re angels in human form, but we’re not. The best acts of service always carry some personal reward, and maybe that’s exactly what keeps good people fighting when things get brutal—the fulfillment transcends moral duty and becomes deeply, selfishly satisfying (in a good way)

We also need to be seen. Not Instagram-verified (though they’ve monetized that basic human craving brilliantly—enjoy your purchased blue tick, Cindy), but genuinely acknowledged. Recognition isn’t vanity; it’s oxygen. Social media wouldn’t exist without this fundamental need, which is why it’s so insidiously effective at speaking to our most intimate hungers.

And we have an innate sense of justice. Being wronged doesn’t just sting—it burns. The pain of theft, dismissal, being treated as invisible runs bone-deep. Nothing in the world can heal that wound except making what’s wrong right.

Now let me tell you a story.

The Gym Prophet

This trainer bloke at one gym—nice enough guy who trains women like they’re made of porcelain and approaches every session with the enthusiasm of someone working the night shift at a gas station. His clients? Spinning their wheels on the same routine while he scrolled through his phone between sets.

Then I show up.

I’m shredded, I know what I’m doing, and I’ve got ten years of building actual bodies behind me—no Instagram filters required. This guy starts watching. Not learning, mind you. Watching. Like he’s taking notes for a test he plans to cheat on.

Next thing I know, his female clients are doing my exact routine. Movement for movement, rest periods, progression scheme—everything I’ve spent years perfecting through research, trial, and considerable error.

His clients start looking better. He starts getting more clients. And when I compliment his “methods”—for kicks? He takes full credit with the confidence of someone who genuinely believes he invented the squat.

Here’s what really gets me: how normal this has become. How easy. Today, in the era of social media, people scroll through human experience like they’re shopping at a boutique. They see something they want—your style, your energy, your entire identity—and they just… grab it. Because they can. Because no one’s watching. Because wanting success without paying for it has become normal

The difference between a thief and a disciple? It’s not acknowledgment—it doesn’t require walking up and saying thank you. It’s the energy underneath. Awe versus envy. Learning versus stealing. Motivation versus competition. One person sees you and thinks, “I want to become more.” The other thinks, “I want you gone so I can take your place.”

Sometimes the people you help most become the ones who fight you hardest, because you’re a constant reminder of who they really are. Imagine what a human would do to eliminate something that reflects their moral bankruptcy back at them—they will want to crush it (not to be sexist, but imagine all this in the context of female competition and jealousy, it’s brutal man). Being on top isn’t lovely.

The Soul Market

You know what rich people used to buy? Things: Partners, cars, houses, overpriced wine they couldn’t actually taste the difference in. Predictable, harmless enough.

But they’ve discovered something infinitely more lucrative: they can buy lives. Not just lifestyles—actual lived experiences, blood-and-sweat identities forged in the trenches of real effort, real failure, real triumph.

Consider the actress/ influencer whose career was built solely on her physical presence, now older, suddenly reinventing herself as a philosopher launching an “anti-aging” line. Not by living the path, but by purchasing it: assembling teams of ghostwriters and media specialists faster than you can say “tax write-off.”

They show up in circles they couldn’t touch before, dispensing “wisdom” like they’ve invented it (a pinch of sociopathy too). All while the people who actually walked those paths watch from the sidelines.

Most of these folks reached the top through the usual means—generational wealth, nepotism, the occasional dabble in exploitation. Naturally, they arrive at the summit only to face the consequence: an echoing void.

There’s no genuine fulfillment,no authentic joy—just a self fragmented by incessant performance. So what do these entitled superheroes do when they realize their trophy room is empty?

They don’t reflect. “Earning it” isn’t a recognizable concept beyond Instagram captions. They simply steal it.

“What public persona do I need now?” they muse over their $40 matcha. “An author? Prestigious, intellectual—something I lack. I can buy that respect.”

The Real Theft

Every ghostwritten bestseller pushes a real writer further from their dreams. Every stolen fitness routine puts an actual trainer out of business. Every fake expert steals opportunities from people who spent years building genuine expertise.

But it’s deeper than money. It’s about meaning.

When you’ve spent your life developing something real, watching someone else buy the right to claim it as theirs isn’t just frustrating—it’s soul-crushing. They’re not stealing your work; they’re stealing your right to matter.

Every time someone purchases expertise, they’re announcing that your years of dedication, your failures, your growth, your actual lived experience has no value beyond what money can buy.

They’re saying you don’t matter. Your journey doesn’t matter. Your scars don’t matter.

What matters is who can afford the best ghostwriter, the slickest marketing team, the most convincing performance of authenticity.

What They Actually Get

Here’s the thing they can never steal from you: your failures are yours. Your growth is yours. Your hard-won wisdom is yours. Your scars are yours.

They can copy your methods, steal your content, appropriate your style, but they can’t steal your lived experience. They can’t steal the person you became through walking your own path.

The fact that they have to live as themselves, trapped in a performance of being someone else, should be revenge enough. I can’t think of a crueler fate than being imprisoned in a life you purchased rather than lived.

But here’s the brutal truth: it isn’t revenge enough. Because while you’re consoling yourself with the nobility of authentic suffering, they’re collecting the rewards that should have been yours.

While you’re being “genuinely, messily, imperfectly real,” they’re getting the book deals, the speaking engagements, the recognition. They’re building empires on foundations they never laid, getting credit for journeys they never took.

And the beautiful irony? While you’re reading this, wondering if you’re authentic enough, they’re already shopping for your next identity.

The universe doesn’t correct soul thieves the way it corrected my heroic bird rescue. There’s no cosmic justice coming to balance the scales. No divine intervention to restore what was stolen.

Sometimes the most devastating truth is learning there’s no lesson at the end, no redemption arc, no higher purpose to the pain.

Sometimes theft is just theft. And sometimes the thieves win.