The Cost of Selling Shiny Turds
Why Ignorance Sells Better Than Skill
Let me just preface this post by saying that I'm trying to share what I learn. If we don't agree or see eye to eye, I always hope it becomes a point of a productive conversation, rather than an argument. All feedback is welcome!
I was scrolling through YouTube the other day, watching this coding influencer hype up a product like it was the holy grail of tech. He’d poured weeks into building it, he said. It was complex, groundbreaking, and promised to make life so much easier for anyone who bought it. Better with it than without it, right? He had all the buzzwords down—slick marketing, big claims, the works.
Then a friend of mine bought it. He showed it to me, excited to see what the fuss was about. I took one look and thought, Wait a second. As a self-proclaimed “senior developer”, I could recreate that entire thing in maybe two hours, if I’m not distracted. And if I used Cursor, my favorite AI composer tool, it’d take me less than five minutes. Five minutes! This “revolutionary” product wasn’t revolutionary at all—it was basic.
That’s when it hit me: there’s two types of people buying this guy’s so-called amazing, fantastic creation. First, you’ve got the folks who don’t know how to build anything. They see it, think, Wow, that looks complicated, and figure it’s worth the price. But here’s the catch—they probably never use it because they don’t even know where to start. Then you’ve got the second group: people who do know how to code. They buy it, take one peek, and go, This is shit. I can’t believe I paid for this. But they don’t say anything. They just shrug, chalk it up to slick marketing, and move on.
Here’s the irony. This influencer? He doesn’t really know how to build stuff either. To him, this product feels like a masterpiece because he doesn’t have the skills to see how simple it is. He worked hard—weeks, he says—and in his mind, that effort translates to something huge. So his marketing reflects that. It’s all life-changing this and future-altering that. He’s selling the dream he believes in, promising the sky for something that’s barely a blip.
Now, I’ve got engineering friends—smart, talented people who can do seriously complex things. We’d never dream of selling a product like that. Why? Because we’d know it’s trivial. Laughable, even. It wouldn’t occur to us to slap a $200 price tag on something we could whip up in five minutes. For us, a product worth selling means real work—something actually complicated, actually useful.
And that’s the wild disparity here. The marketer who doesn’t know how to build is raking it in, selling shit with a shiny bow on it, selling it to the customers who don’t have a clue what they are buying. Meanwhile, the people who do understand tech, who get what’s really valuable, can’t—or won’t—play that game. It’s not in our DNA to peddle nonsense.
But maybe that’s the real cost of selling shit: you’ve got to be clueless enough to believe it’s gold.
I’d like to figure out what the answer is, as AI tools are sure making it easier to build every day. Marketing is going to become more and more important, but do we still build things that matter, and market them to the folks who understand, or do we leverage the speed and build shit, then slap lipstick on the pig and sell, sell, sell?
To be determined …
Have a great week,
Kirill
p.s. I am working on something big, and exciting, and I can’t wait to show you, but meanwhile I made another tool — TranscriptKing.com — Of course now I got to market and sell it, and that’s hard work!