Sean Combs was not only a manufactured success, he was a tool instrumental in the process of determining whose success would be manufactured:
Mr. Combs had hidden cameras in every room of his home… has recordings of several ceelbrities, artists, music label executives, and athletes engaging in illegal activity… these individuals were recorded without their knowledge and consent… Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person who has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties.
If you have even a modicum of success, you will be offered various tickets, and various opportunities to compromise yourself and leave yourself at the mercy of the ticket-masters who will then be able to either help you or hinder you as they see fit.
If you don’t take the ticket, they will still hinder you via their various programs to discredit, deplatform, and otherwise minimize your potential influence, but for the most part they will leave you alone because they know the amount of success you can achieve without their assistance is structurally restricted. This is why the ambitious are well-advised to focus on quality over quantity, and why independent efforts of even limited success are far more likely to stand the test of time.
Fame is generally unpleasant for anyone who isn’t extroverted and pathologically needy anyhow. Look at how all the most famous and successful people eventually seek to go to ground and disappear from the constant adulation and attention.
In short, moderate your ambitions and don’t seek the approval of others. Instead, focus on improving the quality and consistency of your output. At least whatever modest success you achieve will be a) real, and b) your own. The reason so many “successful” people have so-called “Imposter Syndrome” is because they are, in fact, imposters, and they know it.
