The follower trap every alpha caller faces (AI is coming)
Airdrop creators like me are facing extinction. The edge we once had was gone, and now we’re trapped in an unwinnable arms race.
The only way to stay relevant is to constantly grind for alpha and share it with your audience.
They’re forced to stay up all day to find the latest alpha and post it before anyone else.
If they’re just a few minutes late, another account’s post will go viral instead of theirs (and they lose out on the X monetisation).
The repeated grind leads to a path of burnout, one that I’ve experienced multiple times since I started on CT in 2023.
AI is coming for you because it pumps out these alpha much faster than you can, and your account is slowly fading away to become irrelevant.
I made the same mistakes because of my warped perception of what success was here, and I realised that I’ve been chasing the wrong metrics completely.
So if I were to start an account on CT completely from scratch today, here’s what I’d do differently:
Everyone’s playing the wrong game
Back in 2023, I had no direction in the content I created.
All I wanted was to build my presence on Twitter since CT was supposed to be the place where all of the crypto conversations took place.
And after burning out doing YouTube videos that were commodity content, I wanted to start something new.
Using AI to generate insights on my content from 2023, I focused heavily on step-by-step airdrop guides, because I thought that creating the best guide for an airdrop would give me a better reputation.
But looking back, this was not the case.
I thought that these were the ways that my account could stand out from everyone else:
Doing a fee analysis or cost roundup after interacting with different campaigns
Threads to summarise all the protocols I interacted with
Going into extra depth to explain how a protocol works
Sooner or later, my edge was slowly diluted away. AI has made it possible for anyone to replicate these same guides that I took hours to write.
I see similar content being generated by many airdrop accounts on CT.
They race to be the fastest whenever a new major announcement is launched by a hyped-up project.
Someone raises a huge amount, and they immediately spew out a thread on the first few ways of interacting with it.
They’re forced to come up with a clickbait hook to hype up the project, capture attention, but they ultimately underdeliver.
There’s not much ‘alpha’ to share about a brand new protocol, especially if there’s no working product.
Because of the creator monetisation incentive, they’re forced to generate the most eyeballs on their content at any cost.
The clickbait titles hook someone into reading the thread, but there’s zero actionable content at all.
And all there really is to do is either join a waitlist or a Discord server that gets flooded with bots.
The big creators with large followings can get away with this because their audience will thank them for sharing the alpha.
But if you’re a newer account that just started creating content, there’s no way to outcompete them.
You have to be earlier than anyone to share the alpha, before you are recognised. Otherwise, no one would care about who you are.
Any small thing that could turn into a BREAKING NEWS tweet will be used to get the most engagement.
I’m still amazed at how adding a ‘claims’ subdomain to a project’s site gets so much engagement.
When your account is all about sharing alpha, you’re trapped on a constant treadmill.
You’re only valuable to your audience when you have an alpha to share, but when you don’t, your followers no longer care about you.
They will hound you for the next airdrop that you’re farming, which stresses you out when there are no new projects that interest you.
Followers don’t care about you, but only about what you give them. And sooner or later, you’ll realise that the audience you’ve built is purely transactional.
Since last year, I’ve slowly realised that I’ve fallen into this trap.
The moment you stop being of value to them, they’d no longer interact with your content or even follow you.
Or they’ll just leave to follow another account that shares better tactics than you.
I regret sharing tactics
Alpha (or tactics) sharing is a status game, which is zero-sum. Those who win this game would fit one of these criteria:
The earliest to share the alpha before anyone else
The post with the most dopamine-fuelled hook
The account with the largest audience that amplifies the reach
While everyone else with a low view count is considered as losers, because they won’t get the same number of views or engagement from their posts.
But are views the only metric for success, or is it just because you earn the most money because of the impressions that you get?
A viral post means nothing except for pushing up your clout and status. But how many people did you actually impact? Would they remember your post in a few hours, or will they scroll past to find the next dopamine hit?
I’ve experienced that high many times where my article gets 50k+ views, like the one I wrote about the Base Trifecta.
It highlighted my strategy to get the Base airdrop which earned tons of views, but my follows did not increase significantly.
In this case, the views were because of the topic (Base airdrop), and not because of who I am or what worldview I have.
Another example was a HyperEVM thread that I wrote.
This was one that I toyed with writing for a long time, because it felt too surface-level for me. I didn’t explore the protocols enough, except to deposit some funds in different ones.
Most of the protocols that I shared here were the same as any other generic thread, and I didn’t add more value except for how much I deposited in each place.
While this thread performed well in terms of views, I’m not proud of it because it lacked any depth. I just wrote this thread because HyperEVM was trending, and I was racing to complete it before the hype died down.
Instead, I could have added more value just by sharing my research and why I chose to interact with the protocols.
I was addicted to the dopamine hits that these posts gave me. Because I wanted to replicate them again and again, I started becoming the person I said I wouldn’t become.
I started caring about follower counts and other meaningless metrics, all because it gave me more clout. But in the end, no one actually cares.
Follower counts are not correlated to the impact that I give to the world. There are some accounts with lower counts than me, but they provide more actionable value.
You could argue that value is subjective, because each person has their own problem to solve.
But the reason why these types of posts I write do well is because the majority just want the easy way out. You tell them what to farm and they’ll follow you without thinking about the risks involve or even your real motive for sharing the alpha.
I’ve attracted too many followers who are looking for a quick dopamine hit, and I’ve lost value in their eyes because I no longer talk about the next airdrop to farm.
It has become a chore, and I don’t want to be stuck inside a treadmill that I hate and can’t escape.
Instead, I’ve learned that teaching principles are more boring, but it builds trust faster.
Tactics work for a specific scenario, but principles can be applied to different situations. You trust that account more if they have received successes across multiple years, instead of winning just once today.
And that’s why I’ve switched towards talking about principles that get me lower views, but I get to build an algo-proof brand:
Build your Category of One
In this age where AI can create anything at scale, your reputation and worldview are what make you stand out.
If you just share tactics, you become a commodity that AI can easily replace.
But if you share your authentic opinions that are shaped by all of your experiences, you become a Category of One creator:
One where people follow you because they align and resonate with your values, instead of just the topic that you talk about.
And that’s why so many KOLs will die off soon:
They have zero opinions and would just talk about the trending topics in the space
They share about the same boring tactics as anyone else
Some of the most respected creators in CT are those who have built a reputation just by being themselves. The best example I can think of right now is @Zeneca:
Started off in 2021 with ZenAcademy during the NFT craze
Built out more content for ZenAcademy during the bear market in 2022
Moving towards creating crypto x AI content in 2024
Sharing experiences from his poker days to navigating the crypto market
Building out agents and AI tools in the first few months of 2026
The main reason why others follow him is not for a specific topic that he’s good at. They value his insights because they show his judgment and how they tie back to the principles that he had since 2021.
Judgment becomes the most important skill to own, because time is limited. We can do anything and everything, but we are constrained by the 24 hours we have every day.
When you show that you have value based on the successes you provide with your judgment, you’ll build a Magnetic Reputation that naturally attracts rewards to you.
So here’s what I’m doing to escape the dopamine trap of content creation to build a presence that will stand the test of time:
Escape the dopamine trap
These are the questions and considerations I have when reflecting over the past few years of creating content:
Why do people actually follow me?
What value am I providing to my audience?
What principles guide the actions I choose to do or avoid?
What are my authentic perspectives that are different from the industry norms?
How am I framing my content?
What metric am I truly optimising for?
The truth is uncomfortable, because we’re living in a world where vanity metrics get celebrated, but they’re the most meaningless numbers.
Right now, trust is the most valuable asset that you could own, because you build enough goodwill to receive value back for everything you put out in the world.
Making this shift in your content will result in a drop in engagement. I’m living proof of that, as my transactional followers start to leave.
My follower count has dropped, and my views have been the worst in a while.
But I’m sacrificing these in the short-term to compound my reputation. The views that I share would anger many in the airdrops space, but some would resonate with what you say.
So focus on your biggest fans, and use your content to continue speaking to them while letting the algo find those who fit your profile.
The more your actions align with what you say, the greater the luck surface area you create, so opportunities, airdrops, and early information will all come back to you.
You have a choice to make
It’s perfectly fine to continue writing tactics-based posts if views and engagement are your definition of success.
But you’ll continue being stuck on a constant treadmill and fighting a losing battle with AI.
The alternative path is to build a Magnetic Reputation where no one else can compete with you.
It’s not the easy path because you won’t be recognised as a ‘top KOL’ or given any other labels because of your ‘poor vanity metrics’.
But if your content reaches the right people, they will become your biggest fans, and you’ll never know who you attract.
That’s the whole concept of Airdrop Magnetism, which is my strategy to get airdrops without spending my entire life being in the trenches:
If you want to build a reputation that attracts airdrops and opportunities instead of chasing them, join the Airdrop Magnetism Academy for my proven frameworks, daily practices, and live guidance.