Folding Ideas
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2022–2026
1:15:38 · 4.2M views · Sep 27, 2022
Dan Olson of Folding Ideas investigates the Mikkelsen Twins and the ghostwritten-audiobook passive-income course industry, even playing along with the scheme. It is a long video essay on get-rich-quick publishing grifts.
HN links it whenever threads cover book spam, AI-written ebooks or passive-income hustle culture.
20 comments from Hacker News
> This is what I call meta advice. That’s what I call a grift. Your description reminded me of Dan Olson’s fantastic video on that type of strategy—where you make money by selling the idea that anyone can make passive income by doing something the seller doesn’t themselves do (anymore)—using the Mikkelsen Twins as the example. In Dan’s words (emphasis mine), the Mikkelsen Twins aren’t special, grifters like them are a dime a dozen. He chose them as the example “because they are of a type. They are a representative sample of a category of grift. And also because they’re kind of incompetent and that makes them entertaining ”. He’s not wrong. this video
The 'book factory business oppportunity' trend spotted in the article is explored in depth in this excellent Dan Olson video: this video It is a great and informative watch.
a very entertaining, highly-recommended, and intense gonzo video essay on the topic of the courses scams this video
Zoe Bee did a video essay[0] on her experience as a ghostwriter producing essentially the kind of junk that is now being automated with LLMs. In her case she was (somewhat unknowingly) paid to write unlicensed Minecraft stories. I think the video is worth a watch if you're not aware of the state of ebooks (especially on Amazon) prior to LLMs. It's also worth mentioning that this problem isn't limited to ebooks. There's also a cottage industry of mass produced minimal-effort audiobooks on Audible as part of various "passive income" scams. Dan Olson made a pretty good video essay[1] about one such scam where he actually played along for most of it and also gave it a try as a ghostwriter. [0]: [LINK] [1]: this video EDIT: Considering the most cited examples are Amazon/Kindle and Audible, I think parallels can also be drawn to the proliferation of no-name brand Chinese whitelabel dropshipping products on regular Amazon. Everyone already knows not to trust Amazon reviews but at this point it's hard to find reputable brands for products you're not already familiar with (e.g. which of the one hundred brands featuring near identical products are actually brands you might find in a retail store rather than a random name slapped on the product in the same Chinese factory?). LLMs will definitely make reviews even more untrustworthy but they might also help generating even more plausible copycat product descriptions and designs.
Folding Ideas on youtube has an excellent explanation of the business model behind the rise of EBook Spam. The Mikkelson Twins are running a massive MLM scheme but instead of steak knives or scented candles, it's "training and support for creating your own EBook Passive Income Stream" which leads to what we see on Amazon ebook listings. The video also goes into the darker side of the incentives that lead people to commission ghostwriters, AI editors and the crushing labour demands of the people employed to write these books: this video