It’s the keystone of our odd age: your brand, your recognizability on social media, how quickly your postings go viral. It’s related to your follower count, your willingness to video and post outrageous (often sexual) or tedious (package-opening) things online. It’s perhaps the most admired and desired, as well as despised and discredited, activity of our time.

If you are a brilliant geneticist, a symphonic contrabassoon soloist, a published author of witty, trenchant fiction, or a skilled woodworker specializing in Victorian replicas, you probably have a cohort of appreciative admirers, colleagues, and clients, and you may derive pleasure in your accomplishments. Most of us once were pleased to do meaningful work and impress those whose opinions we value.

Now most of us want fame, adulation, mania, bling. Rarely, these attributes accrue to someone who combines genuine accomplishment with a naturally entertaining personality, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson. More often, they accrue to someone with no talent or accomplishments whatsoever, such as Kim Kardashian. The GoFundMe campaign of the young woman dying of a curable disease without insurance failed and she died, while that of the young woman who said I want to buy more stuff hit in six figures. The new gods we now worship are capricious.

The real enablers of the era of the monetizable reputation are those who watch and click. Gangnam Style, the most popular Youtube video ever with 900 million views, made only $870,000 for Psy. That’s more than 1000 views per dollar. He was able to capitalize on that fame to earn much more of course, and he’s a far outlier. How many millions, billions of us are watching videos or clicking on ads right now?

How many of those are cat videos?

Efforts to channel click mania into constructive activities such as finding exoplanets or decoding gene sequences have had real success, but only a small minority of people participate.

The hedge fund manager equivalents in this industry are not the video personalities, but the consultants. Really vast fortunes are made by those who can successfully transform an eager corporation or celebrity wannabe into the Next New Thing. These social media savants are similar to the folks who set up brothels and mining equipment stores in San Francisco in the 1850s instead of panning for gold: They can name their price, they don’t have to deal with privation or act like idiots, and they “hit” at a much higher rate than their customers do.

I think that may what galls me most about the online fame game. Unlike diversions of the past, these promise real rewards, leading many people to spend not only their spare time and energy, but the bulk of their time and energy on what for most–approximately 100%–is a false hope.