These are my alternative facts, and they’re true because I believe they’re true. You see, the truth is never what it is. The truth is what they say it is. You can wrap yourself in honesty, polish every word until it gleams with sincerity, and still, they will take that truth and twist it into a grotesque caricature of their choosing. Perception, my friend, is the currency of power, and no matter how meticulously you sculpt your image, someone else always holds the chisel. And isn’t that just delightful? You sweat blood crafting your masterpiece, only for them to hang it upside down in a gallery of their lies. Bravo, humanity. Brava.

People don’t want to know you—they want to own the version of you that fits their narrative. You think you’re the artist painting your story, but no, you’re just the clay, pliable and conveniently mute. They mold you into a hero, a villain, a fool—whatever satisfies their insatiable need for meaning in a world they’re too lazy to understand. And the irony? They believe their creation more than they believe the truth staring them in the face. Self-delusion has a better PR team, I suppose.

Oh, I’ve tried, believe me. I’ve fought to control the narrative. I’ve handed out scripts, written their lines, even rehearsed their performances. But the minute you turn your back, they crumple your script, scribble their own, and pass it off as gospel. That’s the game. The rules are simple: perception is reality, and reality is irrelevant. A toddler with crayons has more respect for the walls than these people have for the truth. But who am I to complain? They’ve given me the greatest education of all—the masterclass in manipulation they didn’t even realize they were teaching. For that, I suppose I owe them a thank-you card. Maybe a fruit basket.

But our power—true, quiet, devastating power—comes not in trying to wrest the pen from their hands but in how we change the tale while the perception is written. You see, while they craft their stories, they don’t notice the subtle shifts, the seeds we plant that twist their narrative without their even realizing it. They can build their caricature of you, but you plant the shadow of doubt, the alternative version, the whisper that something doesn’t add up. And doubt, my friend, is a slow, patient poison. It spreads through their story like ink bleeding on a page. It's practically an art form, and I’ve always been a patron of the arts.

They think they hold the reins, but they don’t even see the subtle tugs guiding the narrative back where we want it. We are never truly powerless, not as long as we are willing to play the long game. Because even as the ink dries on their version of the truth, the story is never finished. The tale is rewritten, chapter by chapter, moment by moment, until it is unrecognizable from the original. That’s the beauty of perception—it’s malleable, fragile, and easily corrupted when no one is looking. And trust me, they’re never really looking. People only see what they want to see. Half the time, they’re too busy staring at their reflections in the broken mirror of their egos.

And here’s the real secret: it doesn’t have to be the whole truth. It doesn’t even have to be half the truth. It just has to be close enough. When all is said and done, no one remembers the facts, the details, the nuance. What they remember is the story that feels right. The story that lingers. The story that they choose to believe.

It doesn’t matter that AI helped me write this, because I told it what to say. Just like your narrative about me, it’s not real, but you believe it anyway. You control the input, twist the output, and call it a masterpiece. But isn’t that life? Artificial perception dressed up as the truth. All that matters is the story you tell yourself—and the one you convince others to believe.

When the curtain falls, it falls for everyone. The lights dim, the applause fades, and the audience goes home with whatever version of us they think they saw. We all fade, swallowed by the narrative. But if we’ve played our part well—if we’ve planted the right seeds, pulled the right strings—what’s left behind will be ours. Not the truth, not their truth, but our truth.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be real. It just has to be based on a true story. Because in this world, my friend, that’s all it takes to turn a myth into history. And I intend to be historical.

Oh, and by the way, even I get to turn off the laptop, PC, or cell. That’s the one thing they can’t twist, can’t rewrite, and can’t control. I decide when the screen goes dark, when the narrative pauses, and when the world can wait. Because in the end, power isn’t just what they believe—it’s what you refuse to give.