"The fifth form of guidance is where we come in." Pablo claimed with triumph. "This fifth form is arguably the strongest. After all, how can anybody question or resist something if they aren''t even aware of it? While I don''t have a particular name for it, some of my colleagues call it the ''Invisible Influence''. It is something we all use and are subjected to in our daily lives and it leverages everything I already mentioned: religion, laws, economics, even evolution. Create interesting combinations of them while making sure that this force remains unseen and you can get almost anything done."


    This was starting to feel like a cult. I''ve heard of several versions of such tales: the unseen blade is the deadliest, the hand in the shadow that controls everything, a handful of individuals running all global companies. Pablo was just saying the same things and at a very high level. I despise grandiose and vague ideas and appreciate the details more. Details like ''what plane crash was Josie talking about?''


    "There are a few things we need to understand about this Invisible Influence. Firstly, it''s very complex and the complexity is only increasing with time. The complexity shows more correlation with the rise in individual capability than population growth. A thousand years ago, there was a limit to how many people an average person could reach out and influence. If you were a king or queen, then maybe you built enough influence over the course of your life to impact a decent number of people around you. Today, anybody can achieve overnight fame, launch a crypto currency and scam millions. Each of us is now a lot more capable of inciting tremendous change than we were a few years back. How can anybody or anything predict what will happen in such a complex system or hope to guide it in a direction? Understanding this complexity is what your first homework is about."


    Homework?


    "Secondly, and this is somewhat related to the first point: influence does not override free will. You can apply as much force as you want, but at an individual level, a person can react in countless different and often unpredictable ways. The same force applied to different individuals can result in very different reactions from them. There is a silver lining though because as an individual one is unpredictable, but as a society or a group, things tend to follow certain patterns, like that law of large numbers. Some of you may remember learning about Gas laws in Science. A single gas molecule behaves randomly, but a gas in a large container strictly follows certain laws linked to pressure and temperature."


    I assumed Pablo was probably quite old. Old people loved linking things to completely unrelated high-school science concepts. Instead of focusing on the preachy class, I was just thinking about two things: the homework and the plane crash.


    "The third point is that Invisible Influence is hierarchical in nature," Pablo continued, "You lie to your child, your boss lies to you, the government lies to your boss, somebody else lies to the government, and so on. As we go up the hierarchy, the deception becomes a lot more, well, deceptive. The shock-value of these lies increases the higher we go up this chain. Also, different hierarchies may interact with each other in complex ways, like one government vs the other, the police department of one state vs the other, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, they are all influencing each other. If their objectives differ, then usually one triumphs over the other and it''s not always easy to see which one is the winner and which is the loser.


    Lastly, there is no ultimate authority in this hierarchy. By definition, there can''t be an ultimate source of Invisible Influence, because that self-assuming champion might be getting influenced from somewhere else. His puppet master might even be somebody below him in his perceived hierarchy. We, the perpetual middle-men in this complex system, can just hope to trust that the one pulling our strings is pulling them in a better direction."


    The lecture kept on meandering like this around how potent yet mysterious this Invisible Influence is. Pablo mentioned that at some point in the past a group of highly self-aware individuals came together and decided to make use of this phenomenon and their model evolved over time. Fortunately, their goals weren''t for any short-term selfish gain, but aimed at long-term sustainability and progress of mankind. This is why they captured the imagination of the best of humanity and their ideology continues to be relevant today.


    It was a late Monday night and I was at my limit listening to Pablo talk about vague secret societies and how they sometimes branch out, rival factions arise with different objectives and execution methods. He claimed it''s impossible to give an accurate account of the exact history of it all (no surprises there from this personification of the vague), and how some claim that this has been going on since the time of ancient Egypt, while some believe that it''s a lot more recent with the founders coming together during the Dark Ages. He personally leaned on the theory that this started after the burning of the Library of Alexandria to prevent mankind from backtracking.


    By the time Pablo started talking about how modern times called for expansion of this ideology and getting more people onboard to help with the growing demand for legwork and innovation, I had already switched to a new tab on my browser. I typed ''San Gabriel plane crash'' on Google and sure enough I got some news hits right away. There were even YouTube videos, but I clicked on the articles since I couldn''t listen to both Pablo and the news video in parallel. A small Cessna plane did indeed crash into a house''s backyard somewhere in Los Angeles, but fortunately nobody was even injured. I read about the news on a few different websites and they all said the same thing and none of them mentioned any dog-walker or have any witness statement from Josie. I couldn''t read on some websites because the article was behind a paywall, so if you subscribe to those sites, let me know in the comments if there''s anything I missed.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I was somewhat relieved after reading the news because I originally thought that the plane crash was about a bigger commercial aircraft, but the news made it seem much more harmless. The only alarming point was that the crash site was in California, the same state as where I''m currently living. Was this a state-wide orientation session?


    "Some of you may not have been able to follow me through all this. I know it''s hard to understand concepts without concrete details, but ambiguity is something that you really need to embrace if you want to thrive here. Now, for the homework that you need to do for the next class."


    I closed all other tabs and re-focused on what Pablo was saying. I glanced at the clock, it was 9:58pm.


    "For those who had me as their first session, this would be the first test you will be taking. How it works is that each session ends with a test and if you pass it, you get the invite for the next session. I can see that there are five of you in this cohort so far. At most three of you will pass this homework assignment. The ones who don''t will probably never hear from us again so take this seriously if you want to continue."


    I didn''t realize there were going to be eliminations, especially with 40% chances of failure. It wasn''t like we were all fighting for a high-paying job. That being said, I was still willing to do my best and try to pass the test as long as it wasn''t something unreasonable like ''who can share the maximum digits of their credit card number''. I just hoped it had nothing to do with more suspicious aviation activities like UFOs and plane crashes.


    "You have to make a comment on a YouTube video. The aim is to get the maximum number of likes."


    Huh? Is this a click farm?


    "The content of the comment can be anything, any language, emojis and you can choose any YouTube video but it shouldn''t a Short. You can make at most 3 new comments, starting 50 hours from now and then upload a screenshot of just one of them within the next 100 hours. You can''t use a past popular comment you made, and your submission shouldn''t be a reply to an existing comment. Once we have all your submissions, we''ll evaluate them and the two people with the least amount of likes will be informed that they didn''t make it while the rest will be mailed the invite to the next session."


    The meeting ended abruptly and I was kicked out of the virtual meeting room. The time was exactly 10:00pm.


    <hr>


    As you can probably tell, it takes me a while to write down these chapters. As of now, it''s been more than 50 hours since the orientation session ended and I''m allowed to make a comment now. I spent some time during the day researching what to do and looking at the most liked comments on YouTube. The majority of them seem to be either pinned on the videos, or were from the creator thanking their viewers or some other popular celebrity. My comment won''t belong to any of these categories so I don''t think it will make it to the hall of fame.


    However, I don''t need to get a million likes, I just need more likes than my competition. I''ve never made a popular comment on a YouTube video before, I''ve read some of the funny ones but I never counted how many likes they have. I also don''t know what''s up with the YouTube algorithm for sorting comments. The most liked ones tend to appear near the top, but they aren''t strictly sorted by the number of likes. It would suck if my comment is gaining traction and then gets randomly shown below other comments.


    With regards to opponent research, there''s not much I can do. All I know is that one of them has a name which sounds South Indian, while the other is Josie, who is likely from Los Angeles. None of this tells me what sort of range of likes I can expect from their comments or how to beat them. Hopefully, none of them is a YouTuber or celebrity.


    I also have a doubt whether I am allowed to modify my comment after making it. Some people add a "thanks for the likes" to their comment. Is that a good strategy to get more likes or will it backfire because I find it super irritating and so might others?


    I like this test. I guess it is about understanding the complexities of the general YouTube audience to maximize the impact of your comment. I wasn''t sure if there was a way to directly apply the Invisible Influence that Pablo worships and ace this test. I wasn''t sure about the invisibility aspect of it, since people seem to have pretty blatant comments to maximize likes. "Like this and your parents will be happy", "1 like = 1 <rose emoji>". There is nothing invisible about their desperation for the meaningless social currency of likes and replies. How strange that this meaningless number is actually so important to me right now.


    I just remembered something else that Dan told me about how it would be helpful if my content here gains readership. Had I been popular here by now, I would have linked my comment here and requested you all to give it a like. Given that I''m barely getting double-digit views on my chapters, I don''t think it will make much difference as of now. However, I can still ask for your help by voting on what sort of comment I should make and helping me narrow the possibilities. I would be extra grateful if you can add a comment and suggest some alternate strategies.


    So far I have these strategies:


    1. Comment "Who''s listening in 2025?" on some slightly old but popular Bollywood song, which already doesn''t have this comment.


    2. A witty comment on a trending gaming-related video (Welcome to Noxux - League of Legends).


    3. A highly positive comment on a new trailer (REACHER Season 3).


    4. Early funny comment on a popular YouTuber, based on who uploads first and what the video is about.


    5. Early highly positive comment on a newly uploaded song.