As the pro blogging dinosaurs struggle to find something to write about, scraping the bottom of their barrels of old and tired ideas, some of the less scrupulous ones spew out advice that can only be described as dumb. But the piece of typing, since it’s definitely not writing, that I’m going to share with you today is at best ridiculous and at worst socially dangerous. Presumably this particular dinosaur has decided to post this drivel in a desperate bid for attention and traffic.

I don’t read John Chow’s blog. The following quotes are taken from an article by Chow that a friend forwarded to me. Chow’s blog is a classic example of the second level affiliate scam. He tells people he has made money with a bunch of schemes and that they can be rich if they signup for the same schemes. The gullible then signup and make maybe $10 per month from their hard work, often much less. Chow, as the referring sub affiliate, takes a cut of all of the individual $10 payouts. As long as he pushes enough people into enough schemes he gets rich while they make enough money for a drink or two at the end of the month.

I suppose it proves that blogging can make you rich. But it’s a pretty low way to do it. With that in mind, the following diatribe from John Chow probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.

It is said that you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. Take a look at your five closest friends. If they are not where you want to be, then it may be time to find five new people who are.

Dumping friends because they’re not where you want to be may seem cold but one of the biggest barriers to success is quite often the people you hang around with. They laugh at your crazy dreams and say you’re wasting time trying to be a big money blogger. More often than not, you’ll let your friends keep you down because of peer pressure and the desire for acceptance. However, If you want to break out of the rat race, then you may need to stop spending so much time with your current buddies and start associating with people who have the same dreams and goals as you.

The truth of the matter is, you’re not really leaving your friends. More often than not, it will be your friends who will leave you. As you move up the ladder of success, your old friends will no longer be able to relate to you. There will also be the jealousy factor as well.

In order to continue climbing the ladder of success, I make sure I associate with other successful people. I thought I was doing well when I was making $10,000 per month. Then I started associating with people like Shoemoney and Neil Patel. Now, I can’t imagine living on only $10K per month. If you aspired to be more than what your friends want to achieve, then you’re going to have to find others at your level or above and start associating with them. Birds of feather flock together. Success breeds success. This is why the rich get richer. If you want to become rich, you need to hang with the rich.

In case you missed it, or just didn’t believe it. Chow is telling you to dump your friends and replace them with rich people in the vain hope that you will somehow magically become rich by association.

Let’s take a look at what he is saying, if only to try and persuade anyone who currently thinks like this, or anyone who is thinking about dumping their friends purely to follow John Chow’s path of junk, that it is wrong on every level.

You are not the average of the five people you hang out with most. Where did Chow get this from? Who says this?

My friends didn’t laugh at me when I told them I was going to make a lot of money online as a blogger. Why didn’t they laugh at me? Because they were, and are, my friends! Friends don’t laugh at each other. If my friends had thought it was a bad idea they would have told me, they would have offered their opinions, but they wouldn’t have poked fun at me because that’s not what friends do.

The only people who did laugh at me where the people who had always laughed at me. The ones who told me that music wasn’t a viable career and that blogging was for sad people who kept diaries online. Those people weren’t my friends, never were and never will be. The people who hold you back, John, aren’t your friends in the first place, unless you are consider acquaintances who don’t really like you to be your friends.

My friends aren’t jealous of me. Far from it. Many of my friends have benefitted from my success. Why would they be jealous? Would a true friend want me to fail?

And then, in the dumbest of all quotes, we learn that John Chow picks his friends based purely on their income, choosing to sycophantically align himself with people who he thinks are rich. Perhaps when your children go to school, John, you should make sure they only make friends with the kids from the rich families.

Can you see how absurd and damaging this kind of reasoning is?

I don’t choose my friends by asking to see their bank statements. I choose my friends because I like them and because of the content of their character. And that’s the way it should be.

Of course, if you look carefully you will see what Chow is trying to achieve. He hopes that his readers will think he is right, drop their own friends and align themselves emotionally with him. He will pander to them via a plethora of social networking sites in return for this misplaced devotion. But, in reality, these new found fake friends that John will acquire in this way are simply trying to bag some extra traffic, unaware that is them who are providing fuel for that traffic to flow in Chow’s direction. He is creating attention by telling people that they will be successful if they pay him attention in the form of friendship. But that attention only flows one way, back to Chow.

Don’t fall for it. Please, whatever you do, don’t fall for it.

Your blog will be successful, or unsuccessful, regardless of your friends bank balance. Be true to yourself, write honestly and tell your own story. That is the key to genuine blogging success.