A social media account for a ‘car repair shop’ astonishingly gained 200,000 fans from zero within just a week. All this was accomplished by a single post on a new TikTok account. The community manager, a 29-year-old, confessed that he had lied on his resume to get the job. The plea in the first post was: “Please flood this post with comments so I don’t get fired.”

@clancysautobody

Job market is tough rn 😒 #bodyshoplife #shoplife #autobody

♬ オリジナル楽曲 – unicouniuni – I’m Uni.

Everyone instantly understood. The car body shop chose a very smart way to promote itself, using the universally relatable concept of “lying on a resume.” The content of the post was just an animated picture of a huge cat sitting on the roof of the car repair shop. The shop looked like a large warehouse, and the cat on top was ten times larger than the cars nearby, quite startling.

The key question is, why did people like this post? Many online analyses said it’s because they successfully mixed a cat with the story of a faked resume. But there’s more to it.

Key Takeaways

People didn’t like it just because the cat marketing was genius, or because they genuinely wanted to help this young guy. Instead, most people were simply curious: what would happen if this trick actually made this person appear as a truly competent social media manager in the eyes of their boss? What if the person who was hired because of a faked resume suddenly saw his dream come true? It was somewhat like a practical joke, allowing an average person to become an overnight superstar, which was kind of funny.

Surprisingly, this person later admitted that he wasn’t lying on his resume after all. After gaining 200,000 followers in a week, he confessed that he had been working with the company for three years and maintained a good working relationship, contrary to the threat of being fired.

The online community wasn’t upset by his lie, as it was all just for fun. After achieving the goal of 200,000 followers, people were ready to see what the person would ‘perform’ next. As the first post set up the character of a ‘big boss’, the ‘big boss’ had to keep showing up. The boss, known as ‘bossman’, frequently appeared in the following videos. One day, the boss was irritated because he was constantly receiving calls due to good reviews on Google, slammed the door, and there was the rotating cat again. Thus, the cat, the boss, and the community manager’s predicament all continued to exist, and everyone just kept watching along.