A measured dose of delusion is not denial but armor. On the quiet methodology of staying delulu when you make things online and the world mostly does not clap.
Today I want to speak about a word the internet handed us a few years ago and that I have, quietly, made a method out of. The word is delulu.
Yes, you read that right. It is short for delusional, and it began as a joke about people who refused to face reality. It has since become something else. For those of us who make things online, who write, who publish, who film, who post, delulu is no longer a joke. It is a working tool.
I do not mean delusion in its clinical sense, of course. I mean the measured dose of irrational self-belief that lets you press publish on a piece that nobody asked for. I mean the small private certainty that what you are making matters, even when the numbers say it does not, even when the silence after a post is louder than the post itself. I mean the conviction that you will, somehow, eventually, get there, without having any evidence in hand that you will.
Henry Ford said that whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. That sentence has been repeated so often it has lost its grain, but it remains true. The thinking precedes the doing, every time. Sanity asks you to be honest about your odds. Delulu asks you to refuse the odds long enough to do the work. Besides, sanity, in the early years of a creative life, will not get you out of bed, trust me on that.
Here is the misunderstanding though: Delulu is not denial. Denial pretends the negative does not exist. Delulu sees the negative, names it, and then steps over it like the muddy puddle that does not belong in your righteous path. The hate comments, the algorithm punishing your good week, the friends who do not share your post, the family members who think you are wasting your time, the inner voice that lists every reason you should stop : delulu does not silence them. Delulu just decides they do not get to make the final call.
Toni Morrison wrote that if there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. That is delulu in its purest form, the delulu I personally aspire to reach. You do not wait for permission, for proof, for an audience already gathered. You assume the book is needed, you assume someone will read it, and you assume that someone will be you first. Joan Didion wrote that we tell ourselves stories in order to live.
The creator’s first story is always the same one : I will make it. I will be read. I will be heard. Delulu is the discipline of repeating that story to yourself until your hands believe it enough to keep typing.
I have been a writer since I was nine. I have been a blogger since 2015. I have been a content creator since 2024. I have published thousands of words, I have filmed, I have posted, I have stayed up rewriting captions for posts that twelve people saw. I have learned, in eleven years, that the people who keep going are not the most talented and not the most strategic. They are the ones who stayed a little delulu, on purpose, on a Tuesday morning, when nothing was happening, and pressed publish anyway. The fear and the negativity do not disappear with success. They disappear when you stop letting them write your next sentence.
So today, if you make things online and you are tired, here is what I want to tell you: Be delulu. Be delulu about your craft, about your voice, about the audience that has not yet found you. Sanity will return on its own. It always does, unfortunately. But sanity is not what builds a body of work. A measured dose of delusion is not denial. It’s just armor. And you cannot publish without armor.
I will keep posting, even on the days when the post seems to fall into a hole.
Enjoy today’s Shatzi.
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**TL;DR**
– Delulu is short for delusional and started as an internet joke. For creators, it has become a working tool.
– It is not denial. It sees the negative and decides it does not get to make the final call.
– Henry Ford, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion all point to the same discipline : you tell yourself the story first, the world follows.
– A measured dose of delusion is armor, and you cannot publish without armor.
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The French translation of this article is available on Substack.
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