There is a very great deal of untruthfulness in the world today! More than there was even as recently as forty years ago - although, of course, there has always been a good deal of lying and even more misleading - even in the most honest places (which used-to include England).
In everyday social life there are some people who claim always to have had a Great Time, whatever they have been doing - at a play or concert, a party or holiday. By their own account - their lives are one fun thing after another.
The valuation is not accurate - as you realize if you ever happen to observe them in such situations. Indeed, nobody who was not in the grip of chronic hypomania could possibly regard their own life in the way they claim to!
Such people would be outraged if accused of lying, or even exaggerating, their own responses - yet, in their own way, each is systematically misleading other people about the nature of reality.
We, as social listeners, need to realize that such people are not speaking accurately; and the same applies to writing.
Social media has greatly increased the amount of Having A Great Timers among writers; just as, on the opposite pole, there are many more high-volume pathographers - indeed the same person may alternate their accounts of themselves, oscillating between accounts of exaggerated happiness and misery.
Although it is true that a false impression is being deliberately created; the audience are complicit - because the audience wants to believe that a life of continual fun is possible, and achievable by themselves.
And this is the basis of the exploitation: the apparently-hypomanic social media "influencer" is in some sense "selling" the method by which the audience expect to have as much as fun as the influencers appear to be having.
And this claim-hope forms the basis of whatever is "for sale".
But what applies, in a crude and rather obvious way, in the world of social media; also applies in the world of "serious" writing: of theology, philosophy, and spiritual writing generally.
Some authors (and these include some of the best, as well as most of the worst) project a personal of Having a Great Time; and describe their own exquisite responsivity to place and situation, to books and music; their intense and frequent religious experiences, their ecstasies and transcendental exaltations*.
And readers need to recognize that this is as false and misleading an artefact; as contrived a construct; as the over-acted excitements of social media influencers.
I did not recognize this as an adolescent; but (to an amazing extent) took authors at their own evaluation and projection.
It was a valid learning process to realize (eg. from further experience, critical analysis, or biographies) that literally nobody I have ever known of - IRL or by writings - ahs "solved the problem of living" in the way that so many such imply that they have.
This insight has been vital in realizing that there is no solution to the problem of living in this mortal life and earth; and that attempts to emulate constructed authorial personae do more harm than good.
It's a kind of laziness (to which I am also prone) to try and pick-up a purpose and meaning of one's own life in any second-hand, or emulating, kind of way.
Certainly we can learn from other people - but we'd be wise to learn from what is true, rather the fantasies they try to convince us are true. This involves acknowledging that almost everybody with whom we interact is not just habitually and by social-conviction dis-honest, but is making no serious or sustained attempt to be honest. Especially not about their own motivations and responses.
If we can sustain this realism; we might then be able to learn the right lessons, and make the right choices, relevant for our unique actual life and situation.
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*Some other writers adopt a chronic and pervasive pessimism and/or affectation of misery - which, if sincere and chronic, would have long since led them to obscurity and death; rather than the fame and esteem they bask-in. Schopenhauer and Samuel Beckett spring to mind. This negative propaganda has only ever been popular among a sub-sector of upper class (or would be upper class) intellectuals... But that's another story.
