Chapter 7: The Scroll

It starts the way it always starts. In bed, phone too bright, eyes that should have been closed an hour ago.

I’ve turned the brightness down to the point where the screen looks like it’s underwater, but it doesn’t help. My brain’s doing that thing where it won’t switch off. Three weeks of sehri at half four has wrecked my sleep pattern — I’m wide awake at midnight and dead by two, and the gap in between is where the scrolling lives. The flat’s quiet — Mum went to bed an hour ago, Yus has been asleep since half nine. Just me and the algorithm.

I’m not looking for anything. That’s the problem. I’m not looking for anything, so the algorithm decides what I’m looking for, and tonight it’s decided I need financial advice from strangers. Lucky me.

It starts with a reel. A lad — maybe twenty-two, maybe twenty-five, hard to tell with the beard and the sunglasses — walking through what’s either his apartment or an Airbnb he’s renting for the content. White kitchen. City view. Laptop open on a marble countertop. Oh great, another lad with a rented flat telling me I’m behind.

Text overlay:

If you’re 16 and you’re not investing, you’re already behind.
Warren Buffett started at 11.
Your parents worked 40 years and still rent.
Start NOW or stay broke forever.

Link in bio. Obviously.

Mate. Warren Buffett’s dad was a congressman. My mum works at a care home for twelve hours a week because they cut her shifts by text. But yeah, tell me more about how I’m behind.

I scroll past. But the algorithm’s got the scent now.

Next: a screenshot of a Shopify dashboard. £12,847 in monthly revenue. Some lad grinning next to it — headphones on, coffee shop, laptop. Caption says No degree. No experience. Just my laptop and the blueprint. 3 spots left. DM ‘READY’ to apply.

Three spots left. It’s always three spots left. It was three spots left last Tuesday and it’ll be three spots left next Tuesday. Twelve grand a month and he’s sat in a Starbucks begging strangers to DM him. Right.

Then: a crypto one. Someone’s phone screen showing a chart going up — straight up, like a wall. Green candles. I put in £200 three months ago. This is what it looks like now. Not financial advice. The chart shows £1,400. Seven times his money. For doing nothing. The “not financial advice” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that caption.

Then: a girl — first girl I’ve seen in about twenty reels — doing a voiceover about how she quit her job at nineteen to do dropshipping. She says the word “freedom” four times and “passive income” twice. She’s sitting on a beach, obviously.

The course she’s selling is £249.

I pause on that one. Not because I want the course. Because the numbers start running before I can stop them — it’s automatic now, like breathing or checking the group chat.

£249. That’s nearly forty hours at work. That’s a month and a half of Life pot money. That’s — I actually can’t think of what I’d buy with £249 because I’ve never had £249 that wasn’t already promised to something else.

And she wants me to spend it on a course. About selling things online. From a beach.

Then: a “money glitch” reel. A screen recording of a banking app. Text says: POV: you found the glitch nobody talks about. Someone transferring money between accounts in a weird loop. The comments are half does this actually work? and half this is literally fraud and the person who posted it has replied to neither.

I know this one. I know it because a girl from Year 10 got done for something like this. Well, not done exactly. But her bank account got frozen and she couldn’t open another one for years. She said someone asked to borrow her account and she said yes because they said it was just moving money around, and it turned out it was dodgy. Like, actually criminal. She was fifteen.

I scroll past it. Fast.

But the thing is — and this is what gets me — I know all of this is rubbish. I know the Shopify screenshot is either fake or cropped to hide the costs. I know the crypto chart will go down as fast as it went up. I know the dropshipping course is the product, not the dropshipping. I know the money glitch is fraud. I know all of this.

And I still feel behind.

That’s what they’re selling, innit. Not the course or the strategy. The feeling. The feeling that everyone else has figured something out and you haven’t, and there’s some door somewhere that’s closing and you — yeah. I don’t even know how to finish that thought. I just feel it.

I put the phone down. Pick it up. Put it down again. Pick it up and plug it in and put it on the floor, screen-down, where I can’t see it.

I close my eyes. The numbers from the reels float around behind my eyelids for a while, like the ghosts of spreadsheets. Twelve grand a month, seven times your money, two hundred and forty-nine quid for — what did she call it? Freedom.

I fall asleep eventually. Inshallah, tomorrow my feed goes back to cat videos.

Mr Okafor is new.

Well, not new — he’s been at the school since September, apparently. But I don’t have Business Studies until Thursday afternoons, and honestly I’ve spent most of the year so far treating it as the last lesson before the weekend. It’s Business Studies. It’s not like it’s going to change my life.

He’s stood at the front with no PowerPoint. Just him and the whiteboard and a marker that squeaks. He’s maybe late thirties, tall, voice that carries without shouting. He’s wearing a shirt that’s too well-ironed for a Thursday afternoon, which I notice because I notice things like that.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Phones away. Including you, Kai.’

Kai does the slow phone-in-the-blazer move that’s designed to show he’s complying without actually complying.

‘I want to tell you about Jake,’ Mr Okafor says.

Nobody says anything. The room just goes quiet.

‘Jake is seventeen. Lives in Leeds. Works part-time at a gym. He follows a bloke on Instagram who posts about making money online. Trainer-flipping. You know trainer-flipping?’

A few nods. Darren at the back says, ‘My cousin does that,’ which is what Darren says about everything.

‘This bloke — let’s call him GymBossUK or whatever they call themselves — he posts videos of himself buying limited-edition trainers and selling them for double. Triple. He’s got income screenshots. He’s got testimonials. And he’s got a course.’ Mr Okafor writes on the board: £350. ‘Three hundred and fifty quid. That’s what the course costs. Jake saves up for two months. He buys the course.’

Mr Okafor caps the marker.

‘What do you reckon happened?’

‘He lost the money,’ someone says from the back.

‘How?’

‘The course was rubbish.’

‘It wasn’t rubbish, actually,’ Mr Okafor says. ‘The course was fine. It had videos. It had a PDF guide. It explained how to find limited drops, how to use bots, how to sell on StockX. Real information. You can find most of it on YouTube for free, but it was real.’

He leans against his desk.

‘The problem was that Jake spent £350 on information that was worth about nothing, because the trainer market was already flooded. Every kid with the same course was trying the same drops. Jake bought three pairs, couldn’t sell them for more than he paid, and ended up down £350 plus the cost of the trainers. Total loss: about five hundred quid. That’s — what? How many hours is that at your jobs?’

People start working it out. I can see it happening — heads tilting, lips moving.

‘Over eighty hours,’ I say. Too loud. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

Mr Okafor looks at me. ‘Eighty hours. At the under-eighteen rate. That’s about ten weeks of part-time work. Two and a half months of someone’s life. For a course they could have Googled.’

He lets that sit.

‘So,’ he says. ‘I’m going to give you three questions. Three questions you can ask about any financial claim, any offer, any opportunity, any DM from someone you don’t know.’ He turns to the board and writes, and the marker squeaks on every letter.

1. Who profits?
2. What’s the opportunity cost?
3. Can I wait 72 hours?

‘These are not original,’ he says. ‘I didn’t invent them. But they work, and I want you to actually use them. Not write them down and forget them. Use them.’

He taps the board next to number one.

‘Who profits? When someone tells you how to get rich — ask who’s getting rich from telling you. Is it them? Is it through the course? Through the affiliate link? Through the sign-ups? If someone’s making money from you buying into their advice, that doesn’t mean the advice is bad. But it means you should notice.’

A hand goes up near the window. Priya, I think. She’s one of those people who actually engages in lessons, which is either brave or mental depending on the subject.

‘Sir, what if the course actually works though? Like, what if someone’s teaching something real and they charge for it? That’s not automatically a scam, is it?’

Mr Okafor points at her. ‘Good. No, it’s not. People charge for knowledge. That’s fine. The question isn’t “is this person making money?” — everyone’s trying to make money. The question is “is the way they’re making money aligned with the thing they’re teaching me?” If someone teaches you plumbing and charges for the course, they’re a plumber who teaches. If someone teaches you to get rich and the only way they got rich is by selling the course about getting rich — that’s different.’

He pauses.

‘And honestly? Sometimes the line is blurry. Sometimes someone genuinely believes their strategy works, and they charge for it, and it doesn’t work for you. That’s not a scam — that’s just someone who’s wrong. The framework doesn’t tell you if something’s good. It tells you what to check first. That’s all it is.’

That lands. I can feel it land. Nobody in PSHE ever gave us anything this concrete. Just “think before you spend” and a worksheet.

‘Number two. Opportunity cost. Big phrase, simple idea.’ Mr Okafor looks around the room. ‘If you spend three hundred and fifty quid on a course, you haven’t just lost three hundred and fifty quid. You’ve lost whatever else you could have done with it. Driving lessons. Savings. Three months of bus fares.’

‘So like, what else you could’ve bought?’ Connor says.

‘More than that. The question isn’t “can I afford it?” The question is “what am I giving up?”‘

He pauses. Looks at us.

‘I’m not going to pretend I’ve never bought something stupid. I bought a juicer. Ninety quid. Used it twice. My wife still brings it up.’ A few people laugh. ‘But I could absorb ninety quid. Jake couldn’t absorb three-fifty. Know the difference.’

He taps number three.

‘Can I wait seventy-two hours? Three days. If someone’s telling you the price goes up tonight, the spots are limited, you have to act now — that’s a sales tactic. Not always a scam, but always a tactic. And the question is: if this is genuinely a good opportunity, will it still be a good opportunity in three days?’

He caps the marker.

‘If the answer is no — if the deal disappears in seventy-two hours — then it was probably relying on you not thinking. And you deserve to think.’

The room is quiet for a second. Not the bored quiet of a Thursday afternoon. Something else.

Kai puts his hand up. Half up. The kind of hand-raise that’s ready to come back down at the first sign of embarrassment.

‘Sir, what about betting? Like, sports betting. Is that the same kind of thing?’

Mr Okafor tilts his head slightly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I dunno. That’s why I’m asking.’

‘Okay. Apply question one. Who profits when you place a bet?’

‘The betting company,’ Kai says. Quickly. Like he already knew.

‘And question two — what’s the opportunity cost of the money you’re betting?’

Kai doesn’t answer that one. He just sort of nods and looks at his desk. Mr Okafor doesn’t push it. He moves on. But I see Kai’s jaw do a thing, and I think — I dunno. Something about hearing yourself answer a question that fast. Like you already had the answer and didn’t want it.

‘Right,’ Mr Okafor says. ‘Case study sheets. Pairs. You’ve got twenty minutes. And if I see TikTok on anyone’s phone, I’m confiscating it and I will look at your search history. I’m joking. Mostly.’

The case study sheet is about a girl — fictional, obviously — who gets a DM from someone offering a “mentorship programme” for £500. “Join my team. Build your empire. Financial freedom by 25.”

Sienna’s not in this class. The person next to me is Harpreet, who I’ve spoken to about four times in my life. He’s got three different colour highlighters out, which tells me everything I need to know about how he approaches Business Studies. He also smells like he’s applied Lynx Africa with a fire hose, but I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

He reads the sheet, uncaps the green highlighter, and goes, ‘So — who profits?’

‘The person selling the mentorship,’ I say.

‘Yeah, obviously. But what about the thing they’re selling? Like, if the mentorship actually works —’

‘Does it, though?’

‘Dunno. That’s the point, innit? You can’t tell from a DM.’ He highlights something. ‘But also — it says “join my team.” That’s a bit MLM, isn’t it? My mum’s friend sells Herbalife and she’s always going on about her “team” and none of them make any money.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘So who profits?’

‘The people at the top.’ He switches to the orange highlighter. ‘Always the people at the top. Same as everything, innit.’

We work through the questions. Opportunity cost: Harpreet says £500 is about six months of pocket money, or about eighty hours at work, or the full cost of a provisional licence and a driving theory test with change left over. Seventy-two hours: the DM says “offer closes Friday” which is textbook urgency.

Mr Okafor comes round. He stops at our desk, reads what we’ve written, and nods.

‘One thing,’ he says. ‘You’ve both identified who profits. But here’s the next level — how do they profit? Where does the money actually go? If someone’s selling mentorship at five hundred quid a head, and they’ve got two hundred mentees, that’s a hundred grand. Where’s it coming from? You. Where’s it going? Them. What are you getting? A PDF and some Zoom calls. What are they getting? A hundred grand.’

He moves on.

I write that down.

Walking home. I’ve got my earbuds in but nothing playing. Just the street noise and the cold hitting different now it’s dark by half four.

I think about the reels from last night. I could run the questions on all of them — the affiliate link lad, the dropshipping girl. But the one that sticks is the crypto lad. The one with the chart.

Because the crypto lad might not be selling anything. He might genuinely believe the coin’s going up. He might have put in £200 and it might actually be worth £1,400 right now. That doesn’t mean he’s lying. It means he’s showing you the chart on the good day. Not the day it drops sixty percent. Not the day he can’t cash out because the platform’s frozen withdrawals.

Who profits? Maybe nobody. Maybe him, if more people buy in and the price stays up. Maybe the exchange, taking fees on every trade. It’s not as clean as the affiliate link lad, where you can draw a straight line from his content to his commission. This one’s murkier.

He’s not necessarily a scammer. He might just be someone who got lucky and thinks luck is a strategy.

Does that make it safer? No. Because it’s not about whether he’s lying. It’s about whether what happened to his money tells me anything about what would happen to mine. And it doesn’t. His chart is his chart. It’s not mine.

The framework catches the ones that feel reasonable too. Not just the obvious scams.

I don’t need the framework to say no. I was already going to say no. But it’s like having the words for something you already felt.

I turn onto the estate. Someone’s got their kitchen window open and I can smell frying onions and — yeah, that’s definitely keema.

My phone buzzes. Notification. I look without thinking.

A reel in my suggested feed. A lad — different lad, same energy — holding up a wad of cash and saying something about passive income. Link in bio.

I look at it for about three seconds. Then I keep walking.

Inside the stairwell I’ve got my phone out again. Not for reels this time. I Google: how do finfluencers make money UK.

Affiliate links, course sales, all the stuff I’d sort of guessed. And then some things I hadn’t — paid signal groups, something about YouTube ad revenue. It’s all there. It’s not hidden. It’s just that nobody talks about it in the reels. In the reels, the money comes from “the strategy” or “the hustle” or whatever. Not from you clicking a link.

One thread on Reddit — someone claiming to be a marketing manager — breaks down how much a finfluencer with like two hundred thousand followers makes off a course. The number is — I stop scrolling. Four hundred grand. From a course that probably took them a weekend.

And the other followers — the ones who didn’t buy the course — they’re still there, watching the reels, clicking the links, signing up for the apps, generating affiliate income. They’re still the product even if they don’t buy the product. You’re the revenue stream.

So basically — he’s not even selling advice. He’s selling me. Like, I’m the thing. I click, he gets paid. The advice is just — whatever. Bait.

Home. Khana. Yus talking about something that happened at school involving a football and a window and a supply teacher who apparently said a swear word, which Yus is retelling with the energy of a war correspondent. Mum’s at the counter folding Yus’s school shirts, matching the creases with her thumb the way she does — precise, automatic, like her hands know the routine even when the rest of her is somewhere else. She’s half-listening, half on her phone, doing the thing she does where she scrolls through the care home rota app like it’s going to tell her something different this time.

I eat. I wash up. Lie on the bed. Stare at the ceiling.

The ceiling’s got a crack in it that runs from the light fitting to the corner, a thin dark line like the ceiling’s been thinking about splitting but hasn’t committed. I keep thinking about Kai. The way he answered “the betting company” before Mr Okafor even finished the question. He knew. He asked anyway.

I’ve got the questions now. Three of them. Not a magic fix — just a way to check stuff before I do something stupid. But Kai already had the answer and it didn’t stop him, so maybe knowing isn’t the whole thing. Mr Okafor called them a starting point. Theek hai. Sleep. Tomorrow’s Friday. Payday.

Except my school shoes have finally given up, and my English coursework is due in six weeks, and I’ve been doing it on Mum’s phone with its cracked screen and its battery that dies at forty percent.

I need shoes. I need a laptop. I’ve got questions for the finfluencers now. But the question I can’t answer is the one about myself: what do you do when you need something you can’t afford yet?