I used to chase shells

I Used to Chase Shell

When I first dove into cybersecurity—self-taught, no roadmap—I was neck-deep in low-level code, obsessed with getting shell access on machines across the same LAN. It was raw, real, and exhilarating. I watched as the hacking world split: some went deep into binary exploitation (which looked insanely cool), and others drifted toward Web Pentesting. There was a clear line between depth and surface.

Fast forward to today, and I’m seeing a similar split—this time in AI.

On one side, you’ve got hardcore AI engineers: folks grinding on transformer architectures, optimization tricks, distributed training, bleeding-edge math. And then there’s a wave of what I call “vibe coders”—the ones using those hard-earned tools to stitch together websites with payment systems, Auth, and some vague dashboard they probably can’t explain.

They’re not solving real problems. They’re chasing MRR goals and startup hype. No deep ideas. No technical backbone. Just vibes and a dream of hitting $10k/month.

They’re trying to build the next Apple or Microsoft… by building glorified landing pages.

And here’s the thing: they won’t last. Not because they’re not smart, but because they’re building with no soul, no substance, and no understanding of the tech they’re leaning on. The hype will carry them for 2–3 months. Then the users vanish, the momentum dies, and it all fades—because it wasn’t built on value, it was built on vibes.