I was somewhere around the registration desk at the Affiliate Summit is when the proxies began to take hold.
Not literal proxies, though God knows I was selling enough of them, but the psychological kind. The kind that let you stand in a Las Vegas ballroom shaking hands with men who needed my 5G mobile infrastructure to automate their way into social media fortunes, all while maintaining the facial expression of someone discussing legitimate enterprise software.
The room was pure carnival. Fluorescent lighting doing its best to murder any romance the word "networking" might still hold. Tables covered in branded swag nobody wanted but everybody took, pens that don't write, stress balls for an industry built entirely on stress, USB drives preloaded with malware masquerading as marketing materials. The air tasted like desperation mixed with complimentary coffee that had been sitting in an industrial urn since the Carter administration.
I was here to move product. 5G mobile proxies. SMS verification services. The infrastructure of the modern traffic game. And business, as they say, was good.
"So you can handle the 2FA?" The European was leaning in close, his accent placing him somewhere between Frankfurt and desperation. Thin guy, expensive watch, the kind of nervous energy that comes from running operations across too many time zones.
"SMS verification for any platform," I told him. "Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you're farming. I've got the fertilizer."