In Part One, we explored the origins of online trolling—how anonymous mischief-makers infiltrated expert forums in the early days of the internet, pretending to be subject matter experts to stir up chaos. These trolls brought no real knowledge or experience but used internet searches and jargon to mimic credibility.
Fast forward to today, and we find that this behavior is no longer fringe or exceptional. It’s mainstream—especially on social media platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. What began as trolling has now evolved into a widespread practice encouraged and amplified by the platforms themselves, led by a new breed: social media influencers.
These influencers create content that is polished, attention-grabbing, and shareable. However, much of it is surface-level. It’s often designed to appeal to novices, not professionals with deep domain knowledge. Crucially, influencers are rarely held accountable in real time. They’re not required to walk their talk, explain the “how” under pressure, or deliver results under real business constraints. Yet, their content heavily shapes popular understanding.
This brings us to Excel—one of the most widely used business tools on the planet—and a major opportunity that lies hidden beneath all this noise.
Excel, Influence, and the Industry Gap
Let’s break down the real-world use of spreadsheets:
- 90% of Excel usage happens inside organizations with business processes—companies with teams, operations, and workflows.
- 8% covers freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses.
- 2% belongs to social media influencers who dominate the conversation about Excel online.
The vast majority of industry users—those in the 90%—use spreadsheets to run mission-critical processes: finance, supply chain, planning, operations, reporting. And yet, nearly all the training and tutorials available online are created by and for the 2%.
These influencers target the largest, easiest demographic to reach: beginners and intermediate users. Their content focuses on teaching Excel like it’s a digital sheet of paper—something you send around by email, save on shared drives, or decorate with formulas and charts.
But this mentality is completely unsuitable for large-scale enterprise use. In complex businesses, spreadsheets must operate in a hub-and-spoke architecture, where data is centralized, collaboration is structured, and processes are synchronized. The alternative—working with stand-alone files—leads directly to Excel Hell.
What Is Excel Hell?
“Excel Hell” refers to chaotic, fragmented spreadsheet environments: multiple versions of the truth, data silos, human error, lost files, and broken links. It’s so widespread that a $100+ billion industry of ERP, FP&A, and planning software exists solely to escape it.
But the root cause of Excel Hell isn’t Excel itself—it’s how Excel is taught and applied.
Because nearly all training comes from influencers catering to novice users, the enterprise use cases—collaborative, multi-user, data-driven solutions—are neglected or misrepresented. Enterprise spreadsheet solutions require thinking in terms of architecture, governance, and process integrity. Instead, most users are taught to think in terms of sending files and updating tabs.
The Hidden Opportunity: Transforming Excel from Chaos to Control
This misalignment is your opportunity.
Let’s illustrate with a real-world scenario: the budget review process in a mid-to-large company.
Traditionally, here’s how it plays out:
- Finance downloads reports from the ERP.
- These spreadsheets are emailed to 100+ budget holders.
- Each person opens the file, reviews the numbers, adds comments, and sends it back.
- Finance manually consolidates all these versions to adjust the draft budget.
It’s a massive, error-prone workload. So many companies avoid it altogether, exposing themselves to massive risk and undermining the accuracy of their financial reporting.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Here’s the transformed version of the process:
- No spreadsheets are sent or received.
- Budget holders access a shared interface where they view draft numbers and click a button to leave feedback.
- All comments flow to a single dashboard.
- Finance reviews and adjusts centrally.
- Budget holders confirm final numbers in one click.
Suddenly, a process once deemed “too complex” becomes elegant and streamlined—with Excel.
This is what we mean by transformation. From clunky, siloed spreadsheets to enterprise-ready, collaborative solutions. All built with the Excel you already have.
But Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This Already?
Because most people, including managers, have never seen this approach. They’ve only seen what social media teaches: single-user techniques, outdated assumptions, and flashy tricks that don’t scale.
So when someone demonstrates a hub-and-spoke Excel solution—built with best practices from enterprise architecture—the reaction is often disbelief. “I didn’t know Excel could do that.”
And that’s your leverage.
If you’re the one who can show your team, department, or company how to make this leap, you become the hero. You’ve not only solved a painful problem—you’ve done it with tools they already own, in a fraction of the time, without a $10M system.
The Social Media Trap—and Why It Matters
Social media influencers, by design, seek engagement—not transformation. Their incentives are likes, views, and sales of online courses. Naturally, they target novice users with content that’s easy to grasp, widely shareable, and entertaining. That’s fair.
But the problem is that their influence has shaped the default mindset around Excel. And that mindset has led to poor architectural decisions in the enterprise—Excel being used as a digital notepad rather than a collaborative engine.
The irony? If you give these influencers a real enterprise challenge—like the budget review scenario—they’d likely fall back on outdated, manual solutions. Or worse, they’d recommend third-party tools, because the techniques they teach are inappropriate for the task.
This disconnect is what created Excel Hell—and it’s also what creates the opportunity to fix it.
Conclusion: From Trolling to Transformation
The link between trolling, social media, and Excel may seem unexpected—but it’s real.
The early internet trolls feigned expertise for attention. Today’s influencer culture does the same at scale, shaping how millions perceive tools like Excel. And while some content is helpful, the overwhelming bias toward beginner-level, single-user techniques leaves a vast knowledge gap in enterprise-level spreadsheet design.
That gap is your opportunity.
If you can demonstrate what’s possible when Excel is applied with proper architecture and enterprise thinking, you can transform real business processes—and your career. You’ll be solving problems that everyone else says are unsolvable, proving that Excel isn’t the problem—it’s the way we’ve been taught to use it.
So the next time someone tells you, “It can’t be done with Excel,” just smile—and show them that it can.
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