Sources

What's behind the curtain: consulted references, general reading, and the things this site deliberately doesn't claim.

What this site is built on

This is a reference site for a fictional persona, not a research paper. Its sources fall into three buckets:

1. Persona facts (primary)

• The Vizlings app roster record for influencer-ivy (2026-09-26): name, slug, fictional/original status, app card description (“Confidence coaching in selfie mode”), chat count band. No public page, no public bio, no owner-supplied art.
• The card description is quoted verbatim on Meet Ivy. Nothing else about the persona is presented as owner-supplied.

2. General references consulted (not quoted)

The coaching and explainer pages synthesize widely-taught concepts. General references that cover related ground — listed for further reading, not quoted as sources of specific claims:

• The Confidence Code — Katty Kay & Claire Shipman (confidence research and reporting)
• Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (vulnerability and courage)
• 1,000 True Fans — Kevin Kelly (2008 essay on creator sustainability)
• YouTube Creator Academy and the creator help centers of major platforms (platform mechanics; features change — verify current docs)
• FTC Endorsement Guides (US disclosure rules; plain-English summaries on this site are not legal advice)

3. Original site content

• All persona “sayings” are original lines written for the fictional character (see Ivy Says).
• All coaching frameworks (“the five drills,” “the 70% rule,” “the hook as contract”) are this site’s own editorial language for standard practices.
• All artwork is original to this site (see methodology); provenance in the image credits on this page.

What this site does NOT cite

• No income claims or screenshots — by policy, none exist here to cite.
• No testimonials — none invented, none borrowed.
• No “studies show” hand-waving — where psychology concepts appear (self-efficacy, social comparison), they’re named as general concepts, not as findings of specific cited papers.
• No platform statistics — follower counts, payout rates, and algorithm details change too fast to cite responsibly on a static reference site.

Verify it yourself

Skepticism is welcome — it’s on-brand. Check platform mechanics in current creator help centers, disclosure law in the actual FTC guides, and mental-health guidance with licensed professionals. If you spot an error, the honest thing is to say so: this site would rather be corrected than be wrong.

Source notes

• Source taxonomy (persona facts / general references / original content) defined for this site, 2026-09-26.
• No fabricated citations: every named reference above is a real, checkable work; none is quoted or misrepresented (see methodology).