Hard work never makes you visible

As far as I can tell, only three things ever cross the wall:

1. A paid bridge. Ads. You rent your way in.

2. A trusted insider. Someone they already follow says your name.

3. A signal loud enough to clear the wall on its own. Novelty, a scandal, a number too strange to ignore.

Grit isn't on the list. Grit is what keeps you standing outside the wall, waiting for one of those three to happen.

That doesn't mean quit. It means stop counting your effort and start asking which of the three you're actually building.

So what got you your first real users? Did anyone here breach the wall some other way?