why buy fake engagement?

this may be a very rudimentary question but whats the point in purchasing vanity metrics on social media platforms?

as an influencer its so easy to tell whos real and who’s fake

do they trick algorithm to push you to real follower growth faster? or is it just ego based?

They are vanity matrics and also give you a head start if you are new to a platform but have a decent following in another.
But it may work against you as some platform proactively try to detect it and shadow ban / soft ban the account.
In that case buy shoutout and join engagement groups to grow organically.

To show people that you are supposedly famous or successful, just a stupid thing