[notaigenerated]

One more use case for personas:

As someone who owns a popular website, I often receive guest writing inquiries (probably for links and SEO).

Most of the time it's either Indians or Eastern European guys. But for some reason they always use fake personas and names to sound/look more "western".

When I asked why do they do that, the answer was "it increases the conversion rates" among "western" publishers. Who also happen to be the most valuable prospects.

So, basically they exploit the conscious or subconscious xenophobic biases in people of western cultures towards people from other "foreign" cultures by creating fake personas. And it works! People are more likely to accept guest articles from someone who looks like them.

PS. You would be surprised to know how many contributors at Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, Tech Crunch, Mashable, etc are completely fake personas.