My friend told me to post at 3 AM and it was a total waste of time

My buddy Mark, who runs a small skate shop, swore that posting his Instagram Reels at 3 AM local time was the secret. He said the algorithm was 'sleeping' and his content would get a better shot. So for two weeks, I set my alarm for 2:55 AM to post my video game clips. I was exhausted, and the results were terrible. My views dropped by over 60% compared to my usual 7 PM posts. The people who were online at that hour just weren't my audience. It taught me that timing advice is useless if you don't know when YOUR specific followers are actually scrolling. What's a piece of timing advice you tried that completely backfired?