"The side project myth is getting out of control. Most recruiters and hiring managers will never even open your GitHub profile."

I'm pretty sure some job seekers have figured this out, because I've seen some threadbare github repos put forth on resumes.

I also see a related strategy where they're populated, but in a way that will fool someone who isn't familiar with how GitHub works. I always open them if you give them to me because even a glance can tell me a lot, and I've seen a number now that are basically three-ish forked repos, among which there is maybe one commit from the user total that makes a small documentation change or something. I'm thinking some job seekers may have noticed that it's easy to build a github profile in which you have a lot of impressive stuff on it, but if you dig in, the job seeker isn't responsible for any of it. They just pushed "fork" on a few repos and a token commit somewhere.

I reluctantly suggest that this is probably a good strategy in general, though it may knock you out of the running with an interview with anyone clueful enough to notice this strategy, so, you know, consider the costs & benefits for your situation.