Can I just make my own back links

Sorry this probably a very basic question but I'm trying to teach myself the ins and outs of this. Could I just make 100 sites link them to each other and fill them with content about the site I actually want to promote and then link them all to that site. I'm thinking actual human written prose for the content but I'm not going to put much thought into it just a 4am caffeine high keyboard hammering session? Would this work would Google know would I be able to use a domain hosting service that lets you have multiple domains or has Google seen that trick before?