Protip for the author: --allow-empty ;P

But that doesn't change the files, so it won't show up in the tree view as the user is trying to accomplish.

instead of --amend?

Instead of adding or removing a space in random files when making cute and useless commit logs.

that's what I meant - "amend" would not create any extra commits/entries

...which is not a helpful advice when what they clearly wanted is to create a bunch of extra commits.