Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (edition 2012)

Didn't finish this. Skimmed more than read, but he did a good job of articulating the grotesque nature of "blogging journalism", particularly that of Gawker and Jezebel. Depressing media manipulation. ( )

As soon as I heard an interview with Ryan Holiday on the radio, I became intrigued by the concept of his book. Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator acts as a personal confession on how the current media system is setup so people like him can intentionally, and maliciously deceive the public for personal gain.

In short, he argues that internet news is setup to spread misinformation at its foundation. With a medium controlled by advertisers the amount of traffic an article gets becomes more important than the content itself. Professional bloggers are taught to get as much content out there as they can. Produce the content fast. Make the headlines catchy and appalling with just enough information to make the reader want to click. Make the articles short and entertaining or enraging--sharible. But whatever you do, don’t take time to check facts and contact sources. Holiday seems to argue that the system in fact welcomes mistakes, because then corrections could be turned into articles themselves, and thus bringing in more traffic. He even makes an interesting parallel between the world of blogging today and the yellow press of the late nineteenth century that have similarly dangerous results. This opens the doors wide open for media manipulators like himself to feed content hungry bloggers what they want while creating false controversy that sells more of his clients’ products.

While there were a couple points in the book that I felt were redundant, overall I was intrigued by the inside look at how misinformation is spread. I also really enjoyed Holiday’s retellings of how he personally has been able to manipulate the media for his clients’ gain. I highly recommend this book. Though I must warn that this book won’t leave you happy, but the information you gain from it is important all the same. ( )

I've always enjoyed reading Ryan's blog. His topics on life and philosophy have been refreshing to read. This book is quite different than the topics from his blog since he discusses the issues with today's online media world. It was an interesting read but I found much of it unsurprising. Overall the book was written well but I never found that edge which made me want to read more. ( )