Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

by Ryan Holiday

Overview

The cult classic that predicted the rise of fake news—revised and updated for the post-Trump, post-Gawker age.
 
Hailed as "astonishing and disturbing" by the Financial Times and "essential reading" by TechCrunch at its original publication, former American Apparel marketing director Ryan Holiday’s first book sounded a prescient alarm about the dangers of fake news. It's all the more relevant today. 

Trust Me, I’m Lying was the first book to blow the lid off the speed and force at which rumors travel online—and get "traded up" the media ecosystem until they become real headlines and generate real responses in the real world. The culprit? Marketers and professional media manipulators, encouraged by the toxic economics of the news business.
 
Whenever you see a malicious online rumor costs a company millions, politically motivated fake news driving elections, a product or celebrity zooming from total obscurity to viral sensation, or anonymously sourced articles becoming national conversation, someone is behind it. Often someone like Ryan Holiday.
 
As he explains, “I wrote this book to explain how media manipulators work, how to spot their fingerprints, how to fight them, and how (if you must) to emulate their tactics. Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I’m tired of a world where trolls hijack debates, marketers help write the news, opinion masquerades as fact, algorithms drive everything to extremes, and no one is accountable for any of it. I’m pulling back the curtain because it’s time the public understands how things really work. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591846284
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/02/2013
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	90,053
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ryan Holiday is one of the world's bestselling living philosophers. His books like The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness Is the Key appear in more than 40 languages and have sold more than 5 million copies. Together, they've spent over 300 weeks on the bestseller lists. He lives outside Austin with his wife and two boys...and a small herd of cows and donkeys and goats. His bookstore, The Painted Porch, sits on historic Main St in Bastrop, Texas.

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Excerpted from "Trust Me, I'm Lying"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Ryan Holiday.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Introduction 1

Book 1 Feeding the Monster How Blogs Work

I Blogs Make the News 11

II How To Turn Nothing into Something in Three Way-Too-Easy Steps 17

III The Blog Con: How Publishers Make Money Online 31

IV Tactic #1: Bloggers Are Poor; Help Pay Their Bills 41

V Tactic #2: Tell Them What They Want to Hear 49

VI Tactic #3: Give Them What Spreads, Not What's Good 59

VII Tactic #4: Help Them Trick Their Readers 69

VIII Tactic #5: Sell Them Something They Can Sell (Exploit the One-Off Problem) 75

IX Tactic #6: Make it all about the Headline 87

X Tactic #7: Kill 'Em with Pageview Kindness 95

XI Tactic #8: Use The Technology Against Itself 105

XII Tactic #9: Just Make Stuff Up (Everyone Else is Doing It) 113

Book 2 The Monster Attacks What Blogs Mean

XIII Irin Carmon, The Daily show, and Me: The Perfect Storm of how Toxic Blogging can be 123

XIV There Are Others: The Manipulator Hall of Fame 133

XV Cute But Evil: Online Entertainment Tactics That Drug You and Me 139

XVI The Link Economy: The Leveraged Illusion of sourcing 145

XVII Extortion Via the Web: Facing the Online Shakedown 157

XVIII The Iterative Hustle: Online Journalism's Bogus Philosophy 165

XIX The Myth Of Corrections 177

XX Cheering On Our Own Deception 187

XXI The Dark Side of Snark: When Internet Humor Attacks 195

XXII The 21st-Century Degradation Ceremony: Blogs as Machines of Hatred and Punishment 207

XXIII Welcome to Unreality 215

XXIV How to Read a Blog: An Update on Account of all the Lies 223

Conclusion: So … Where to from Here? 229

Acknowledgments 237

Appendix A 239

Appendix B 259

Notes 279

Works Cited 289

Further Reading 291

Index 293

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Holiday is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results…this whiz kid is the secret weapon you’ve never heard of.”
—Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek

“Essential reading.”
—Andrew Keen

“Ryan Holiday's brilliant exposé of the unreality of the Internet should be required reading for every thinker in America.”
— Edward Jay Epstein, author of The Big Picture

“The strategies Ryan created to exploit blogs drove sales of millions of my books and made me an internationally known name.”
—Tucker Max

“Behind my reputation as marketing genius there is Ryan Holiday, whom I consult often and has done more for my business than just about anyone.”
—Dov Charney, CEO and founder, American Apparel

“Holiday has written more than a dyspeptic diatribe, as his precise prose and reference to the scholarship of others add weight to his claims. A sharp and disturbing look into the world of online reality.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“His focus is prescient and his schemes compelling. Media students and bloggers would do well to heed Holiday’s informative, timely, and provocative advice.”
—Publishers Weekly

“While the observation that the Internet favors speed over accuracy is hardly new, Holiday lays out how easily it is to twist it toward any end… Trust Me, I’m Lying provides valuable food for thought regarding how we receive — and perceive — information.”
—New York Post

“This is an astonishing book. Holiday has worked for several years as a self-proclaimed media manipulator, running campaigns for companies such as American Apparel. He is now intent on revealing the tricks that his kind use to influence us. Many of these stories are chilling.”
—Gillian Tett, Financial Times

Editorial Reviews

Holiday effectively maps the news media landscape. . . . Media students and bloggers would do well to heed Holiday’s informative, timely, and provocative advice.”
— Publishers Weekly

“This book will make online media giants very, very uncomfortable.”
— Drew Curtis, founder, Fark.com

“Ryan Holiday’s brilliant exposé of the unreality of the Internet should be required reading for every thinker in America.”
— Edward Jay Epstein, author of How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft

“[Like] Upton Sinclair on the blogosphere.”
— Tyler Cowen, MarginalRevolution.com, author of Average Is Over

“Ryan Holiday is the internet’s sociopathic id.”
— Dan Mitchell, SF Weekly

“Ryan Holiday is a media genius who promotes, inflates, and hacks some of the biggest names and brands in the world.”
— Chase Jarvis, founder and CEO, CreativeLive

“Ryan has a truly unique perspective on the seedy underbelly of digital culture.”
— Matt Mason, former director of marketing, BitTorrent

“While the observation that the internet favors speed over accuracy is hardly new, Holiday lays out how easily it is to twist it toward any end. . . . Trust Me, I’m Lying provides valuable food for thought regarding how we receive— and perceive— information.”
— New York Post

From the Publisher

"Ryan Holiday is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results...this whiz kid is the secret weapon you've never heard of."

Tim Ferriss