Hype
How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We're Following
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
"Hype is the best kind of nonfiction: juicy, sharp, savage and wildly entertaining, with a celebrity behaving badly on every page. What more could you want?” -Cat Marnell, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life
From former Vice journalist and executive producer of hit Netflix documentary Fyre comes an eye-opening look at the con artists, grifters and snake oil salesmen of the digital age—and why we can’t stop falling for them.
We live in an age where scams are the new normal. A charismatic entrepreneur sells thousands of tickets to a festival that never happened. Respected investors pour millions into a start-up centered around fake blood tests. Reviewers and celebrities flock to London’s top-rated restaurant that’s little more than a backyard shed. These unsettling stories of today’s viral grifters have risen to fame and hit the front-page headlines, yet the curious conundrum remains: Why do these scams happen?
Drawing from scientific research, marketing campaigns, and exclusive documents and interviews, former Vice reporter Gabrielle Bluestone delves into the irresistible hype that fuels our social media ecosystem, whether it’s from the trusted influencers that peddled Fyre or the consumer reviews that sold Juicero. A cultural examination that is as revelatory as it is relevant, Hype pulls back the curtain on the manipulation game behind the never-ending scam season—and how we as consumers can stop getting played.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One shouldn't believe everything they see on social media, admonishes this scattershot exposé of online deception. Vice journalist Bluestone investigates impresario–con man Billy McFarland's infamous 2017 Fyre Festival, which was hyped as a glamorous music festival in a Bahamian island paradise but ended up being a rain-soaked gathering at a gravel pit. McFarland had spent millions on parties for himself and on social media personalities who swayed followers to buy tickets to the nonevent, and later pleaded guilty to defrauding his investors. Alongside her reporting on the Fyre debacle, Bluestone explores the economy of influencers who leverage pseudo-relationships with followers into hidden marketing deals with the brands showcased in their feeds, taking potshots along the way at Tesla founder Elon Musk, WeWork founder Adam Neumann, and, inevitably, Donald Trump. Bluestone offers some entertaining case studies of internet frauds, but her theorizing of it all as a symptom of "a post-truth world" feels overblown and the narrative can bog down in repetitive, semi-articulate interviews. (" ‘That's one of the best explanations I've ever heard,' gushes one influencer to Bluestone about her question; ‘It makes me laugh, because the way that you—I've never heard anyone explain it as well as you did.' ") The result is a baggy, rambling tour of internet fakery that itself feels somewhat overhyped.
