Trust Me, I'm Lying
Confessions of a Media Manipulator
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this revealing volume, Holiday describes the marketing strategies he's learned, developed, and put into practice through his work with such infamous entities as American Apparel (under whose auspices he serves as director of marketing) and the notoriously irreverent Internet-to-print phenom Tucker Max. A self-described "media manipulator," Holiday candidly states that his "job is to lie to the media so they can lie to you." According to him, it's all part of the game. Though he admits to being "no media scholar," Holiday effectively maps the new media landscape, from "small blogs and hyperlocal websites," to "a mix of online and offline sources" and the national press. But his main market is blogs, and given the increasingly interconnected nature of the Digital Age and the rise of blogs as veritable news outlets, his focus is prescient and his schemes compelling. From fabricating stories and marketing them "until the unreal becomes real," to defacing his own billboards to build street-level buzz, Holiday's tactics may not represent the apogee of ethical marketing, but they work folks love to hate American Apparel's lewd ads, and the vitriolic concoction that Holiday brewed around Tucker Max took his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Media students and bloggers would do well to heed Holiday's informative, timely, and provocative advice.
Customer Reviews
A must read for understanding modern media
Well laid out and written with real world examples and detailed background, this book paints the dark reality of how modern media works, and gives a playbook by which one can live and thrive by in this jungle. You almost don't want to believe it is so, but know that it is true, from its perspective.