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

by Ryan Holiday

Early Usenet users called this Warnock’s Dilemma, after its originator, Bryan Warnock. The dilemma began with mailing lists but now applies to message boards (why is no one responding to the thread?), blogs (why hasn’t anyone commented?), and websites (why isn’t this generating any chatter?). The answer to any of these questions could just as easily be satisfaction as apathy, and publishers want to know which it is. This dilemma was actually predicted by Orson Scott Card in the 1985 book Ender’s Game. Peter Wiggin creates the online persona of a demagogue named Locke and begins to test the waters by posting deliberately inflammatory comments. Why write this way? his sister asks. Peter replies: “We can’t hear how our style of writing is working unless we get responses—and if we’re bland, no one will answer.” Card understood that it is incredibly difficult to interpret silence in a constructive way. Warnock’s Dilemma, for its part, poses several interpretations: 1. The post is correct, well-written information that needs no follow-up commentary. There’s nothing more to say except “Yeah, what he said.” 2. The post is complete and utter nonsense, and no one wants to waste the energy or bandwidth to even point this out. 3. No one read the post, for whatever reason. 4. No one understood the post but no one will ask for clarification, for whatever reason. 5. No one cares about the post, for whatever reason.