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

by Ryan Holiday

The economics of the Internet are exploited to change public perception—and sell product.

Was the product Trump in 2016 and was it Russian machinery that sold it?

The best way to get traffic is to publish as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and as simply as possible.

Everything you consume online has been “optimized” to make you dependent on it. Content is engineered to be clicked, glanced at, or found—like a trap designed to bait, distract, and capture you.

Another way to look at it, though, is that the greatest success of iterative journalism gave us a story twenty minutes earlier than it would have come otherwise. Bravo. A whole twenty fucking minutes. The world is forever in your debt.

What do we get when iterative journalism fails? The answer is: a lot of pain and suffering for innocent people.

In another study researchers examined the effect of exposure to wholly fictional, unbelievable news headlines. Rather than cultivate detached skepticism, as proponents of iterative journalism would like, it turns out that the more unbelievable headlines and articles readers are exposed to, the more it warps their compass—making the real seem fake and the fake seem real. The more extreme a headline, the longer participants spend processing it, and the more likely they are to believe it.

Snark is profitable and easy for blogs. It’s the perfect device for people with nothing to say but who have to talk (blog) for a living. Snark is the grease of the wheels of the web. Discussing issues fairly would take time and cognitive bandwidth that blogs just don’t have. It’s the style of choice because it’s click-friendly, cheap, and fast.

media is a mechanism for systematically limiting the information seen by the public.

Why does this matter? We’ve been taught to believe what we read. That where there is smoke there must be fire, and that if someone takes the time to write down and publish something, they believe in what they are saying. The wisdom behind those beliefs is no longer true, yet the public marches on, armed with rules of thumb that make them targets for manipulation rather than protection.

Colonial newspapers at various points in British history were required to post a security bond in order to enter the publishing business. It was intended to secure payments in the event of a libel action and to ensure some responsibility by the press.

You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If, as a culture, we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.