Trust Me I’m Lying

Listened via Libby (Pima Public Library)

Written as an exposé about media manipulation in 2012.

Quite interesting if a bit bloated and all the more relevant now.

Could have been trimmed, while the information was good some of it could have been organized better and condensed.

My favorite part was the section on ‘iterative news’: releasing a story first then confirming it. While is terrible for all sort of reasons, (An old proverb says “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to put on its own shoes.” And first impressions of a story are often the ones people remember.) even when it works well (in the death of Bin Laden) the news broke merely 20 minutes earlier than it otherwise would have. And often it doesn’t work well and Holiday documents lives and businesses destroyed.

As far as most interesting one lines: Holiday argues RSS was killed because of the lack of commercial potential. If you’re not clicking on the site, advertisers don’t get revenue

Links (& a postscript)

Okay there’s a whole section in his book about how links aren’t citations, but here’s a link to Ryan Holiday’s site anyway. It appears he’s pivoted from marketing manipulation to marketing himself? But his blogs are interesting. His latest one features Death Comes for the Archbishop which I read as part of a book club. Fascinating title. And then he pivots to a course he’s selling at the end… which I’m always skeptical of. I guess you never really can leave marketing. Favorite juxtaposition: Book Ego is the Enemy where the cover features a headless bust statue, yet Holiday’s face is prominent on every page of the site. But this is probably that snark he warns against.