PRAISE FOR RYAN HOLIDAY AND TRUST ME, I’M LYING “Holiday effectively maps the news media landscape. ​Media students and bloggers would do well to heed Holiday’s informative, timely, and provocative advice.” — Publishers Weekly “This book will make online media giants very, very uncomfortable.” —​­Drew Curtis, founder, Fark.com “Ryan Holiday’s brilliant exposé of the unreality of the Internet should be required reading for every thinker in America.” —​­Edward Jay Epstein, author of How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft “Ryan Holiday is the Machiavelli of the Internet age. Dismiss his message at your own peril: He speaks truths about the dark side of internet media which no one else dares mention.” —​­Michael Ellsberg, author of The Education of Millionaires “[Like] Upton Sinclair on the blogosphere.” —​­Tyler Cowen, MarginalRevolution.com, author of Average Is Over Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 1 29/11/2017 16:02 “Ryan Holiday is the internet’s sociopathic id.” — Dan Mitchell, SF Weekly “Ryan Holiday is a media genius who promotes, inflates, and hacks some of the biggest names and brands in the world.” —​­Chase Jarvis, founder and CEO, CreativeLive “Ryan has a truly unique perspective on the seedy underbelly of digital culture.” —​­Matt Mason, former director of marketing, BitTorrent “While the observation that the internet favors speed over accuracy is hardly new, Holiday lays out how easily it is to twist it toward any end. Trust Me, I’m Lying provides valuable food for thought regarding how we receive—​­and perceive— information.” — New York Post Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 2 29/11/2017 16:02 TRUST ME, I’M LYING Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author and a leading media strategist. After dropping out of college at nineteen to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many bestselling authors, multiplatinum musicians, and notorious clients. He’s served as the director of marketing at American Apparel, where his work was internationally known and used as case studies by Twitter, YouTube, and Google. His books have been translated into twenty languages and his writing has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Entrepreneur and Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies like Google, Taser, and Complex, and some of the biggest authors in the world. He currently lives on a small ranch in Austin, Texas, and writes at RyanHoliday.net. Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 3 29/11/2017 16:02 TRUST ME, I’M LYING CONFESSIONS OF A MEDIA MANIPULATOR RYAN HOLIDAY PROFILE BOOK S Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 5 29/11/2017 16:02 First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Profile Books Ltd 3 Holford Yard Bevin Way London wc1x 9hd www.profilebooks.com First published in the United States of America in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin Edition with a new preface and two new appendices published 2013. This revised and expanded edition published by Portfolio / Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017 Copyright © Ryan Holiday, 2012, 2013, 2017 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Designed by Pauline Neuwirth Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays, St Ives plc The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 78816 006 3 eISBN 978 1 78283 423 6 Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 6 29/11/2017 16:02 The very blood and semen of journalism, on the contrary, is a broad and successful form of lying. Remove that form of lying and you no longer have journalism. — JAMES AGEE, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 7 29/11/2017 16:02 CONTENTS PREFACE . ���xiii INTRODUCTION . 1 BOOK ONE FEEDING THE MONSTER HOW BLOGS WORK I BLOGS MAKE THE NEWS . 13 II TRADING UP THE CHAIN: HOW TO TURN NOTHING INTO SOMETHING IN THREE WAY-TOO-EASY STEPS. ������������������������������������������21 III THE BLOG CON: HOW PUBLISHERS MAKE MONEY ONLINE ����������������������������������������������������������39 IV TACTIC #1: THE ART OF THE BRIBE ��������������������������49 V TACTIC #2: TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������61 Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 9 29/11/2017 16:02 VI TACTIC #3: GIVE ’EM WHAT SPREADS ��������������������77 VII TACTIC #4: HELP THEM TRICK THEIR READERS ����93 VIII TACTIC #5: SELL THEM SOMETHING THEY CAN SELL (TO BE IN THE NEWS, MAKE NEWS). .103 IX TACTIC #6: MAKE IT ALL ABOUT THE HEADLINE ������������������������������������������������������������������ 119 X TACTIC #7: KILL ’EM WITH PAGEVIEW KINDNESS . .129 XI TACTIC #8: USE THE TECHNOLOGY AGAINST ITSELF ������������������������������������������������������������������������143 XII TACTIC #9: JUST MAKE STUFF UP (EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT). .155 x TRUST ME, I’M LYING Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 10 29/11/2017 16:02 BOOK TWO THE MONSTER ATTACKS WHAT BLOGS MEAN XIII IRIN CARMON, THE DAILY SHOW, AND ME: THE PERFECT STORM OF HOW TOXIC BLOGGING CAN BE. .169 XIV THERE ARE OTHERS: THE MANIPULATOR HALL OF FAME ����������������������������������������������������������183 XV SLACKTIVISM IS NOT ACTIVISM: RESISTING THE TIME AND MIND SUCK OF ONLINE MEDIA . .195 XVI JUST PASSING THIS ALONG: WHEN NO ONE OWNS WHAT THEY SAY ������������������������������������������207 XVII CYBERWARFARE: BATTLING IT OUT ONLINE ������225 XVIII THE MYTH OF CORRECTIONS . .243 XIX THE TWENTY- FIRST- CENTURY DEGRADATION CEREMONY: BLOGS AS MACHINES OF MOCKERY, SHAME, AND PUNISHMENT. .255 CONTENTS xi Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 11 29/11/2017 16:02 XX WELCOME TO UNREALITY . .271 XXI HOW TO READ A BLOG: AN UPDATE ON ACCOUNT OF ALL THE LIES ������������������������������������281 CONCLUSION: SO . WHERE TO FROM HERE? ������������289 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ������������������������������������������������������������301 APPENDIX . .303 NOTES . .357 WORKS CITED ����������������������������������������������������������������������������365 FURTHER READING ������������������������������������������������������������������369 INDEX ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������370 xii TRUST ME, I’M LYING Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 12 29/11/2017 16:02 PREFACE A MAN MUCH SMARTER THAN I AM ONCE DESCRIBED a “racket” as something that “is not what it seems to the majority of the people,” where only a small group of insiders know what’s really going on and they operate for the benefit of a few and at the expense of basically everyone else.1 I read this description after I wrote and published Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. I had used the word casually only once or twice in the book, but I understand now, based on the reaction the book generated, the extent of the racket I was exposing. There is no other definition for the modern media system. Its very business model rests on exploiting the difference between per- ception and reality— pretending​­ that it produces the “quality” news we once classified as journalism without adhering to any of the standards or practices that define it. Online, outlets have to publish so much so quickly and at such razor-​­thin margins that no media outlet can afford to do good work. But of course, no one can admit any of this without the whole system collapsing. Starting to sound like a racket, no? In recent years, the evidence has piled up. The president of CBS said on the record that the election of Donald Trump “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” White supremacist Richard Spencer has talked openly to reporters about how he “memed his movement into existence” (and they kept covering him after he admitted it). It was revealed that many of the “fake news” sites that dominate Facebook with preposterous left-​­wing and PREFACE xiii Trust Me I’m Lying b-format.indd 13 29/11/2017 16:02 right-​­wing propaganda are owned by the same parent company. An editor at Gawker tweeted that if they resisted publishing those too-good-​­ to-​­ be-​­ true​­ viral stories, “traffic would crater.” For me the kicker was having another Gawker editor tell me after an inaccu- rate story that the whole game was “professional wrestling.”* These kinds of incidents make you realize it really is a brazen and cor- rupt system operated by a few at the expense of the rest of us. So there’s your question: I might be the one “confessing,” but who is the real media manipulator here? When I started talking to publishers about this book in late 2011, I told them that I didn’t want to put out a book of media criticism. No matter how smart or insightful those books can be, they’re usu- ally written by academics or outsiders and can only scratch the sur- face of the problem. I believed I had a chance to do something different. I could be the first defector, in a position to expose the worst of the web’s marketing and publishing practices because I’d created and perfected many of them. I decided to administer a major shock to both the media system and the public with the same book. I wouldn’t just rip back the cur- tain—​­I wouldn’t let anyone look away from what they saw. This decision sent me and the book you’re about to read down a path that surprised and appalled me, a person I thought was plenty jaded.