I am 2 years late to Ryan Holiday's book"Trust Me, I'm Lying". Never much of a PR person, I learned immediately from his nonfictional account of being a"media manipulator" that marketing can be everything once you've assembled a great product. Since I must return the book by 12/20 to the San Diego Public LibraryI figured that this is a great time to write my notes down as a blog post.
Quotes in"Trust Me, I am Lying"
Orson Scott Card
"Social networking isn't a set of resources to permit humans to communicate with people. It is a pair of embedding mechanisms to permit technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing... The Matrix had it wrong. You're not the batter power in a worldwide, human-enslaving AI, you are somewhat more precious. You are part of the switching circuitry"
"It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap in the industry force of what I've come to consider as"outrage planet" -- the frequently occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted websites like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate's very own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They're ignited by authors that are compelling readers to sense what the authors claim is righteously indignant anger but that is really only petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. All these firestorms are fantastic for page-view-pimping bloggy business."
-Emily Gould out of Slate.com
"Companies should expect a full-scale, organized attack from critics. One that will concurrently overrun blog comments, Facebook fan pages, and an onslaught of blogs, leading to mainstream media allure. Start by creating a social networking disasters plan and developing internal fire drills to anticipate opowiadania zdrada what would happen."
"Our selves are the home in which we live; they are our information, our personalities, our adventure, our types of art, our really experience."
-Daniel Boorstin
Practice Advice in the Novel
Control your Wikipedia page (use any media mention from blogs or traditional media)
Study the best stories and you'll notice a pattern: the top stories all polarize poeple. If you create it threaten people's 3 Bs -- behaviour, belief, or belongings -- you receive a massive virus-like dispersion
Write stuff bloggers could post immediately without any work. Feed them their own lies"assist them trick their readers"
Loaded headlines are very popular
Silence on blogs is your worst.
Faking escapes with email editor (from various sources) can operate if you have the Ideal contacts
Media historian W.J. Cfambell once identified the identifying markers of yellow journalism as follows:
Prominent headlines that cried excitement concerning utlimately unimportant news
Luxury use of images (often of little significance )
Color comics plus a big, thick Sunday nutritional supplement
Ostentatious support of this underdog causes
Utilization of anonymous sources
Prominent coverage of high society and events
Concepts from the book
Ongoing Narrative /Iterative Reporting -harm is already done, there's no such thing. Iterative reporting is bullshit, people treat news headlines as"cultural fact", the damage is already done, even it it is a baseless accusation.
Faking escapes with email editor (from various sources)
The Psychology of Error -- Errors and mistakes get rewarded, causes outrage = pageviews = money
For example, each image is a different load display = more pageviews (short term vs. long-term metrics). Usability vs. profitability -- publishers are concentrated blindly on pageviews, but in the long term, consumer trust will be important. Meanwhile, reckless bloggers are making millions from sensationalizing stories that are untrue.
Snark -- deadly weapon (humor in its dark form. Another online example: Hot Chicks with Douchebags
All that happens -> All that's known by media --> All that's newsworthy ->All that is printed as information -> All that spreads. This really is the systematic restricting of the data seen by the public
My Action List / Courses in the Book
Websites hold a Good Deal of power
The right contacts at the ideal sites in a certain sector hold tons of influence. Example: Apple announcements
Building a new website with high viral traction (but with the ideal user metrics in mind) can take off fast. Websites like Watch Mojo, Ebaumsworld, Break.com, ride the wave of copying content from other people, organized in a digestible way that consumers can quickly disperse. Millions of dollars are created this way while resources are never credited. There must be a way to do both.
There is a need for a respectable news source, or a business specific source that doesn't pander to"mass hysteria". Example: refinery29.com