Trust Me, I’m Lying
by Ryan Holiday
How to break the internet on purpose.
For you if
you want to understand exactly how media manipulation works from someone who used to do it professionally
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Holiday confesses his sins as a digital spin doctor, revealing how outrage, clickbait, and fake news built the modern attention economy. It’s a field guide to our post-truth landscape — equal parts mea culpa and manual for media literacy. Read it to learn how the sausage gets made… and why it’s still trending.
Where This Book Lives
- Themes
- media manipulation
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Bowling for Columbine(2002)
dir. Michael Moore
Fear, guns, and the culture that connects them.
Michael Moore investigates the roots of American gun violence and the culture of fear surrounding it, from the Columbine shooting to the NRA's political power.
Why it’s here: Moore's methods aren't neutral, and it's worth knowing that going in — the Heston interview in particular has been widely criticized for selective editing. What survives the criticism is the underlying question about American fear and gun culture, asked louder here than almost anywhere since.
Fahrenheit 451(1966)
dir. François Truffaut
Burning books to keep everyone happy.
In a future where books are outlawed, fireman Guy Montag burns forbidden literature for a living until a young woman's curiosity about reading unsettles his loyalty to the system. Truffaut's only English-language film, adapted from Ray Bradbury's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in imagining resistance as an act of memory — the "book people" who become the books they refuse to let die. Pedagogical in showing censorship dressed up as compassion, a government that burns literature "for everyone's peace of mind."
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
