The book, Trust me, I’m lying: the tactics and confessions of a media manipulator, by Ryan Holiday is a public relations campaign for the benefit of Ryan Holiday. It presents itself as a public service to teach you how to use the media to get the public to do what you want and how not to be duped by media manipulators anymore. If you are easily manipulated, you will think Holiday is a good person with a conscience and his book will help you to succeed. Minus lying, the marketing tactics he described can be found in other marketing strategy books. This book serves to bolster Ryan Holiday’s own reputation and public image and to manipulate his readers into complacency when we know the American news media lies to us.
The first few chapters are passed off as a public service to teach readers how to use the media to manipulate the public and how the media works to the advantage of liars and social engineers. Holiday discusses how he bought billboards for his friend’s movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, vandalized those billboards himself, and then used blogs to build public controversy over this movie. I don’t recall if he gave exact tactics about how he provoked women’s groups to protest this movie, again, with the goal of creating media controversy for his friend’s movie. There is a link at the bottom of this review, so you can view a trailer for the movie in YouTube. When you see it, you will understand how badly and desperately that movie needed controversy to provoke the public’s curiosity in viewing such a horrible movie: weak plot, weak dialogue, and weak acting just based upon that movie’s trailer. I listened to an e-audiobook version of this book, I have not heard Holiday call his marketing tactics for this movie what they really are: lying and social engineering. Instead, he calls his tactics media manipulation and fake news, because people hold contempt for liars, and will tolerate “media manipulators” if he can prove that doing so isn’t’ that bad. I have read other marketing books, and I have never read any recommendations for lying, so this is a novel tactic to suggest to readers. In my former college business classes, we were taught business ethics. We weren’t taught to ethically lie to the public.
Holiday discussed his tactics for a friend’s non-profit. First, they made a YouTube video about the non-profit. Second, he wrote an article for a Brooklyn based blog that fed the story into the Huffington Post under local news for both New York City and Los Angeles. Third, Holiday sent an email about those two local news articles in the Huffington Post to CBS news in Los Angeles. After CBS picked up the story about the non-profit, Holiday posted an article on Reddit. After the Reddit story was posted, Holiday says non-profit raised thousands of dollars within three days. I have read previous marketing books and I recall a few them recommending that small businesses (1) use social media, (2) make a YouTube video, and (3) write an article for Reddit to get voted on. The only thing different about Holiday’s tactics that I have never read in the other marketing books is to be strategic in writing an article in a blog where larger news corporations such as the Huffington Post would pick up the story. Also, the other marketing books that I have read never recommended using a fake email address to send links to a major metropolitan broadcast news station such as CBS in Los Angeles. You can find the same recommendations for social media, YouTube, and Reddit in other marketing books with only a few differences.
Holiday discussed a controversial ad campaign for American Apparel to provoke the controversy he wanted, but I don’t recall any clear steps he used as is the case for his non-profit example. The discussion on the topic was vague. By comparison, his discussion for the non-profit is the only one designed for readers to remember by steps: first, second, for example.
Another thing Holiday said is to submit public relations announcements for your small business for every new thing you do such as a new product. That isn’t really a new strategy, because I have read the same thing in previously other marketing books, recommending small business owners releases public announcements about their businesses to get picked up the by the newspapers and/or broadcast news stations. What is new is how Holiday explains how the media industry works. According to Holiday, the newspapers and broadcast news reporters will report the news exactly as he has written it in blog posts, blog articles, and public relations announcements, verbatim. According to Holiday, the newspapers and news stations don’t check the facts as they are supposed to. According to Holiday, reporters use Wikipedia, which can be altered by anyone, to check their facts. There is even a website called HARO or “Help a reporter out,” where you can feed stories to reporters or establish yourself as an expert. However, the news can originate as a blog post, a blog article, or public relations announcement by marketing specialists, who abuse the public’s trust in the credibility of news reporters, to make all of us believe lies and then we take predictable reactions to those lies. Remember, Holiday never calls his tactics lying or social engineering. He calls it “media manipulation” or “fake news.” This book is presented as a public service to help you to use the tactics on your own and/or not to be duped by lies in the media.
In the book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, the author, Ryan Holiday, explains how the news industry works. He uses the expression, “fake news” rather than lies, social engineering, marketing campaigns, and public relations campaigns to describe the lies, passed off as credible news. You can start a lie in a blog. That lie or rumor will get picked up by bigger blogs, who in turn feed into medium sized newspapers and broadcast news stations. Then, finally those lies reach very large newspapers and broadcast news stations, making national news. According to Holiday, news journalists will not bother to check the facts of the story. The story originated somewhere else. They can buck the responsibility off on fact checking on the original source of the news stories. If later the story is revealed as lies, the reputable newspapers and broadcast news stations will issue a redaction, but the majority of the public will not hear it or remember it. The damage is done to ordinary individuals and/or small businesses and redactions will not repair it. Victims of media lies and rumors will lose their jobs, their reputations, sales, earnings, and/or their businesses. Holiday has not given any specific examples of media liars ever being caught and sued. It is likely the persons, who start the media lies and rumors, will never be caught or face legal accountability for their damages to others.
Notice, except for the title of this book, Holiday never calls his tactics lies and social engineering within the content of this book. This book is a public relations campaign to humanize himself in the eyes of others and portray himself as someone with a conscience, someone, who has ethics or a line he won’t cross in order to succeed, so he compares himself with those other bloggers, who use the same tactics as he does. Holiday discusses other bloggers, who have ruined the lives of ordinary people and small businesses, so by comparison he won’t seem so bad for vandalizing billboards and provoking women’s groups to protests for his friend’s movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Holiday demonizes those other bloggers, who don’t care whom they hurt to get paid or eventually get a job, working for a major newspaper, magazine, or broadcast news station. Without realizing it as a reader, you will be socially engineered to perceive Ryan Holiday as an ethical person, rather than a liar and a social engineer. He pointed his finger at other bloggers and made himself appear to us as though he is different, has ethics, or holds a superior moral position. You might recall as I do about hearing broadcast news stations, several years ago, report Holiday’s deceptions in the media to promote the movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. If you discovered that a friend or associate of yours is someone, who lies and socially engineers the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors of others for a living, would you trust that friend or associate anymore? You would have to wonder every time you encountered that person whether your ideas, beliefs, feelings, and actions are your own or whether you were lied to or socially engineered into doing what that person wanted you to think, believe, feel, and do. Ryan Holiday did not write this book to help a gullible public, whom he has lied to in the past for his clients and friends. He is still working as a marketing specialist, so we can conclude, he still lies for a living. This book is designed to help himself and others like him, not his readers. You could very well have gotten suggestions to use social media, YouTube, Reddit, and public relations announcements from any number of marketing strategy handbooks at your local library.
Trust Me, I’m Lying is a sensational title. You will peruse the bookstores online or the library, looking for ways to make social media work for your small business. You will run across this book’s eye-catching title and conclude that this book will give you exact strategies, using social media, to help your business succeed. The beginning of the book starts out as though Holiday is trying to help you by teaching you strategies, most of which you could have easily found in another marketing strategies book. Apart from lying and teaching readers how to feed your lies and public relations campaigns into the respected newspapers and broadcast news stations, you really don’t learn very much in his book that you couldn’t learn somewhere else. Other marketing strategy books are going to tell you to blog, make a YouTube video, write an article for Reddit, and release public relations announcements. The other books might not tell you that reputable newspapers and broadcast news stations will quote your lie and public relations announcement verbatim and that they will likely not check facts before reporting the news, because the story originated elsewhere. If you can get most of the information Holiday disclosed about blogging and using YouTube to promote your business from other marketing books, then he must be holding back a lot of information about how to mass mind control the public with the media. However, he shared just a little bit of his tactics and if you succeeded with it, the public, who was deceived, manipulated, and angered by his lies prior to his writing this book, will start to like him rather than hate him, because everyone will be using his tactics. Everyone or, at least, many readers of this book, will become media liars in blogs and social engineers. They will begin to perceive what Holiday has done for the movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, as not so bad now that we have learned how to lie in media for a good cause, also. That is why Holiday provided clear steps about his work on a non-profit when compared to his other unethical marketing campaigns. This book is designed to make the public perceive Holiday as an ethical liar or a good person. As a reader, we automatically attach generosity, altruism, and goodness to people, who are connected to non-profits. He never admitted lying on that non-profit’s marketing campaign and provided no details in which we can verify whether he did or didn’t. However, as readers, most of us won’t care. We would overlook his omission of details that we might verify. You will likely read that section about his work on the non-profit and conclude, “Lying in the media and social engineering can be done for a good cause.” This is further manipulation over your thoughts by Ryan Holiday, because you won’t think of him as a liar by manipulating American media to serve the good causes of a non-profit. You will begin to think that it is socially acceptable to lie if it serves a good cause. If you are using his deceptive marketing tactics to promote yourself or your business, you will be less inclined to criticize him and more tolerant of corporations and politicians lying to you to engineer your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. This book is designed to serve Ryan Holiday’s public image and engineer social complacency towards public and corporate corruption.
As a reader, your shock over his involvement with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, has been quelled by his generosity in sharing his tactics and his noble deeds to help a friend’s non-profit to raise thousands of dollars in three days. In the example of the non-profit, he has provided you step-by-step examples minus details of the particular non-profit, the particular Brooklyn blog article he wrote and its content, the actual YouTube video and its contents, and the particular article he wrote for Reddit and its content for us readers to inspect the facts of those media instruments. Did he lie in those articles? He didn’t provide any details for anyone to find out. Did the non-profit’s YouTube vide lie to the public? However, you, as a reader, will try those same tactics out on your own with or without lying, you may or may not succeed, and if you do succeed, you will have a favorable opinion of Ryan Holiday. You will walk away thinking that now, you can do what he does, but you can’t. This book doesn’t discloses all of his tactics on lying and social engineering. Remember, he doesn’t even call his tactics lying and social engineering. Holiday spent years learning how to use lies and social engineering to his advantage. Several marketing books will tell you to use blogs, YouTube, Reddit, and public relations announcements. In this book, you only learn how to be strategic in placing a blog article in blogs that that will feed larger newspapers and news stations and to give a major broadcast news station a nudge toward your blog story, using a fake email address. Based on how he wrote his strategies for the few examples he gave, Holiday is not telling his readers all of his marketing strategies. This book is designed to make himself look good and to train you into complacency in the face of corruption. He worked with many wealthy individuals and corporations to socially engineer the public’s perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. He is not going to tell us about all of his strategies. If he did, he would lose power and value if he actually taught everyone to do what he does. He is an expert in the field of lying in the media, but he is trying to make himself into a guru if his readers learn to trust him.
Holiday subtly compares himself to other bloggers to make his readers perceive him as a human with a conscience. Bad bloggers don’t care about the lives they permanently damage. Based on the moral tone Holiday takes in criticizing other bloggers, you will automatically conclude Holiday is different, better, ethical. Holiday makes no declarative statement that he has ever damaged the reputations or earnings of any individual or business during the course of his career as a marketing specialist. And if he did, would you believe him? Just on his word? And no proof to back it up since his marketing campaigns and clients are confidential?
In the content of this book, Holiday suggests he wrote, Trust Me, I’m Lying, to help his readers not to become duped or manipulated by him and others in the media. According to Holiday, if you stop reacting to news stories, he and others like him will stop lying in the media. Using the media to lie and manipulate mass behavior will cease to be effective and profitable if all of us would just stop reacting to the news in predictable ways. In a roundabout way, he is suggesting it’s our fault for believing his lies in the media and the lies of others, who manipulate weaknesses in the American media industry to socially engineer the public into thinking, believing, feeling, and doing whatever they want. Media lies are our fault. Don’t react to the news and they can’t make money or win political campaigns from their lies in the media.
We expect honesty, credibility, and the facts from news journalists. The news is supposed to tell us what we need to know even if we are closed-minded people. The news is supposed to tell us the facts and relevant stories, so we can make knowledgeable decisions. We can watch the news about a natural disaster or violence in our community and not react to a potential media lie, but it might be true and we can end up vulnerable if we do not take precautions to prepare against a threat. In order to not react to the news as Holiday suggested in his book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, we would have to conclude all news reports are lies. We would have to become complacent to all news reports and accept that we are powerless to stop societal corruption in any industry that affects our lives. Or, we would have to have the wealth of a major newspaper or broadcast news station to check the facts of every news story since there is no way to know which story’s facts were checked and which ones were not. Or, we would have to have enough wealth to pursue Freedom of Information Act Requests or Public Information Act Requests and then, sue when government agencies don’t comply with our demands by law. Or, we would have to have enough wealth to hire a private investigator to follow someone around and investigate that person’s involvement in a potential media lie. Ordinary people can’t do these things. Not reacting is not a solution as Holiday has suggested in his book. The public officials, whom we vote for, cannot allow their friends in the American media industry to keep on feeding us lies. And we, readers, listeners, and viewers of American media stories cannot be blamed for someone else’s lies as Ryan Holiday is very subtly suggesting in his book, Trust Me, I’m Lying.
Broadcast news stations are given FCC licenses. If broadcast news stations fail to serve the public, our elected officials should be able to take those FCC licenses away from them, but then again, our media industry is in bed with both Democratic and Republic parties in their practice of mass mind control over all American citizens, so that is not going to happen. If a news reporter exposes a politician for corruption or exposes government agencies’ corruption, they are fired, forced to redact their factually based statements, forced to resign or retire at the behest of elected and public officials and at the behest of people in the highest levels of media organizations, or, in the case of one reporter, who reported the facts of government corruption, he was murdered and declared as a suicide. Journalists don’t lie because they want to; they lie because the highest persons in power within those news organizations and within the highest levels of government wants them to lie to us. Either you join in the corruption, deception, social engineering, and mass mind control of the American public or your career in journalism will be destroyed or you can end up murdered and staged as a suicide, accident, or natural cause. Honest journalists get forced out while liars get promoted up the ranks of media power and influence. A free American press is supposed to keep American government officials and agencies’ honest towards the public, but we can’t trust it to do that, which is why there are citizen journalists online, who are commonly dismissed as conspiracy theorists by the so-called credible journalists in print and broadcast news.
If we elected politicians, who served American citizens rather than their own greed for power and control, honest, trustworthy individuals would be elected, able to investigate mass mind control in the media, punish those individuals and corporations involved, and allow more trustworthy journalists and news corporations to fill the void. It’s not our fault for believing the news; the news industry is supposed to be honest. It is the liars’ faults for lying to us through the media. You can’t logically blame the victims of liars for being lied to as Holiday does in this book. Holiday has shifted blame to all of us, who expect honesty, facts, and credibility from the American news industry. Do not accept his manipulations in this book. No one is helping you by suggesting that you solve corruption in the media industry or elsewhere in society with complacency.
For Holiday to tell his readers not to react to the news in order to make the lying in media stop is not a solution. It is a manipulation to control your actions yet again. Holiday is training his readers to be complacent to mass mind control in the media rather than fight the problem with effective actions against it. You should take actions to make lying in the media stop by electing ordinary people with no ties to either the Democratic or the Republican parties into every level of government. Corporations aren’t the only ones, who use mass mind control in the media to get what they want from us; American government officials lie to us on a regular basis at press conferences and use their friends in the American media industry to lie to you as well. Rather than do nothing as Holiday has suggested in his book, I am recommending that everyone stop voting for the Democratic and Republican parties. Vote for an ordinary, non-partisan person with no ties to politicians or major corporations. Purge both of those parties out of every level of government. The many things that are corrupt in American society exist by majority design. The majority of Americans’ complacency for their society’s corruption is the problem, not a solution. You recycle the same dirty politicians, their friends, and their family members throughout government. They start their careers in local government, doing nothing for you. They move up to state government, doing nothing for you. Ultimately, they end their careers in federal government, doing nothing for you. Those candidates get old, retire, and then, you vote for their adult children to do nothing for you. The wealthy chooses your candidates for you in districts where they don’t live with campaign donations and then, the American media socially engineers your voting habits by focusing your attention only onto certain candidates, and ignoring all others. Specific candidates become “household names.” When you go to the ballot, rushing after work, you will vote for the names that are memorable in your minds without knowing anything about the candidates’ positions on issues that affect your lives. The media told you absolutely nothing about their political positions on controversial topics or problems that affect your lives. You only voted for those familiar names, whom you have heard or seen in the media, because the American media industry have chosen them for you to remember. All other candidates, who are not “household names” lose. You have to change the way you vote in order to end this vicious cycle of the same group of dirty politicians and their children, using public offices to maintain corruption within American government and using the American media as their personal instrument of mass mind control. If you want the American media industry to change by law, then you need to stop voting for the Democratic and Republican parties, who make mass mind control in the media an acceptable political and social practice. If you change the way you vote and whom you vote for, we can all force an end to or, at least, a substantial decline in corruption in American government and in the American media industry. Real change in the American media industry can happen by purging every Democrat and Republican out of every level of government, enacting new legislation against media lies, and/or by enforcing existing laws that has been nullified by political practice by Democrats and Republicans. If the majority of Americans voted for non-partisan, ordinary people into every level of government, maybe we can create a trustworthy American government and media. Electing the same dirty crowd of Democrats and Republicans, their friends, in-laws, and children into the government with each successive generation is not going to translate into positive change in neither government nor the media. A clear majority of American voters have to vote for politically unconnected people with little or no experience in government in order to take radical changes towards honesty and integrity in both American government and American media.
You should read Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday and make up your minds. However, I would not recommend this as a good book for anyone. This book is designed to replace the word, “lying,” with “media manipulation” and “fake news.” People hold different feelings for the same concept when different words are used. You only need to select the right words in order to provoke the feelings you want your listeners or readers to have. I don’t know what this is called in linguistics or psychology, but I have heard that Republicans use it all of the time. For example, people hate “welfare” programs and “welfare recipients,” but the same individuals are less hateful, less angered, or more tolerant toward the expression, “public assistance.” People are distrustful of “liars,” but those same individuals will become tolerant of “media manipulators” and “fake news.” If you are easily suggestible, Holiday will convince you that he is an ethical liar and he is different from those other bloggers, who ruin lives. If you called someone a “liar,” would they get angry or offended? Absolutely. If you called that person a “media manipulator,” does it offend or sting as badly as the word, “liar?” Probably not. How do you feel when you say the word, “liar,” or imagine what a “liar” is? Do you feel the same way when you think of “media manipulator”, “media manipulation,” or “fake news?” Probably not. Your feelings toward specific words or expressions for identical concepts are by design. The words and expressions we use create social reality. That is why social scientists say intangible things like government, race, nationality, institutions, and god are socially constructed concepts. We can’t touch any of these things, but we socially construct their existence into society with language and with consequences for real people. Media manipulators are liars, but if you are easily suggestible, Holiday will have succeeded in convincing you that they are completely different things. Holiday used the word “lying” on the title to capture our attention, but when he described what he does for a living within the content of the book, he does not use the words, “lie,” “lying,” or “liar” to describe himself or what he and other marketing specialists do for a living. Before this book, you might not have ever heard of “media manipulators” and “fake news.” Holiday invented these expressions to brainwash his readers into believing that corporate, political, and journalistic lies are socially acceptable.
There is media manipulations and fake news among corporate professionals and politicians, which this book legitimizes, and then, there are those poor, desperate anonymous bloggers, who destroys lives, using the same exact tactics to better their own financial situation, which this book condemns. This book brainwashes its readers into believing if you are rich, powerful, and wealthy, lying in the media is socially acceptable. It is a necessary professional practice. If you are a poor, unknown blogger, who aspires for a career in journalism, then, lying is socially unacceptable. They have not attained wealth and therefore, they have no legitimacy, power, or prestige to justify their lying. Holiday’s book is trying to convince the public to perceive and accept a double standard. If you let him, if you help him, Holiday will succeed in creating a separate, socially acceptable category of “professional liars” by using language, social engineering, and mass mind control to create a double standard. He already knows that book reviewers are going to repeatedly write about “fake news” and “media manipulators,” because he put those words and expressions in our heads to repeat them. You can’t write about his book without quoting those expressions. I have taken journalism in college many years ago and I have never heard those expressions prior to reading this book: fake news and media manipulation. He invented those expressions. Others will quote those book reviewers in other parts of the media industry. Professors might use his book in school. Students might run across this book on their own and start quoting his invented expressions, “media manipulators,” “media manipulations,” and “fake news” to replace the words, “liars,” “lying,” and “lies.” Without even knowing it, the public will have unwittingly helped Holiday and others like him to create a double standard on lying in the media for wealthy, powerful, well-connected liars as opposed to those poor, isolated liars on blogs. Call what he and other marketing specialists do for a living what it is: lying. There is no such thing as “media manipulators,” “media manipulation,” and “fake news.” These concepts are just liars, lying, and lies.
Another reason not to trust this book is that Holiday blames the lying on the public, who trusts the news as true and factual as if you can psychically know which news reports are media lies or fact-based news reports. Holiday tells his readers to stop reacting to the news in order to stop him and other marketing specialists from lying in the media. His message for you is to do nothing to stop the corruption in media. That’s not logical. If you can’t believe anything you hear in the media, then you need to take actions against the Democrats and Republicans, who make it possible. Doing nothing is not a solution as Holiday wants you to accept. You can read his book, but I hope that you consider my book review after you are finished with it. Do not accept complacency in response to lying, social engineering, or mass mind control in the media. Voting is free of charge. A majority of American citizens can replace every Democrat and Republican from elected office in local, state, and the legislative branch of the federal governments. If a majority of us is fed up with corruption in American government and the American media, then a majority can simultaneously purge all Democrats and Republicans from every level of government, so new people can go into government and to take legislative actions against lying in the American news media.
Reference
Holiday, Ryan. Trust me, I’m lying: the tactics and confessions of a media manipulator. E-audiobook. New York: Portfolio: 2012.
Links:
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of Media Manipulator
Trailer for I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell on YouTube
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