Ryan Holiday Explains How We Are Manipulated…THANKS!

Nobody Knows

I found a very interesting book that everybody should read at least once:

Trust me I’m Lying, Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday confesses, how he was hired to ‘promote’ stories on the internet, and control pretty much whatever topic he wants to get into the news. In other words…he lies. He describes how he got one of his “clients” in the news in order to promote a movie that was about to be released. And he starts out with something…offending:

Offending always gets the attention AND money:

“I designed the advertisements which I bought and placed around the country, and then promptly called and left anonymous complaints about them, (and leaked copies of my complaints to blogs’ for support.) I alerted college LGBT and women’s rights groups to screenings in their area and baited them to protest our offensive movie at the theater, knowing that the nightly news would cover it. I started a boycott group on Facebook. I orchestrated fake tweets and posted fake comments to articles online. I even won a contest for being the first one to send in a picture of a defaced ad in Chicago (thanks for the free T shirt, Chicago Redeye. Oh. also that photo was from New York ) I manufactured preposterous stories about Tucker’s (FAKE NAME) behavior on and off the move set and purported them to gossip websites which gleefully repeated them. I paid for anti-woman ads on feminist websites and anti-religion ads on Christian websites, knowing each would write about it. Sometimes I just Photo shopped ads onto screenshots of websites and got coverage for controversial ads that never actually ran.

So as the manufactured storm I created played itself out in the press, real people started believing it, and it became true. “

The key word here is “manufactured.” Ryan tells how very easy it is to put out a fake story In fact, he gets paid to do this for a living.

” I can turn nothing into something by placing a story with a small blog that has very low standards, which then becomes the source for a story by a larger blog, and that, in turn, for a story by larger media outlets. I create, to use the words of one media scholar, a “self reinforcing news wave.” People like me do this every day. “

This confession by the professional who works in the business, has to interest us all, because what we see every single day is people just repeating some story they got from somewhere.

Obama doesn’t have to attack his enemies constantly: He has PAID media manipulators to do it for him. The conservatives do the very same thing with the tea party. Karl Rove destroyed just about every one of them he could in the last election, helping to place a democratic majority in the Senate. The way they took down Sarah Palin, and all the tea party candidates is right out of Ryan’s book.

Scandals sell. Scandals are big money. They make them up.  What he is saying is that most of our whole media system is based on profits: not truth.

“However the play starts, the end is the same: The economics of the Internet are exploited to change public perception and sell product. But I got sucked into the media underworld, getting hit after publicity hit for my clients and propagating more and more lies to do so. I created false perceptions through blogs, which led to bad conclusions and wrong decisions real decisions in the real world that had consequences for real people. Gradually I began to notice work just like mine appearing everywhere and no one catching onto it or repairing the damage. Stocks took major hits to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, on news from the same unreliable sources I’d often trick with fake stories. I was lost in the same unreality I’d force on other people. I found that not only did I not know what was real anymore, but that I no longer cared.”

This is just a tip of the interesting confessions you will get from Ryan.

In this world where everyone tells you to check Snoopes, or Wikipidia, or some other place, you must always consider the source. Snoopes is owned by Soros. Do we believe what is said there?

Not always.

So…as we hear the same stories being rehashed by bloggers, Newspapers, and National Pundits, how can you tell if that story isn’t just a lie?

You can’t anymore. But there is one clue to it all, and this is something I learned from Marilyn —(Lady genius)

Whatever you are seeing, or hearing, or whatever poll you are listening to…Always consider the source. That is, if you can even find out who the source was.

In the end, Ryan says we’re cheering on our own deception. It’s very interesting when somebody who makes a living at lying, decides to confess. And now, he is writing books. It’s all…good to know, because so very few of us did. Thanks to Ryan’s confession, we now do.

December 10, 2013 Posted by Joyanna Adams | corruption, Media, Uncategorized | corruption, media | 1 Comment