Part one of Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying is filled with interesting and novel tricks all revolving around internet fame/ publicity. Here are three of the most important tidbits of information:
1. It does not matter how many followers you have if what you produce ends up going viral.
Real world connection:
Often times on Twitter, tweets that go viral are not those coming from the mouths of celebrities, but those coming from people just like you and me. There are people out there with a couple hundred followers will tweets on their page with likes in the hundreds of thousands. It is not about the size of your fanbase, but more about the content of what you are sharing and how many people will laugh, relate, or feel the same way you do.
2. "The constraints of blogging create artificial content, which is made real and impacts the outcome of real world events." (pg 16)
Real world connection:
Lies spread like wildfire on social media. When the wrong words come out of the right mouth, a lie can instantly be seen as truthful. For example, the tobacco industry, for a long time, promised customers that cigarettes were not damaging to your health or addictive in the slightest. In reality, 480,000 people die from complications associated with cigarette smoking each year. The lies that the cigarette companies were telling were seen as truth, and were in reality a very damaging truth. This lie impacted the real world and took real lives.
3. How much traffic your blog receives is more profitable than how truthful (or untruthful) your content is.
Real world connection:
When Kanye West started openly supporting Donald Trump and wearing 'Make America Great Again' hats, a lot of people started paying attention. How could someone, who publicly dissed George Bush for being racist, go on to support Donald Trump, arguably the largest white supremacist to ever call the white house home. The traffic created by his contradictory actions was unbelievable. As it turns out, according to Kanye himself, he never truly supported Trump. His actions were all an effort to draw attention to social justice issues. The traffic received is what gave this situation so much power, not the truth, or lack of, that Kanye was supporting.