I preordered the book as I have an interest in these types of topics, and it didn’t disappoint. Renee does an amazing job of reviewing the history of influence from the beginning of PR and marketing in the pre-internet days through to today. I feel it necessary to mention, I do not know her personally and am writing this on my own completely independent without being asked nor prompted by anybody. I was inspired by a troll 1-star review that I find to be dishonest and rather ironically exactly what she’s talking about in the book.
There’s a rather lengthy bad-faith review that uses a lot of words to not really say anything relevant to the book. It appears to be from some type of stalker who has an axe to grind with the author and makes a lot of false claims that are easily disproved by simply reading the book and using elementary-level logic.
For example, this mystery troll insists Renee only cites opinion pieces from her friends, but this simply isn’t true. Although she does include several of her own articles as reference, the reality is she cites a wide variety of around 100 sources for each chapter, with some dating back all the way to the 1800s. The source list includes nearly 1000 unique citations, and it includes every mainstream media outlet you can think of on both sides of the political fence, government agencies, and publishing houses. It would be bizarre to dismiss all of that as if it didn’t exist, and I can’t help but wonder how he could miss all those other sources when they are very clearly listed—does he even have access to a copy of the book? The entire first chapter is about people who died a century before she was even born in order to ground the book in historical context. For me to believe she is friends with these people from prior generations would require me believing she has the power to communicate with the ghosts of long-dead people. If this is supernatural tale is true and Renee does have ghostly friends, it’s even more of a reason to listen and learn from her, as that’s a remarkable super power he accuses her of having. Of course if she did have this magical super power of talking to ghosts that he accuses her of, it would also make sense that she’s somehow friends with everyone in every media outlet, government agency, and book publisher. So we know he didn’t read chapter 1.
Troll reviewer also brings up the difference between social media and human nature as if he made up the idea himself. In reality, he is presenting chapter 2 of this book as his own. This chapter very clearly and in great detail uses a wide range of examples to explain the roles influencers, algorithms, and the crowd each play in making viral content. None of these examples have anything to do with any of the people he mentions—she’s talking about Charli D’Amelio and Facebook groups dedicated to melanoma. She brings up how everyday people have influence in today’s social media landscape, and it’s their relatability to the average person that draws large audiences to them. Everything she’s discussing is very well documented, and it’s odd that he didn’t know this was in the book because it’s a pretty detailed and important part at the beginning. And she obviously already discussed the historical context of this in chapter 1. So we know he obviously didn’t read chapters 1 or 2.
In chapter 3, she focuses on influencers like MrBeast, Candace Owens, Khaby Lame, and Keffals, all of whom have millions of followers and are absolutely influencers by definition. She mentions monetization and marketing—working in that industry, I found it to be a very good overview and explanation on how the influencer economy works. It’s very well cited from nearly 100 sources, and I didn’t see any inconsistencies in it. There is no mention of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger with these influencers. I’m not sure how this troll got those people mixed up when their names are not even close. She does mention Jack Posobiec, so if this troll reviewer had actually read chapter 3 and saw that mention, he could’ve easily name dropped him as an example to try and make his point. I mean I get that he’s some type of far right extremist disinformation spreader, and Posobiec is a hero to that crowd. I don’t know why he wouldn’t bring that up to make his baseless bad faith argument seem more legitimate. It would still not hold water, but at least it would prove he actually read the book he’s attempting to take down. But we know he obviously didn’t read chapter 3.
In chapter 4, Renee evaluates how activism and the crowd play into it. Like every other chapter, she examines a lot of different scenarios, such as ISIS and BLM. She talks about the Arab Spring, Gamergate, the GameStop memestonk rush from WallStreetBets, and how both political parties (and their supporters) began leveraging memes and virally to spread their messages. Troll reviewer uses a lot of trendy far right extremism talking points and would have you believe all she wrote about was these QAnon conspiracy theories he holds dear. That’s simply not true—while they are mentioned because they are very well documented conspiracies, they are a very small part in a much longer conversation. We are now halfway through the book, and it’s very clear that troll reviewer did not read chapter 4. He definitely did not read any of part 1 (the first half). If he did, he clearly struggled to understand what he read because it’s not at all about any of the wild things he says.
Part 2 starts at Chapter 5 with Trump’s big lie. This is a detailed breakdown of everything that happened in 2020 related to Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Troll reviewer seems to think all of this has to do with his heroes Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, but they’re not in any way important in this. They had nothing to do with any of it—she cited 150 sources, again including a wide variety of media outlets and government agencies. She cites Trump and Charlie Kirk’s tweets directly alongside the Associated Press, Washington Post, Politifact, and more. There are literally 150 sources. But in troll reviewers very limited education and failure to actually read the book, he seems to think none of that exists and everything revolves around the only two people he knows and can name. It’s ironic that he’s angry that she points out bespoke realities because he is quite clearly living in his own reality in which only two sources of news ever existed, and they’re both friends with each other. Renee presented a very detailed breakdown of everything that led to Jan 6, 2021 and the riot in the US Capitol (along with what happened in Brazil in 2023 with Jair Bolsonaro), but that wasn’t included in the marketing materials troll reviewer read to pretend he knows what the book is about, so he completely missed it. I imagine he would be much more offended at how painstakingly she documented both of these if he had, so I can confidently state he did not read chapter 5.
By chapter 6, Renee dives deeper into governments using influencer campaigns around the world. She contrasts modern disinformation campaigns with World War 2 not by using her supernatural powers of speaking to her ghost friends Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler but based on historical records of the time. Troll reviewer somehow insists she is saying the government is innocent in this or some silly nonsense but that’s not at all what is being said here. In fact, Renee is very clear about the global dangers of government sponsored disinformation. One would have to be purposefully ignoring this entire chapter (and references to the government throughout the entire book) to somehow misunderstand this. She discusses propaganda campaigns from WW2 through the current war in Gaza and how generative AI played a role in the latter. She clearly identifies state-run propaganda as a problem, not just in the U.S., but globally. At this point I have to wonder if troll reviewer ever left his mother’s basement, let alone his home town, because he has a very USA-focused critique on a book that is clearly and explicitly throughout taking a global perspective. His narrow mind couldn’t imagine the possibility that other countries exist. He definitely did not read chapter 6.
Chapter 7 is focused on disinformation campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Again, this was a global event we all experienced and for some reason troll reviewer completely ignored this to focus on his hot-button issues of pizzagate. He really is obsessed with pizzagate, and it literally is nothing more than a minor passing reference in this extraordinary book. I’m fascinated at how hard he tried to sound educated while missing some major themes in here. It reminds me of when a toddler lies to you but they don’t have the educational reference to pull it off so they blame fantastical imaginary creatures that makes it obvious they are lying. Anyway, clearly troll reviewer did not read chapter 7.
By chapter 8, it becomes clear why troll reviewer is so hellbent on spreading a false review of this book. This is when we get into how Renee herself became the target of a propaganda campaign for simply researching propaganda for the Stanford Internet Observatory. Since the news this week of the SIO being disbanded due to the political and legal pressure, this was the most fascinating chapter for me. This is the one where the author stops discussing everything in the third person and becomes the Main Character of her own book. These smear campaigns are a common obstacle for anyone who attempts to do the right thing, and both media outlets and influencers face this danger of people attempting to destroy your life. Look no further than the one-star troll reviewer on this very Amazon page for proof of this. It’s sad to know this troll is attempting to cost Renee sales on this book with a dishonest and clearly bad faith review, but I hope she finds comfort in knowing she’s not alone in being targeted by these aggressive disinformation campaigns. She briefly mentions how the far right tries to blame every little algorithmic change on “censorship” and the point troll reviewer pulls a quote from here out of context about how various factions are attempting to redefine censorship and tries to attribute it to her somehow redefining censorship. His critique is so truly bizarre and clearly done in bad faith by an intellectually dishonest person. Anyone who read chapter 8 with even basic reading comprehension skills would’ve caught this obvious callback he referenced. He didn’t catch it because he didn’t read it. At this point, Renee does finally mention her personal experiences with Matt Taibbi (whom she refers to as a writer, not an influencer. It’s a moot point, but one that seems very important for troll reviewer for some bizarre and unknown reason), and it is clear troll reviewer is a close follower of Taibbi. She references some of her previous work when discussing herself, and that’s the reason bad faith troll reviewer is attempting to dismiss every other chapter up until this. Troll reviewer seems to have picked up both his obvious personal grudge against Renee and the tiny handful of sentences in his lengthy rambling review that actually come close to being in the ballpark of what it’s actually about from following Taibbi. In his rush to put out that hit job of a review, he got sloppy and admitted his own bias from being influenced by this writer. Taibbi is a minor passing mention being blown way out of proportion by troll reviewer, and this makes it clear that although he may have knowledge from social media that matches tony insignificant portions of it, he did not actually read chapter 8.
Finally we have chapter 9–based on troll reviewer’s one star review, one would expect this is where Renee packs all the bizarre accusations from troll reviewer. But no—she starts with a story about Father Coughlin, a religious influencer in the 1920s who became a Nazi propagandist. He died in 1979, so we must add him to the list of friendly ghosts Renee can communicate with according to troll reviewer (I just owed myself laughing so hard at how hard that kid tried to pretend he read and understood anything in this book). She contrasts his usage of the radio a century ago with todays social media landscape. She explains the differences between how a company like Facebook would moderate Nazi messaging in a country like Germany that explicitly bans it versus a country like the United States which has very little control over what private companies do (as the first amendment is about government restricting speech against the government). She proposes 3 ways social media companies can be more mindful to help stop dangerous speech while suggesting how regulation could be changed to both deter such disfinformdtion and provide more transparency into how tech companies handle it, using the Twitter files as an example. She also advocates for providing users with more control. She goes even further by educating the reader on what we can all do personally to recognize disinformation and propaganda (such as the troll review here). She also stresses the important of communicating with each other. It should go without saying since we already know troll reviewer neither read nor comprehended the messages in the first 8 chapters, but it’s very clear he did not read chapter 9.
Overall, this is a fantastic book. It is filled with a wide variety of very well known and well documented instances of misinformation, and it does a great job of explaining very complicated situations in a relatable way. I can see why some people are so terrified of Renee that they spend their time promoting a fake review on Amazon that was obviously not written by someone who actually read the book. I am in no way associated with her and am writing this simply because I purchased the book with my own money out of interest in the topic and saw what was clearly a bad faith review from a troll. I wanted to make sure people have real insight into what’s actually in the book from someone who read it and not just some incel fantasy meant to attack her business.
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