58 Brendan Koerner, “Watch This Guy Work, and You’ll Finally Understand the TikTok Era,” Wired, October 19, 2023, https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-talent-factory-ursus-magana-creator-economy.
59 Drew Harwell, “How TikTok Ate the Internet,” Washington Post, October 14, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-popularity.
60 Ryan Broderick, “Your Least Favorite Gross Viral Food Videos Are All Connected to This Guy,” Eater, May 11, 2021, https://www.eater.com/2021/5/11/22430383/why-are-gross-viral-food-videos-popular-rick-lax-facebook-watch.
61 Ashley Mears, “Hocus Focus: How Magicians Made a Fortune on Facebook,” The Economist, July 28, 2022, https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/hocus-focus-how-magicians-made-a-fortune-on-facebook.
62 Horwitz and Seetharaman, “Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive.”
63 This is the title of one of my favorite books: Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841; reis. New York: Noonday Press, 1932).
64 Renée DiResta, “Crowds and Technology,” Ribbonfarm, September 15, 2016, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/09/15/crowds-and-technology.
65 Ryan Schocket, “This Woman Tweeted About Having Coffee Every Day with Her Husband—the Internet Tore Her Apart,” BuzzFeed, October 24, 2022, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/woman-backlash-for-coffee-husband-tweet.
66 Joon Ian Wong, Dave Gershgorn, and Mike Murphy, “Facebook Is Trying to Get Rid of Bias in Trending News by Getting Rid of Humans,” Quartz, August 26, 2016, https://qz.com/768122/facebook-fires-human-editors-moves-to-algorithm-for-trending-topics.
67 Hannah Ritchie, “Read All About It: The Biggest Fake News Stories of 2016,” CNBC, December 30, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html.
68 Olivia Solon, “In Firing Human Editors, Facebook Has Lost the Fight Against Fake News,” The Guardian, August 29, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-trending-news-editors-fake-news-stories.
69 Boorstin, The Image.
70 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923), 171.
71 Boorstin, The Image, 10.
72 Brian Welk and Rosemary Rossi, “Bean Dad Makes His 9-Year-Old Struggle to Open Can of Beans for 6 Hours, Infuriates Twitter: ‘Self-Absorbed A–Hat,’” The Wrap, January 3, 2021, https://www.thewrap.com/bean-dad-9-year-old-open-can-6-hours-infuriates-twitter.
73 Israel ישראל (@Israel), “Things that shouldn’t be trending on @Twitter: ‘The Jews’ @TwitterSafety do your job,” Twitter, May 16, 2023, 5:02 a.m., https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1658397528398737408.
74 Sarah Mervosh and Emily S. Rueb, “Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students,” New York Times, January 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-covington.html.
75 Joshua Rothman, “How to Escape Pseudo-events in America: The Lessons of Covington,” New Yorker, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-covington-saga-reveals-about-our-media-landscape.
CHAPTER 3: GURUS, BESTIES, AND PROPAGANDISTS
1 Jason Horowitz and Taylor Lorenz, “Khaby Lame, the Everyman of the Internet,” New York Times, June 2, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/style/khaby-lame-tiktok.html.
2 Thirst traps are provocative images or videos in which the creator is trying to appear attractive or enticing.
3 Clare Malone, “The Gospel of Candace Owens,” New Yorker, April 22, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-gospel-of-candace-owens.
4 While there are many journalistic profiles of MrBeast, his frequently updated Wikipedia page provides the most up-to-date summary of his content and philanthropic efforts. “MrBeast,” Wikipedia, last modified September 8, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MrBeast.
5 “I Helped 2000 Amputees Walk Again,” video posted to YouTube by Beast Philanthropy, May 7, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5PvwYZQtT8.
6 Keffals became known in part for successfully trolling her ideological opponents, posting things like “I’ve always wanted to ratio…” and then pointing followers to a quote-tweeted post or other mention of a prominent media figure, politician, or corporate target whom she felt had done something stupid or malicious. Her followers would then go and comment on the post or reply to the poster. The term ratio refers to the number of comments relative to likes on a social media post; a post with many more comments than likes often indicates to observers that the person got a lot of flak and little support for what they expressed. Taylor Lorenz, “The Trans Twitch Star Delivering News to a Legion of LGBTQ Teens,” Washington Post, June 26, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/26/keffals-trans-twitch-streaming-news.
