Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet-and Why We're Following

by Gabrielle Bluestone

Overview

"Hype is the best kind of nonfiction: juicy, sharp, savage and wildly entertaining, with a celebrity behaving badly on every page. What more could you want?” -Cat Marnell, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life

From former Vice journalist and executive producer of hit Netflix documentary Fyre comes an eye-opening look at the con artists, grifters and snake oil salesmen of the digital age—and why we can’t stop falling for them.

We live in an age where scams are the new normal. A charismatic entrepreneur sells thousands of tickets to a festival that never happened. Respected investors pour millions into a start-up centered around fake blood tests. Reviewers and celebrities flock to London’s top-rated restaurant that’s little more than a backyard shed. These unsettling stories of today’s viral grifters have risen to fame and hit the front-page headlines, yet the curious conundrum remains: Why do these scams happen?

Drawing from scientific research, marketing campaigns, and exclusive documents and interviews, former Vice reporter Gabrielle Bluestone delves into the irresistible hype that fuels our social media ecosystem, whether it’s from the trusted influencers that peddled Fyre or the consumer reviews that sold Juicero. A cultural examination that is as revelatory as it is relevant, Hype pulls back the curtain on the manipulation game behind the never-ending scam season—and how we as consumers can stop getting played.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781488059124
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	1,026,929
File size:	619 KB

About the Author

Gabrielle Bluestone is a journalist and licensed attorney from New York whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Observer, Sunday Times Magazine, Esquire, InStyle and Gawker. She is the Emmy-nominated producer of Netflix’s “Fyre” and the associate producer of “Different Flowers,” winner of the 2017 Kansas City FilmFest Festival Prize.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11

Chapter 1 The Cult of Flounder 35

Chapter 2 Fake It Till You Make It 83

Chapter 3 Under the Influencer 125

Chapter 4 The Allegory of the Fave 171

Chapter 5 Fyre in the Hole 229

Chapter 6 On the Internet No One Knows You're a Fraud 257

Chapter 7 The Fyre Next Time 281

Chapter 8 Covidiots 299

Conclusion 309

Acknowledgments 317

Endnotes 319

Editorial Reviews

02/08/2021

One shouldn’t believe everything they see on social media, admonishes this scattershot exposé of online deception. Vice journalist Bluestone investigates impresario–con man Billy McFarland’s infamous 2017 Fyre Festival, which was hyped as a glamorous music festival in a Bahamian island paradise but ended up being a rain-soaked gathering at a gravel pit. McFarland had spent millions on parties for himself and on social media personalities who swayed followers to buy tickets to the nonevent, and later pleaded guilty to defrauding his investors. Alongside her reporting on the Fyre debacle, Bluestone explores the economy of influencers who leverage pseudo-relationships with followers into hidden marketing deals with the brands showcased in their feeds, taking potshots along the way at Tesla founder Elon Musk, WeWork founder Adam Neumann, and, inevitably, Donald Trump. Bluestone offers some entertaining case studies of internet frauds, but her theorizing of it all as a symptom of “a post-truth world” feels overblown and the narrative can bog down in repetitive, semi-articulate interviews. (“ ‘That’s one of the best explanations I’ve ever heard,’ gushes one influencer to Bluestone about her question; ‘It makes me laugh, because the way that you—I’ve never heard anyone explain it as well as you did.’ ”) The result is a baggy, rambling tour of internet fakery that itself feels somewhat overhyped. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A deep dive into the depressing world of grifters, bullsh*t artists, plagiarists and long con experts turbocharged by the Internet— and what, if anything, separates those scammers from some of our most respected captains of industry. Fyre Festival, Bluestone makes clear, may have been a low-water mark so far in the history of empty hype— but the tide, as ever, just keeps rolling out.”
—Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power


"Hype is the best kind of nonfiction: juicy, sharp, savage and wildly entertaining, with a celebrity behaving badly on every page. What more could you want?” -Cat Marnell, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life


“Gabrielle Bluestone is one of the most gifted chroniclers of American culture working today because she is one of the coolest people alive. In Hype, she delivers the story of what the f*ck is wrong with us as only she can: with detailed reporting that skewers the subjects who deserve it — and without an ounce of sanctimony — while taking us for a ride so fun that, by the end, it takes you a second to realize that Hype may have indicted you, too (she is a lawyer, after all). We may not deserve this book, but we do need it. Hype is the most fun, most outrageous, and — most of all — most true book of the year.”
—Olivia Nuzzi, author and Washington correspondent, New York magazine

"Scams are hot right now, and Bluestone covers the hottest here." -Booklist


"Entertaining." -Publishers Weekly

"A highly compelling read... very well-researched." -E&T

“Ms. Bluestone is a journalist and knows what questions to ask and how to get people to answer them… I was entertained.” –East Hampton Star

"Entertaining... author Gabrielle Bluestone, a former Vice journalist, shows how easy it is for even the savviest person to get scammed... So is this book a warning? Yes, but as Bluestone shows, it'll never be enough. We'll always be conned because we're human and this book proves that. Forewarned, though, is forearmed, so grab and see what it says." —Meridian Star

From the Publisher