Traffic: genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral

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Smith, Ben (Journalist)

Smith, Ben

Cary Regional
Eva H. Perry Regional
Middle Creek Community
Morrisville Community
North Regional
Northeast Regional
Oberlin Regional
Southeast Regional

Adult Non-Fiction

Cary Regional - Adult Non-Fiction
Eva H. Perry Regional - Adult Non-Fiction
Middlecreek Community - Adult Non-Fiction
Morrisville Community - Adult Non-Fiction
North Regional - Adult Non-Fiction
Northeast Regional - Adult Non-Fiction
Oberlin Regional - Adult Non-Fiction
Southeast Regional - Adult Non-Fiction

"The candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and Buzzfeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale in the first two decades of the 21st century helped release the dark forces that would overtake the Internet and American society... The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000's, in that brief moment after the first dotcom crash and before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become tech's center of gravity. There, within a few square blocks, Nick Denton's merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier crew at HuffPost and Buzzfeed were building the foundations of click-bait media. It was tech's age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. Progressive activists were first to the scene, and for a while it seemed they were the scene... Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as Buzzfeed's editor-in-chief, was either there or talked to everyone who was, and in his trademark fashion, he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no one--and certainly not himself... At the heart of Traffic is one of the great ironies of our time: the Internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. As Smith and his colleagues and rivals thought they were inventing digital media, other figures, flickering around the margins of their story, had different designs. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart and Gavin McInnes and Chris Poole, the creator of 4chan, all seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah and crew were the stars. By 2020, any reasonable observer might wonder if the opposite wasn't the case"--

Book

Books

91047e35-10ab-674c-6835-80a862126fd5

9780593299753

2025-08-12T09:13:34.508Z

-1

Non Fiction

Non Fiction

070.43 SMITH

Wake County Public Libraries

Cary Regional
Eva H. Perry Regional
Middle Creek Community
Morrisville Community
North Regional
Northeast Regional
Oberlin Regional
Southeast Regional

9780593299753

2023

Penguin Press

grouped_work

Denton, Nicholas
Digital media -- Economic aspects -- United States
Internet industry -- United States
News Web sites -- United States
Peretti, Jonah

Traffic : genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral

Traffic : genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral / Ben Smith

Traffic

genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral

Denton, Nicholas
Digital media
Economic aspects
Internet industry
News Web sites
Peretti, Jonah