--- title: "What can Trust Me, I'm Lying teach creators?" description: "Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying in 5 frameworks with steps, and the two Tom Sharman lessons it backs." canonical: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/ updated: 2026-11-03 --- # Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator > Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying in 5 frameworks with steps, and the two Tom Sharman lessons it backs. The frameworks here are Ryan Holiday's, from Trust Me, I'm Lying. Claude read the book in Tom's Brain and linked it to his lessons. ## How Tom uses this - [People online are selfish, so lead with what they get](https://tomsharman.com/lessons/people-online-are-selfish-so-lead-with-what-they-get/index.md): Holiday's evidence is that what spreads serves the reader's own emotional payoff (anger, awe, amusement), and that sharing is driven by what the sharer gets from it. (pp. 69, 70 and 78) - [A brand that compounds has a mission and an enemy](https://tomsharman.com/lessons/a-brand-that-compounds-has-a-mission-and-an-enemy/index.md): He shows that outrage views are transitory (96 percent of Most E-mailed articles appeared once), that critics made angry spread your message, and that chasing attention without purpose brings blowback. (pp. 73, 142 and 237) - Author: Ryan Holiday - Pages: 269 - ISBN: 9781101583715 - Chapters: 13 - Frameworks: 5 - Categories: Storytelling, Offers and pricing, Lead generation - Book 44 of 46 on the bookshelf: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/index.md ## What it argues Holiday argues that online media is built on incentives that reward traffic over truth: blogs earn money by the pageview, are built to be sold, and sell every story one-off, so they need content that spreads, which means anger, scandal and simple narratives. Those incentives make blogs easy to steer, and he spent years doing it through trading up the chain and nine tactics, from paying bloggers indirectly to writing their headlines. The same system then turns on its users, because stories cannot be corrected, links stand in for verification, and fakes become real behaviour. He concludes the result is unreality, offers no solution, and says readers and publishers must change the incentives by demanding and paying for quality. The book is both a manual and a confession, and he warns that using the tactics brings blowback. ## Worth keeping - Revenue is advertising times traffic, so every publisher decision follows traffic by any means; predict the incentive and you predict the behaviour (p. 39). - Trading up the chain: a story placed on a small blog is cited by legacy-media blogs and then by national outlets, so each level legitimises the next (pp. 26 to 33). - The strongest predictor of sharing is anger, then other high-arousal emotions, and sadness and practical utility spread poorly (pp. 68 to 70, 78). - Selling each article one-off forces sensational headlines, while a subscription aligns incentives with the reader, so trust and a returning audience are the durable model (pp. 86 to 92, 236). - Write the headline into the pitch and let the blogger take it, because the blogger's real job is the headline (p. 99). - The first version of a story wins, corrections reach a fraction of readers and can backfire, so prevention beats correction (pp. 133 to 134, 190). - A link looks like a citation but is not, and delegating trust to other outlets lets errors compound (pp. 159 to 162). - The decoder of stock blog phrases (tipster, leaked, breaking, updated, exclusive) shows how to read coverage sceptically (pp. 228 to 229). - Ask what you plan to do with any piece of information; most of it has no practical use beyond distraction (pp. 236 to 237). - Manufactured attention brings blowback, so weigh the costs in dignity and trust before using the tactics (pp. 15, 237). ## The questions it answers ### What makes a format repeatable, as opposed to a hit that happened once? The Wharton study shows 96 percent of Most E-mailed articles hit once and vanished, and the subscription history (pp. 86 to 90) shows a series with a returning audience is the repeatable alternative to a one-off spike. ### How do you build a personal brand that generates inbound rather than requiring outbound? Trading up the chain and HARO (pp. 26 to 33, 61) show how a source becomes the person journalists come to, though the conclusion warns that manufactured reputation brings blowback. ### Which of my stories travel, and which only feel like they should? The Detroit slideshows (pp. 66 to 68) and the anger finding (p. 69) show stories travel when they arouse, and importance alone does not make them travel, which is a test to run on the fifty stories. ### What does AI actually change about the shape of a content team? Demand Media's algorithm-led production line (pp. 148 to 149) shows what an automated content team looks like and what it drops, which is a contrast case for a team with human judgement. ## The frameworks 1. [Trading up the chain](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/trading-up-the-chain/index.md): Moves a story from a tiny blog to national coverage, so each level becomes the source for the next. 2. [The nine tactics](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/the-nine-tactics/index.md): Nine ways to exploit the incentives of blogs, each resting on a weakness in how online media earns money. 3. [The cycle of manufactured coverage](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/the-cycle-of-manufactured-coverage/index.md): How a blog turns its own need for traffic into a story the public then treats as real. 4. [The news funnel](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/the-news-funnel/index.md): Shows how the media filters reality down to what the public sees. 5. [How to read a blog](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/trust-me-im-lying/how-to-read-a-blog/index.md): A decoder for the stock phrases bloggers use, each of which has lost its original meaning. ## More by this author - [Ego Is the Enemy](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/ego-is-the-enemy/index.md) ## Working with Tom on this Tom works with creators and founders one to one, from a single session to a fractional role. [Work with Tom](https://tomsharman.com/consulting/)