- Editorial:
- PENGUIN
- Año de edición:
- 2023
- ISBN:
- 978-0-593-29975-3
- Páginas:
- 352
TRAFFIC
GENIUS, RIVALRY, AND DELUSION IN THE BILLION-DOLLAR RACE TO GO VIRAL
BEN SMITH
If attention is the new oil, Ben Smiths Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dotcom crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become techs center of gravity. There, within a few square blocks, Nick Dentons merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Perettis sunnier crew at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. It was techs age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. After all, didnt progressive activists online get Barack Obama elected?
Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeeds editor-in-chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no oneand certainly not himself. Smith tells a nuanced story: yes, Dentons ideology of radical transparency was problematic, but at least he had an ideology. Jonah Peretti survived long after Dentons Gawker perished because his focus on clicks was relentlessly content-agnostic. But unintended consequences began to snowball.
Traffic explores 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. 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 wasnt the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.
