Doctor Mike

Sure.

This is the chilling effect, I think, that's going to happen as a result of some of what happened over the last two years.

So I wrote it for general audiences in part because it's the agency of the individual, I think, that really matters a lot.

It's making ordinary people aware of how is the game played.

How does the system work?

Why are influencers so persuasive and so interesting?

How does the algorithm curate things for you?

What are the ways in which it operates?

But not in complicated technical terms and like...

I think interesting ways of framing it.

How does this then get picked up by political machines?

How did it work or not work during COVID?

Why are institutions so bad at it?

So anybody who works at an institution should read it.

Anybody who...

wants to understand, I think, how public opinion is shaped and how the sausage is made.

One of the things that I got very excited about was when the Blake Lively story broke because I thought like, oh my God, people are talking about it with celebrities now.

Now people will understand how very subtle things that are planted or that influencers say or ways that information trades up the chain about specific people really can just twist perceptions.

What do you think people in academia or institutions should be doing?

Well, that I think is an interesting point, right?