Kelsey
Ugh. This was one of those books that should have been a more focused long-form article. I would've liked it WAY more. Not only did it meander (sometimes endlessly), but it was often self-promotional and just entirely off topic. Like, I didn't pick up this book to learn how to craft a compelling TikTok video or Instagram caption...
I understand that there is a connection between influencers' algorithm-driven content and the way we now speak offline, but do we really need ~100 pages about what exactly makes a good TikTok video? There were moments where it seemed like he hyper-fixated on one topic that had only a tenuous relationship to the overall purpose of the book, and, unfortunately, he dragged the reader along with him in this exploration of the corners of his influencer-content-creator-brain.
Somewhat of an aside, but... I'm curious about how he wrote this entire book about the evolution of language from ~2012-2025 and onward without once mentioning Covid? Obviously the focus was on social media, but didn't we all end up WAY more online in 2020? That seemed like a huge miss.
The only reason I finished the book at all was because there were a handful of fascinating nuggets of information buried in what I can only assume was editorial fluff. If they publish a second edition of this book, I wish they'd change the subtitle to something more apt, like: “How algorithms influence influencers and influencers influence language” (someone else can wordsmith it for me).
Ugh. This was one of those books that should have been a more focused long-form article. I would've liked it WAY more. Not only did it meander (sometimes endlessly), but it was often self-promotional and just entirely off topic. Like, I didn't pick up this book to learn how to craft a compelling TikTok video or Instagram caption...
I understand that there is a connection between influencers' algorithm-driven content and the way we now speak offline, but do we really need ~100 pages about what exactly makes a good TikTok video? There were moments where it seemed like he hyper-fixated on one topic that had only a tenuous relationship to the overall purpose of the book, and, unfortunately, he dragged the reader along with him in this exploration of the corners of his influencer-content-creator-brain.
Somewhat of an aside, but... I'm curious about how he wrote this entire book about the evolution of language from ~2012-2025 and onward without once mentioning Covid? Obviously the focus was on social media, but didn't we all end up WAY more online in 2020? That seemed like a huge miss.
The only reason I finished the book at all was because there were a handful of fascinating nuggets of information buried in what I can only assume was editorial fluff. If they publish a second edition of this book, I wish they'd change the subtitle to something more apt, like: “How algorithms influence influencers and influencers influence language” (someone else can wordsmith it for me).