From the popular and award-winning staff writer for The Atlantic, an eye-opening look at how the current media landscape has incentivized us to see our fellow citizens as characters in an ongoing entertainmentand how we can fight back against this phenomenon.
Whether its our reality-television-star President or our expertly curated Instagram feeds, the line between fact and fictionbetween whats real and whats fabricated for entertainmenthas never been more blurred. Plot Twist explores what happens when we cede our reality to spectacle. Megan Garber explains how todays internet-inflected culture conditions us to see one another not as people but as characters in an ongoing show, and how some of our most chronic and harmful social conditionsloneliness, depression, mistrust, misinformation, cynicismstem from our demand for diversion.
In ten chapters, each themed around an element of stagecraftfrom The Producers, who edit our reality, to The Props, the strangers we turn into objects of our amusement, to the Haters, the worshipful Qanon-types who expect the prophecies of their anonymous leader to play out on live televisionGarber argues that this comedy of our daily lives is quickly becoming tragedy. And we cant understand our politics without first understanding our culture.
Like The Anxious Generation but about our media diet, Plot Twist shows why Megan Garber is one of the most respected and widely-read journalists of our day. It is an urgent, page-turning, and dazzling look at how we entertained ourselves into our current predicament, and how we might find our way out of the maze of misinformation and chaos.
