We were promised a global village; we got a gladiatorial arena. No longer just a tool for connection, social media has spawned an entire outrage industry harvesting and monetising our worst impulses. Welcome to the era of Angertainment.
Praise:
‘Ed Coper keenly explores and masterfully analyses the dangerous world of angertainment where so much of our politics now resides,’ The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC, 29th Prime Minister of Australia
Ed Coper is a pioneer of politics in the digital age. A leading political communications expert and authority on the internet and democracy, he built the global blueprints for modern advocacy. He grew Australia's first online political movement, GetUp, and launched Australian Labor’s first digital presence before exporting these techniques across six continents. He has been behind the scenes of many of the last two decades’ most prominent social movements, and has advised high-profile changemakers ranging from Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg to Sir Richard Branson and Shakira. Ed founded a New York-based agency servicing multiple Nobel Peace laureates, and established the Center for Impact Communications which led efforts to safeguard US elections from disinformation and combat vaccine hesitancy. His groundbreaking campaigns have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for social causes and have featured in several museum exhibitions. Now CEO of the agency Populares, Ed remains at the vanguard of political disruption; he was a key strategist behind Australia’s historic 'Teal' movement. Ed is the author of the acclaimed book Facts and Other Lies, which has become the definitive handbook for defending truth in the disinformation age.
‘Coper takes the basic building blocks of human nature and combines them with a frank assessment of new tech to build an (ironically) enraging picture of how we have been manipulated en masse. It is devastating to read about how year after year our capacity for critical thinking plummets in proportion to our willingness to simply tune in and rage. Malicious characters have shaped this new world in symbiotic relationships with the corporations that profit from our attention. This book is required reading for every engaged citizen and thankfully, the final hundred pages are Coper's 'antidote' to these ills. It should be considered mandatory – for young and old alike – to get a crash course in media literacy like this. The landscape of how people get and give information has completely transformed over the last decade. Whether you run a community garden or a Fortune 500, whether you've got a ten-year-old son or a ninety-year-old grandfather, you need to read this book.’ -- <B>BRI LEE, author of <I>Eggshell Skull</I></B> ‘From tradwife gurus to manosphere rage-baiters, the world’s most dangerous actors are gaming your brain for profit. Angertainment is a gripping, darkly funny, and utterly essential unmasking of the viral mechanics the MAGA outrage machine has spent a decade perfecting. Ed Coper decodes their digital playbook: read this before the MAGA machine tries to cancel it.’ -- <B>TAYLOR LORENZ, journalist, writer<I>, User Mag</I>, <I>Power User</I></B> ‘Read this: it’s urgent, vivid, informative and a powerful call to arms against the virus of “angertainment”’. -- <B>LUCINDA HOLDFORTH, author of <I>Going On and On</I></B> ‘Clever. Frightening. Gripping. Only now that Ed Coper has given it a name – ANGERTAINMENT – and offered a compelling strategy to deal with the divisive malevolence of social media, can I fully understand my long-held fears and discomfort about this existential threat to civility.’ -- <B>PAUL DALEY, author of <I>The Leap</I> and Guardian writer</B> ‘Ed Coper makes sense of so much that seems broken in the world through understanding the corrosive impact of social media outrage. Then he thinks about fixing it. Angertainment explains the insidious reach of rage bait with both urgency and humour.’ -- <b>LENORE TAYLOR, Walkley-Award-winning journalist and former editor, <i>Guardian</i></b> ‘For years, we’ve watched in horror as the manosphere has moved from our screens into our classrooms and our most intimate moments. In Angertainment, Ed Coper delivers a masterful and unflinching exposé of the intentional, profit-driven machine behind online misogyny, divisiveness and hate—eviscerating the lie that online toxicity is just “human nature”. With clarity and urgency, this book brilliantly diagnoses the machine radicalising our feeds and provides the definitive manual for dismantling them. Angertainment is essential reading for anyone committed to building a safer, saner and more cohesive world.’ -- <B>CHANEL CONTOS, Founder of Teach Us Consent and author of <I>Consent Laid Bare</I></B> ‘Both a vital field guide and survival guide to our ever more strange and scary world. A must-read writ large.’ -- <b>NICK BRYANT, former BBC Washington correspondent and author of History Never Ended </b>