Toxic sludge is good for you
by John C. Stauber, John Stauber, Sheldon Rampton · first published 1995
8mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2015–2026first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Documents the history of public relations and astroturfing in twentieth-century America, showing how corporate interests used front groups and hired agents to shape opinion; for readers curious about propaganda.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Toxic sludge is good for you blows the lid off of today's multi-billion-dollar propaganda-for-hire PR industry, revealing how public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony "grassroots" front groups, spy on citizens and conspire with lobbyists and politicians. --Publisher.
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…health. Then, only after losing dozens of lawsuits did the propaganda switch to "but everyone knew for 100+ years that smoking was lethal". One can read about it by reading Trust Us, We're Experts, or Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, or the other books written by the authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Us,_We%27re_Experts https://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html
on “Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them” ↗1.- Sandman 2.- Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry 3.- The Advertised Mind: Groundbreaking Insights into How Our Brains Respond to Advertising 4.- The Hidden Persuaders - "A brisk, authoritative and…
on “Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2015” ↗…in the US, and Edward Bernays created modern public PR, that apparently is working frighteningly well still. Read: Merchants of doubt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-dou... Toxic Sludge Is Good For You https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659246.Toxic_Sludge_Is_G... Exxon Has Known for over 40 years: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
on “Is the Insect Apocalypse Upon Us?” ↗Let me recommend the book "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You" - despite the rather silly title that book is an extremely thorough historical examination of PR, AstroTurfing and in general a rather shocking unveiling of an aspect corporate power that most people…
on “How the oil industry made us doubt climate change” ↗Let me reccomend "Toxic sludge is good for you". http://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html. Its a book about PR in the twentieth century. Basically the corporate elite has been hiring armies of secret and hidden agencies, front groups, lawyers PR people,…
on “What Happened to Jane Mayer When She Wrote About the Koch Brothers” ↗PR comes from PR companies. A great book on this topic is "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You," which I highly recommend. PR is designed for mass consumption. If you poke around in the documentation on their websites which is designed for developers, you'll see that these computers cannot be…
on “Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit” ↗Watch the pretty mainstream movie "Get Me Roger Stone" about how gamed certain segments of the population is to mobilise them politically, maybe read the book "Toxic sludge is good for you" about the history of astroturfing in the US - all what used to be mainstream views, that propaganda and fake grassroots group mobilisation has been rampant for over 100 years, then realise how many fed…
on “Lableak truther loses $100k in his own debate” ↗…* Have a number of "critical" position and can only be filled by <firstname.lastname> person. This is of course a joke. But that how some PR organizations works. There is of course the classic book "Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry" how the word sludge turned to biosolids. One of the techniques was to create a fake scientific journal and start publishing fake papers to it. Then…
on “Ask HN: What visa do foreign YC founders use to stay in US beyond 3 months?” ↗