<p><b>‘An absorbing study of online propaganda and its threat to democracy’ – <i>Guardian</i>, Book of the Day</b><br><b>‘A wonderful record of these haywire times . . . it really explains how we ended up in this mess’ – Jon Ronson</b><br><br>This is a story about how the extreme became mainstream. It reveals how the truth became ‘fake news’, how fringe ideas spread, and how a candidate many dismissed as a joke was propelled to the presidency by the dark side of the internet.<br><br>For several years, Andrew Marantz, a<i> New Yorker</i> staff writer, has been embedded with alt-right propagandists, who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. He also spent time with the social-media entrepreneurs who made this possible, through their naive and reckless ambition, by disrupting all of the traditional information systems. <br><br>Join Marantz as some of the biggest brains in Silicon Valley teach him how to make content go viral; as he hangs out with the conspiracists, white supremacists and nihilist trolls using these ideas to make their memes, blogs and podcasts incredibly successful; and as he meets some of the people led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization.<br><br><i>Antisocial</i> is about how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then becomes reality. By telling the story of the people who hijacked the American conversation, <i>Antisocial</i> will help you understand the world they have created, in which we all now live.</p>