Forbes profiles Ryan Holiday, a marketing executive in New York, with an unusual hobby: making up stories to appear on TV news programs, and to get quoted in newspaper articles.
Holiday is quite the character, using an online service designed to connect journalists with sources, and having no problem making up any story to get himself in the news:
He expected it to take a few months of meticulous navigation, but he found himself with more requests than he could handle in a matter of weeks. On Reuters, he became the poster child for “Generation Yikes.” On ABC News, he was one of a new breed of long-suffering insomniacs. At CBS, he made up an embarrassing office story, at MSNBC he pretended someone sneezed on him while working at Burger King. At Manitouboats.com, he offered helpful tips for winterizing your boat. The capstone came in the form of a New York Times piece on vinyl records — naturally, Holiday doesn’t collect vinyl records
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Holiday wrote a book called Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, which is being released this week.