>> thank you very much marco the strand was founded on fourth avenue book roads stretching from union square to astor place it dwindled

over 92 years the strand is the sole survivor still run by the original family who founded it we are running 400 events per year and still have new and used books after all this time we are excited to be hosting author of the brand-new book antisocial. andrew has written since 2011 and appeared in harper's magazine mother jones the new york times among others and contributed to radio lab. and with the new york times magazine and book review and

currently teaching a writing course. i could not be more excited to hear about our informational landscape how it has been transformed and monopolized and radicalized in what creators and inhabitants have to say about the results. with that in mind please join me to welcome vincent and andrew to the strand. [applause] >> it is great to be here. it's right there in the title you have set up to draw these online extremist that you took

the bullet for all of us to expose yourself. led the third part of the triangle to so i would love to trace all parts of that but first i want to ask the question that people ask why did you spend your time with these people. why give them oxygen cracks what is the impulse to say it is important quex. >> it is a good question on multiple levels why you put yourself through that psychologically and why legitimated or given oxygen and i didn't want to be sent about that because the question of when to avoid a normalization should be on

everybody's mind constantly these days and not things that should be marginalized. but basically and doing to us psychologically. a note then to know how weird and darwinian it is. there's no great checks on any businesses. because speech acts to the good that we agree with that with that darwinian click bait. but this is all before

politics entered into it what it would do to the ecosystem and to the news and i was at the new yorker talking to people and then it seems amoral. so just chill out we are old-school and to say it's not that but there's nothing preventing them from taking over the whole internet. if the internet is everything. and then to hang out with this

one. donald trump was the one - - was a thing but he hadn't come down the escalator. and this is where the utopian thing comes in. like when you are 26. i'm a disruptor. and that you want to change the world. and they're all these waves to make the market efficient. and that we can change the world. and then just one obvious question over another. and then to get really prickly.

but then donald trump comes down the escalator and then now we really are screwed. because collectively as a nation we cannot say absolutely not. and i keep using the word darwinian because it is a rift that all the news that is fit to print. and then there is that darwinian sense of fitness that everybody's just duking it out. and then to say i don't feel sanguine. and then to say instead of sitting here and opining about

ito. >> it's interesting that you mention that faith and what is a threat all the way through you show howow much that's not just a tech belief that's a national belief to use obama like the arc of the moralrs universe. and i didn't use this thing of those wheels of inevitability. and with very specific and heavily cure one - - curated ways. and then live up to our ideals.

and then to get there. the way that filters to the consciousness and then you spend some semesters at harvard and then you drop out to start a company theoretically but you're not thinking very hard or wrestling with reading revisionist history are that humanity should rule a the world. that the reason it's not pure is that with those consequences but if you just absorb that really made much sense when you go build something that could turn into the world's largest platform for discourse there aren't safeguards built into that. if you start a party and say

come on in will just hope it is great and then the arc of the party that okay what if somebody starts.one - - poisoning the drink. you didn't check ids. you are just hoping that it will work out. and then there's two.4 billion people at your party. so you mention obama sometimes in this book. because nobody can hide from the truth the sunlight and disinfectant but over the past 15 years there is an obama critique somewhere in there.

it runs through reagan or obama and then i land at a chicago airport and on the way there is a plaque with reagan to say the same thing. it's about her future. and then to put a nice positive spin on it. just like rotting corpses and what you think about the best of us. that is reagan versus bushes or obama i understand why it's a good stump speech but not good policy and there is this weird thing that happens that

we are doomed to pessimism. i just think that you can i give a speech in 2010 but guess what if you go back to egypt in 2012 you will get laughed out of the room. example but they don't talk about the muslim brotherhood veryen often and those are just facets of our history. so the original question was why pay attention to the online extremist cracks because that's why. we all know the story of three guys in hoodies that are in the garage and started a company and change the s a world is not antisocial because it

is antisocial media but we assume for so long the internet can only be pro social. if we ignore the other side of the coin antisocial side 40 or 60 percent whatever it is it's immaterial and it's a lot but they are fine with you knocking on their door letting them in you never know who will be okay with you coming in and these are the last that i would expect to say sure. come on in but they slam the mdoor on my face and they say no nothing but he's like i have nothing to hide.

[laughter] he has done book talks before i was like this guy has aas massive audience. but at the time there was a whole thing. the new yorker is like a minor character in the book i didn't include it because i was struggling with the metadata and how media is producing in the 21st century. so i was like there is a lot of stuff how the new yorker does things in that way so i didn't get into this but there is a whole thing because of alex jones we have to make

arrangements and is much as i would like that i don't think he's the biggest fan i don't know if it would help that much and just set up a phone call. so i didn't do that but i went to orange county to sit with this contributor among other things. a married l guy. and had a dog and a kid. and then to editt video footage of h her in a way that seems suggesting.

and then to give me a polygraph. and then to say i want to win this election for trump and that my abstract nor should off saudi arabia policy does this blinking thing. and then i watch them do it. and with the state owned russian control sites it was literally a bunch of people that he was connected to through skype podcast who would coordinate and then say watch meme do this. and then do a periscope video and all those commenters would say what is our #cracks what are we going to doie cracks

stuttering hillary. they workshop then they pick one and get it trending because that's where all the journalists are the journalist cnn drudge would see it then jump to fox news then to cnn and literally i'm in my hotel room in orange county pick up dthe newspaper and i did this this is because of what i watch him do yesterday. yes it is marginal but it's also that's what the internet does is break down all barriers between the fringe and the mainstream t with the metaphor of infection you could be in the middle of the nowhere but if you're on a jetliner you're everywhere.

>> so with this juxtaposition incredibly dark phenomenon it as a secondary character for much of 2015 and 2016 everyone i knew said that donald trump thought he could be president and with that wealth transfer reading blog post and massage in the gets you laid and then to see several things i was not giving up because i was convinced i was not scouring the internet for titillation but something was happening as trying to figure out what. so how was it doing this quex's like the world could

not be more incongruent and those speech codes the way of being on a day to day basis. suggest to say another theme of the book is what it's like to be a journalist and what you have to do. >> yes and i did have those moments to get a vicarious picture of the thrill why they did find it titillating although i was constantly i mortified. and then everybody can do everything. and those things in life you're not supposed to look at. and i understand vicariously.

and then to feel my brain be split into understand and those waiting you want to be drawn to this but also not the moral, this. and wide journalist is supposed to be. there is a clash to keep that moral code this. the kind of journalism where the moral code this part that i use a phrase to be an astoundingly frictionless weathervane like we are doing c is wrong so don't just go.

not just where the wind blows but you see it all over the place that some people say it is provocative rhetoric and there has been complaints that have raised eyebrows but i think with that confusion comes in that look it's weird to live inn a world where the president is an idiot and a liar so to say that sounds like you are being biased but to say it is weird even for me to say it. and just how an journalistic to say it even though that's the job of journalism it should not be the onlyrn job so as not only the president but the whole notion of trolls and internet shifters and to put you in situations that you

cannot describe because you describe those to the point i had a lot more new yorker stuff. it was the gift that keeps on giving. >> and my wife read this manuscript many times we had many conversations about how to deal with the new yorker at all because on one hand it is clear why that decision was there so it seems weird and dishonest the way i do media but on the other hand there is weird just to mention the new yorker was weird in its own

right and that i am quoting one of these people the day after the election so a vote against trump is a vote against the smug elitist ass hole but even to talk about it was that multilayered effect. but i didn't want to pretend i didn't notice the trap but it is they are. but there is a slippage and

with that darwinian notion but you don't just get to but that your arguments don't stand but with that deep occupation in the book though and how we are skating on thin i.c.e. with this h white supremacy and all that stuff there is also the media of it all that the constitution guarantees the government can't shut down the press what it means if it's any good or iff it serves a business model that continues to function is just this

feeling there is no safety just that you hope people want to buy what you are selling so this let the marketplace so what one - - sorted out have you seen the marketplacett sorted out quex's. [laughter] >> it's funny that you talk about that fundamentally hate to make the new yorker the underdog but there is talking about the other american strand that you even talk about yourself that we all conceive of ourselves as anti- elite like when i was a kid we

all grow up with the idea to define ourselves with that rebel sensitivity or bernie sanders in 2016. >> most of them come from the left or the far right orfa whatever and goes through the alt write pipeline right libertarian left and then it takes 60 pages and then ayn rand leads and then the german asking the questions like why can't we have covenants quex's there are more steps in the book but that is yes.

and it is weird to think of that traditional thing of the underdog but it is. it's weird to talk about it but also the reluctant institutional that when they show up to these people the section of the book is inauguration weekend which is called the deplorable's. which you know because you have to explain it. and again anthropologically vicariously the only way i could hit on that is to say what they vibe with is thehe part of me that says don't tell me not to skateboard on that statue i can if i want to

but that's called a democratic norm. but the notion that women should be allowed to work and that you shouldn't punch people. but you have to grow up eventually. and those that said i really want to fight someone because it's punk and countercultural. and those that wanted to say that and there's another part ofs me for me to hold my tongue for three years because you

are playing a persona. and just by, showing up they get rolled into this. i appreciate your not lying about them but you try to forget you still have a brain and there are judgments about them in your head. >> at some point like we are just waiting for you to make the switch. >> because so many of them have switched or whatever ideological but some of them really do think it's that way

anyway we will get you to. i was at the deplorable ball talking to a trolling performance artist guy into your question about oxygen i was trying not to give him the time of h day because i want to play into your shtick. . . . . t

journalism is and in a way it's funny how much we are so tripped up on this like how much should we know and look away because again it's good that we are struggling through it but it's like we don't really do that with should we cover it or not because i think it feels far away and with this it feels almost like i don't necessarily

want to do the work of how much of this i can explicitly disagree with, so let's just make it go away. but then once he was making his announcement it's like 4.5 tiers below and that's who he was reporting for a. i was like okay i will go with you on the bus to dc and sit next to you as you watch king of the hill on your laptop and that was the preparation because he knew on the one hand this job

wasn't to hold them to account. what strikes me so much, and you went into the white house press briefing room but what's interesting is to show how it is possible so they are permeating the white house itself and then on the other hand one of the things i found so jarring gets

in a certain respectability. they keep these people away from our eyes and ears on the internet. i found myself wondering how you took that old in. whether you think these people learned anything about their power with respect to all that. close your board member aware of

cambridge analytic. he is now aware that he cannot just ignore this from the pr perspective it isn't going to fly. ever since facebook was facebook he's been breaking the rules and apologizing for them. i think that he knows that this one isap too big. to me it isn't only how do we keep these out of our eyes and ears because that, his strategy has been to rely on the notion of free speech is so he gets a big speech at georgetown where he said we believe in free

speech and because of free speech it is good and if the answer is therefore we are doing fine because of free speech and referencing frederick douglass it's a little shameless and it's a selective. yes we have an amendment. the parts of it that are being left out how does it then follow that is the only good we are pursuing and that is the only freedom that matters especially with douglas and came to give me

money through their time and dttention that isn't what freedom means. it's a kind of freedom if you want to find it in some kind of a new speak sense and the thing that has been left out a wee don't think of them as being able to have complex trade-offsi among them. it is a time when things need to be said for the first amendment is lovely, i love it lets not get rid of it. and i don't want anybody with that political idea being sent to jail so i am advocating for is that not be the end of the discussion and it's geared to

how we establish those very simple facts and imagine if we did that in the second amendment or we have established if you say there's the right to bear arms to raise the complexity it flies in the face of this notion we are done here. we've done our innovativee disruptive work and now it is up to the arc of history to the city for us. i think that they are sensing it may be over. the stock price is doing fine so i don't think they are feeling it on the pocket of old.

evi do feel they are not all abt money. they have enough of that and i think even they feel they have enough of death, but they want to be luminaries and have legacies. one that we can push as a society as they move out of their building dynamite we canen prevail on that sense of ru sure that you are helping and we never held you to account for that but how sure are you. awi don't know how much comes ot

of it, but it is a useful. >> i would love it if we could get some questions from the audience.

it's the potential nobel prize but among all of us hope we start to get the together the book seems to me like one of those steps if i can sell the book to you. but how do we keep that going? >> that is where i was able to rationalize on the front lines of some demonstratione doing nothing directly and that is how i was able to rationalize it to myself. we do need to try to re- conceptualized how we can think about these things more coherently and robustly.

to try to mix together more of a vocabularyet. a pragmatist and anti-philosopher, very interesting writer who essentially as the notion that comes from anthropology in the way that we conceive of ourselves to re- describe how we don't get to these new positions buyouts or giving each other like there is a kind of enlightenment tendency to just be like wild if you're going to be, you know, lincoln or douglas and one of them is going to win, he makes a very compelling case that doesn' isn't how the socies forward. it's quite telling better stories. so this is an attempt to around

more than just a glossy hollywood version of how we got here. >> question over here. >> thank you for doing this work over the past couple of years so the rest of us don't have to. something that i felt was particularly in resting his discussion held there were two sides when you were thing gained about the people i want to understand them but i don't want to overly empathize. i'm curious if there was everr a time that he felt like it was being maybe not crossed the word and how overall we make sure we don't go through that process. >> there is many kinds. the red pill metaphor comes from the matrix where you take the red pill and it shows you the truth and it's like one of our

favorite allegories to tell as a society because that feeling is really addictiveth and powerful. the power of having secret knowledge. there was never a moment where i was like it really is a. there were a couple of times when -- [laughter] i will say i didn't know the jewish thing was going to be a hangup for some people. i found that kind of quaint like you guys are still doing that? is a funny moment a guy over the phone -- >> there was a kind of dissent throughout the book and this is towards the end where you are meeting the sort of pick of the litter. there was a guy i'd been circling around talking to his family and this is like a philip

roth novel not that i did it that way but it just is that. he was born in this idea like new jersey and they a were the most you could imagine and he then threw a series of pills and steroids ends up in this place where he is in th he's in the de dark and there's a lot of things going on but he's already married to a jewish woman when he discovers they are the p central problem in the world so he has to deal with that and then presents problems and so i've been circling around and talking to his parents. on the one side they are divorced and the other side tries to disown him. his mom is like i hear you are going to a rally in charlottesville. let meas buy you some shirts because your authors are too

baggy and i want you to look good on tv so those are the two ades of his experience. he finally called me. we were actually supposed to go out for dinner to a come and i'm on speakerphone and i didn't realize this about me but i have a journalistic tic to draw people out i now know that it's to n go right, right, to get thm to talking. my wife runs into the room like can you not agree with the nazi -- and he's about to recommend the book on the jewish question and in the middle of the utterance he says wait, you're not a jew are you and i'm like did you google me, mike you have some effect us at your disposal.

and we kept talking and we met up for a beer. he wanted me to meet him at a german beer hall. so, yeah but i do take the? how do we collectively guard against this stuff and i don't think rensorship is entirely the answer. we have to have better algorithms that are not built on outrage and fear and disgust and all the rest of it. but some of it is going to be building a society in which this stuff is not shocking or rage but it just written out of our we are not interested in it anymore. it is an emotional engagement in the positive or the negative sign. i think it's going o to be noboy talks about that stuff anymore.

>> you said you are not the guy to go to for optimis optimism oe and obviously the people that you talk to in y the story, it's pretty horrifying. is there anyone you talk to in the process of this but i did give you some hope lacks >> i think there's actually a few. one of the things i mean, one bright point is some of the people are darkly funny and sometimes just inadvertently pathetically funny. i think they have a kind of rise and fall or you get to end the book on the note of i speak to you could think of his characters ar were going to politically implode. that doesn't mean that they will go away but it does provide a level of sort of comfort. but the real moment of hope for me is the notion that it does move. the mistake is to think that it movesha by itself.

watching the way that our society has responded to post trumpp, it shouldn't have taken all that, but the fact that the response to that has been such that in the space between when i started working on this and now, we have a totally different way of thinking about the responsibilities that the architects of algorithms have and this entire sector of the economy has. to go from this tube vilifying these guys i don't think vilifying them is entirely the answer but it shows me how quickly it can move and frankly i wouldn't have believed that we could move this fast on this stuff. i never thought of the golden boys of tech innovation would be seen as tobacco executives five

years later so that does give me hope, but just i think the window can shift and lots of surprising and interesting directionsin. all i'm trying to do is point out the shaft in really bad directions. a lot of times it goes than a nice direction. the window on same-sex marriage is a really helpful thing to think about and that happened because of democratization of media so these are forces that can be marshaled we just have to stop being in denial about the fact that it will happen on its own. >> i'm just curious about this whole on some level is the human brain hardwired in some section. i think it's in the age of trump

when it has seeped so deeply in society is there something about the human brain i'm just curious because in the beginning i found it shocking and now we've become sort of anesthetized. but at the end of the day, but caused germanyny to embrace the nazi movement, what is allowing people to to think that this group hate is okay? >> the hardwired thing is tough. it took about one of the internal occupations of my household is the kind of struggling of are we hardwired into everything so that was a background preoccupation my wife

and i would argue about when we would argue about this book and i think i mean, again this shows up in a footnote when i was talking about the nazis, the philosophy of public defenders, my wife was a public tour, my child is named after the case that gave us public defenders, something we believe in, but one of the tenets of that is people are not reducible to the worst thing they've done. that's hard to apply to nazis and i don't always get all the way they are or feel i should get all the way there, but i don't think that we want to get stuck in hardwired predetermined or predestined. >> it's not an excuse and we want to hold peopleas to accoun.

i think that it's the moral vocabulary spinning out of control. we exist within social structures more and we wan thano think and the ability to think that something is not unthinkable that controversial that is what leads people into this dangerousry kind of groupthink and obviously material conditions matter and all that. that's why i worry about one of the phrases is to change who we are and i mean that in a literal

way. how we talk is a product of the internet which again is not go good. that is where we need to get control of this internet stuff, not just as a business question or a tech media question. >> we have time for a couple more questions. >> you talked about this in the beginning how useful your role in this but i wonder where you see the role of journalism going forward and also it is a huge concern and a one or how should we be covering this like how should we be looking at this going forward? >> is always an option as you know not to do the story and i think it should be exercised a

lot. there were many times where i talk about thehe guy pitched t me. everybody else in the room was pitching to me. it was a room of a thousand people who all wanted me to write about them. amplification is a concern but another thing is the context and how you couch things it's sort of like i try not to pick on anyone but i kind of reconstructed how they learned to be trolls because they are not like internet research agency they are operating in plain sight a lot of it was

through the critical amplification like followed by literal cut and paste everything they said was they're going. i don't think staying silent in the face of terrible people on the internet is the right answer either because then they look like they are going on challenged but we have learned bitter. if you are going to do it, first it should be a bigger question than it is for most journalists and event what am i reall realle nothing and can i do it in a way if there is amplification if those there' there is a larger g

i'm learning like i can't even with these people. one of the people i wrote about a lot was a kind of punchline on the internet but also extremely influential in ways that it's not fun to hear about. you don't want to hear that he's actually shaping the news on a daily basis is how one

particular character in the book is trade and there are people who kind of follow me around on twitter like you have factual inaccuracies. either they are joking or they now realized how dumb that was.

they seem evenhande evenhanded s created a false norm to give a little encapsulation of it so the more naïve thought that is how it was going to be wrinkling his nose blithely and then just saying there you have it ladies orand gentlemen. i think they were like that's always naïve. a big round of applause. [applause]

if you will stay with us for a few minutes just sit tight and i will get some instruction shortly. ... >>.