Talking Radicalized with the LA Public Library: Trump derangement syndrome, engagement algorithms, and novellas as checked luggage

The LA Public Library's Daryl M interviewed me about my new book, Radicalized, specifically, about how my Trump anxiety (created, in part, by the platforms' relentless use of "engagement" tools to nonconsensually eyeball-fuck me with Trump headlines) led to the book's germination, as well as the specific inspirations for each of the four novellas, and the delights of working in novella form.

What was your inspiration for Radicalized as a collection?

I call this my "Trump derangement syndrome therapy book." I didn't intend to write ANY of thesethey got blurted out while I was working on another bookthe third Little Brother book, working title Crypto Wars, which I turned in just before Xmas.

We've spent 2+ years having Trump headlines nonconsensually crammed into our eyeballs by a media ecosystem dominated by "engagement" metricsmeaning that the longer you hang in there, the bigger the bonuses of the execs, engineers and designers behind the product. That's why Google added "trending searches" to the search bar in Android. No one EVER went to a search bar to find out what other people are searching for. People search to find out the answers to specific questions! But if a Google engineer can hijack your attempt to find out what's in an unfamiliar sauce on a restaurant menu by showing you a list reading "imminent nuclear armageddon/more kids in cages/trump supports torture" then you might actually do SEVERAL searches instead of the one you set out to do. Nevermind that this means dinner is ruinedthe engineer who came up with that gimmick will get a great bonus for increasing "engagement" with their product.