If You Wanted Him to Write Warmly About You, You Should Have Behaved Better

After reading Jacob Silverman’s Down and Out in the Gig Economy I thought about doing him a solid by sending him a copy of Dan Lyons’ Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble. Both writers share a similar lament, but only one of them gets the message across without sounding like the entitled child of a privileged education who’s far too important for the “indignities that no worker should have to go through,” and accompanying shit pay, that Silverman says characterizes his life as a freelancer.

The fact is, I probably would have sent him the book – my own copy, inscription included –  had it not been for an acute gut feeling that Silverman doesn’t much appreciate being bested by his contemporaries.

Contrary to Silverman’s inability to leverage the benefits of a piece he wrote about self-promotion going viral, (or his book ‘Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection’) Lyons has succeeded in parlaying the success of his above-mentioned book into all kinds of opportunities, including an episode he wrote for HBO’s Silicon Valley, and a second book.

Similar to Silverman’s account of his misadventures in a gig economy, however, Lyons’ book is a scornful rebuke of the house of cards upon which HubSpot’s spam-churning marketing model is built. It’s as much a lesson in the precariousness of full-time employ in the world of tech content as it is a warning about the precariousness of employ as a tech journalist yet, unlike Silverman’s sentiments, Lyons’ account is wonderfully crafted, hilarious at times, and it left me wishing I could kick back with the guy over a couple of beers and just listen to him talk.