How to create content in the era of algorithmic manipulation

Marketing professionals cannot ignore how algorithms manipulate our choices and our content. When the warning comes from the co-founder of a media brand with 3 million followers, it’s time to pay attention. Mattia Marangon, through his experience with Ugolize (formerly Legolize), has built a media empire based on viral content; yet in the book “Sommersi. Resistere nell’era delle notifiche e dell’infodemia social” (Submerged: Resisting in the era of notifications and social infodemic), he offers us something unexpected: not a growth hacking manual, but a ruthless analysis of the infrastructure on which our digital marketing strategies rest.

For marketing professionals, this book represents a necessary paradigm shift. It is no longer about optimizing vanity metrics or chasing the latest algorithmic trend, but about understanding the deep dynamics governing online attention and, above all, how these are redefining the relationship between brands and consumers.

The algorithm as a non-negotiable business partner
The book begins with a journey that is “deep, ironic, and ruthlessly lucid into the digital world,” an investigation into the invisible power of algorithms and how they manage to govern emotions, choices, relationships, and even political convictions. For a Chief Marketing Officer or a Digital Strategist, this isn’t philosophy: it’s daily operational reality.

Marangon demolishes the illusion of control that many marketers still cultivate. Algorithms have changed our time, our attention, and our relationships, and they have done so not for our well-being, but solely for our time spent online. This means that every content strategy we develop competes not only with direct competitors but with a system designed to maximize dwell time, regardless of the quality of the user experience.

The consequence for brands is dramatic: we are building relationships with consumers whose cognitive system is constantly under siege. Our brain, with all its shortcuts, cognitive biases, and illusions of control, becomes the p

Cos’è una notizia? Sette ingredienti per l’ufficio stampa efficace

erfect accomplice to a system that feeds on our attention. This radically changes how we must think about the customer journey and engagement.

Context collapse: the end of narrative control
One of the most powerful insights for communication professionals concerns the “context collapse” phenomenon. Social media eliminates context: scrolling through TikTok, the user sees only a 30-second clip, devoid of the tone, premises, and atmosphere of the conversation. Only a fragment remains, and that fragment is almost always the most incriminating one.

For brands, this represents an enormous reputational risk that goes beyond traditional crisis management. Every piece of content we produce, every campaign we launch, can be fragmented, decontextualized, and transformed into something completely different from our original intentions. It is no longer enough to control the message: we must design “fragment-proof” content.

The strategy emerging from the book is not to fight this phenomenon but to accept it and design accordingly. Content must be “context-resilient,” capable of maintaining its value even when extrapolated and reshared in forms we cannot predict or control.

Cognitive biases: from vulnerabilities to strategic levers
Marangon explores how algorithms manipulate our choices and amplify emotions like anger and fear, exploiting the role of cognitive biases. For marketers, this is not just psychological theory but fundamental competitive intelligence.

The availability heuristic, confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect: these are no longer academic concepts but operational mechanisms that determine the success or failure of our campaigns. The book forces us to ask: are we using these biases ethically? Or are we contributing to what Marangon calls “digital brainrot”?

Algorithms do not reward the quality of content, but its ability to generate engagement. Thus, “Skibidi Toilet” videos—where a head literally comes out of a toilet bowl—become one of the most followed trends: silly, surreal, unpredictable videos that engage the user without providing anything in terms of content but hypnotizing their attention.

The rage economy and the brand purpose dilemma
The chapter on the economy of indignation should be mandatory reading for anyone managing a brand today. Anger is no longer just an emotion to avoid in comments; it has become the primary currency of online attention. Rage-baiting and cry-baiting are not system aberrations or bugs: they are features.

For brands that have invested heavily in “purpose-driven marketing,” the book offers a cold shower. Performative activism is unmasked for what it is: an attempt to ride the emotional wave of the moment without a real commitment to change. The risk for brands is twofold: on one hand, completely ignoring social causes means appearing disconnected; on the other, superficial engagement is immediately perceived as opportunistic.

The solution suggested between the lines of the book is radical: instead of chasing every trending cause, brands should choose a few battles authentically aligned with their values and pursue them consistently, even when they are not trending.

Parasocial relationships: the future of brand loyalty?
The book starts from the algorithm, this invisible entity that decides what we see, what we ignore, and ultimately what we think. It then moves to the mind to discover our biases and cognitive shortcuts that make us predictable and manipulable. The heart of the journey is dedicated to the social phenomena that happen online every day.

The analysis of parasocial relationships—those one-sided bonds we develop with influencers and creators—offers crucial insights for rethinking influencer marketing strategies. We are no longer simply “borrowing” a creator’s audience: we are entering complex relational dynamics that consumers experience as real.

This radically changes how we should select and collaborate with influencers. It is no longer just about reach and engagement rate, but about understanding the nature of the parasocial relationship the creator has built with their audience and how our brand can fit into this dynamic without breaking it.

Artificial Intelligence and the end of verifiable truth
The book also addresses the impact of generative AI on the media landscape. The “liar’s dividend”—the advantage gained by those who lie in a world where everything can be fake—represents an existential challenge for brands that have built their reputation on authenticity.

In an ecosystem where deepfakes and AI-generated content are indistinguishable from reality, how can brands maintain consumer trust? Marangon’s answer is not technological but relational: in a world of synthetic content, authentic human value becomes even more precious.

From media diet to content strategy
The fourth part of the book collects remedies: not definitive solutions, because social media is designed to always have a countermove, but practical tools and reflections to become more conscious users. For marketers, this translates into a completely new approach to content strategy.

It is no longer about mass-producing content to saturate every possible channel, but about applying what Marangon calls “digital Occam’s razor”: cutting the superfluous, distinguishing what nourishes from what intoxicates. For brands, this means radically rethinking the content calendar, prioritizing quality over quantity, depth over frequency.

Surviving the crumbling of platforms
The progressive degradation of digital platforms (enshittification) should make every marketer who is investing heavily in a single platform reflect. The book is not a moralistic indictment but rather a map for orientation, an invitation to look deeper and ask ourselves if we want to continue being passive spectators drowning in digital or if we want, finally, to learn to swim.

The lesson for marketing professionals is clear: diversification is not just a good practice; it’s survival. Every platform follows a predictable cycle: it attracts users with free services, monetizes them, then squeezes them to the bone while quality plummets. The brands that survive are those that anticipate these cycles and move accordingly.

Strategic implications for the marketing of the future
The book flows very well and makes unfamiliar concepts easily understandable. Highly recommended reading to gain greater awareness of the social media world, its functioning, and the practices whose mechanisms often escape us. For marketing professionals, Sommersi is not just a book of social criticism: it is an operational manual for navigating an increasingly complex digital ecosystem. The strategic implications are deep:

First, we must completely rethink success metrics. Engagement is no longer enough; we must measure the quality of attention, not just the quantity.

Second, algorithmic transparency will become a competitive differentiator. Brands that can explain to consumers how and why they see certain content will build a trust advantage that is difficult to replicate.

Third, digital education will become part of brand value. Since 2020, Marangon has been involved in outreach, talking about digital platforms, algorithms, and current events, building one of the most followed personal brands on LinkedIn and launching the newsletter Edamame. Brands that help consumers navigate the digital ecosystem consciously will create deeper and more lasting bonds.

A necessary paradigm shift
Sommersi is not a pessimistic book about the digital future, nor a nostalgic manual for a pre-social era that will not return. Instead, it is a call to action for marketing professionals: we can continue to be unwitting accomplices in a system that degrades the human experience, or we can become architects of healthier and more sustainable digital spaces.

The author himself admits to having been obsessed with wanting to understand what was happening every time he opened a social network, starting to write his weekly Edamame newsletter, digging through digital phenomena, psychology, political events, algorithms, and online cultures, always with one question: what is really happening to us?

The real strength of the book lies in its non-binary approach: it neither demonizes technology nor celebrates it uncritically. For marketers, this means accepting complexity instead of looking for simple solutions, building resilient strategies instead of viral ones, creating real value instead of empty metrics.

In an era where what reaches us and the reactions to our posts are manipulated by the very mode of interaction, with emotional perception prevailing over the verification of truth, and by the manipulation of algorithms that distort the proportions of reality by exalting messages that trigger the most reactions, Sommersi offers something precious: awareness. And for marketing professionals, awareness is no longer a philosophical luxury: it is a strategic imperative. Because in an ocean of digital stimuli, only those who can swim survive. And Marangon is teaching us how to do it.

Mattia Marangon, Sommersi. Resistere nell’era delle notifiche e dell’infodemia social (Submerged: Resisting in the era of notifications and social infodemic), Apogeo, 2025, 192 pages, € 20.