There's something zeitgeisty to the book and the reception it got, which is why I keep referencing the Po Bronson speech. Diamond's book an apologia for an entire generation being unreasonable and manipulative, which is noteworthy, just as previous books that captured a zeitgeist.
> Do you want to crusade against bad books?
I don't see that calling a bad book and author bad constitutes crusading; that seems like twisting a straightforward discussion. Instead of trying to impute motives, I think you're just saying "it seems to me futile to object to superficiality, just ignore it", is that right? (Conversely, do you want to crusade against HN posts which you deem to be non-actionable? Presumably you don't either.)
I did also nod towards a wider ongoing discussion about superficiality vs authenticity as pops up in Po Bronson, Chuck Palahniuk, HN [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=superficial], Susan Cain, Haemin Sunim... that took me a couple of sentences, still not a crusade.
Even old-school stuff like "How to Make Friends and Influence People" clearly implies that your behavior in interactions is not some consequence-free zone, the people/organizations on the receiving end of your influencing attempts have memories, and there are social limits on what behavior is too aggressive, greedy, pushy, unreasonable, manipulative.
As well as boosting this sort of manipulative garbage, the NYT also runs articles on customer-service nightmares and dead-end jobs (and (gasp) 'authenticity'), which seems to having your cake and eating it.