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After a short while, I noticed that I’d write things I didn’t even believe in order to get a rise out of readers. I wrote stuff that I knew people wanted to hear, or the opposite, because I knew it would be inflammatory. Oh my God! I was back in that same place, becoming an asshole because of something about this stupid technology! I quit—again. Of all the ten arguments in this book, this is the one that really gets to me viscerally. I don’t want to be an asshole. Or a fake-nice person. I want to be authentically nice, and certain online designs seem to fight against that with magical force. That’s the core reason why I don’t have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp,2 Instagram, Snapchat, or any of the rest. You’ll see fake accounts in my name. There’s even a supposed @RealJaronLanier on Twitter. But I have no idea who that is. Not me. I don’t think I’m better than you because I don’t have social media accounts. Maybe I’m worse; maybe you can handle the stuff better than I can.
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