Deleting Social Media Quotes

Go to where you are kindest

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward

To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid … for all these marvelous reasons, delete your accounts.

What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale.

Here’s a non-geeky framing of the same idea: What if listening to an inner voice or heeding a passion for ethics or beauty were to lead to more important work in the long term, even if it measured as less successful in the moment? What if deeply reaching a small number of people matters more than reaching everybody with nothing?

How can you find happiness without authentic self-esteem? How can you be authentic when everything you read, say, or do is being fed into a judgment machine

One of the main reasons to delete your social media accounts is that there isn’t a real choice to move to different social media accounts. Quitting entirely is the only option for change. If you don’t quit, you are not creating the space in which Silicon Valley can act to improve itself.

Your character is the most precious thing about you. Don’t let it degrade.

Memes might seem to amplify what you are saying, but that is always an illusion. You might launch an infectious meme about a political figure, and you might be making a great point, but in the larger picture, you are reinforcing the idea that virality is truth. Your point will be undone by whatever other point is more viral. That is by design. The architects of BUMMER were meme believers.

BUMMER is a machine with six moving parts. Here’s a mnemonic for the six components of the BUMMER machine, in case you ever have to remember them for a test: A is for Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy B is for Butting into everyone’s lives C is for Cramming content down people’s throats D is for Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible E is for Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else F is for Fake mobs and Faker society

With nothing else to seek but attention, ordinary people tend to become assholes, because the biggest assholes get the most attention. This inherent bias toward assholedom flavors the action of all the other parts of the BUMMER machine.

Most users of social media have experienced catfishing (which cats hate), senseless rejection, being belittled or ignored, outright sadism, or all of the above, and worse.

Speaking through social media isn’t really speaking at all. Context is applied to what you say after you say it, for someone else’s purposes and profit.

It might sound like a contradiction at first, but it isn't; collective processes make the best sense when participants are acting as individuals (p48)

We have given up our connection to context. Social media mashes up meaning. Whatever you say will be contextualized and given meaning by the way algorithms, crowds, and crowds of fake people who are actually algorithms mash it up with what other people say.

The changes were dramatic. People who deleted Facebook became happier, more satisfied with their life, and less anxious. The emotional change was equivalent to 25 to 40 percent of the effect of going to therapy—a stunning drop for a four-week break. Four in five said afterward that deactivating had been good for them. Facebook quitters also spent 15 percent less time consuming the news.

The better analogy is paint that contains lead. When it became undeniable that lead was harmful, no one declared that houses should never be painted again. Instead after pressure and legislation, lead-free paints became the new standard. Smart people simply waited to buy paint until there was a safe version on sale. Similarly, smart people should delete their accounts until nontoxic varieties are available.

As a Twitter addict, Trump has changed. He displays the snowflake pattern and sometimes loses control. He is not acting like the most powerful person in the world, because his addiction is more powerful. Whatever else he might be, whatever kind of victimizer, he is also a victim.

Trump supporters seem nuts to me, and they say liberals seem nuts to them. But it’s wrong to say we’ve grown apart and can’t understand each other. What’s really going on is that we see less than ever before of what others are seeing, so we have less opportunity to understand each other.

Checking is not a useful thing. It might be a verb, but it’s not a real action. When I started blogging, I always checked my stats for no reason. Then I thought: What’s the outcome of checking? Nothing. You just consume information. I try to keep my “checking” at a minimum. That’s why I deleted all news and social media apps on my phone. I don’t even have email on my phone. Otherwise, I check it all the time. I don’t want that. I only want to check my email when I have time to answer emails.

If we want something different to happen, then the way money is earned has to change.

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.

If you aren’t part of the solution, there will be no solution.

Empathy2 is the fuel that runs a decent society. Without it, only dry rules and competitions for power are left.

The inability to carve out a space in which to invent oneself without constant judgment; that is what makes me unhappy.

The damage to society comes because addiction makes people crazy. The addict gradually loses touch with the real world and real people.

And then I delete it and replace it with that fucking crying-laughing face that old people use when they’re being racist on social media.

This book will argue that the companies on their own can’t do enough to glue the world back together.

Facebook is not just injurious to health, it's now a full-on humanitarian crisis.

Each of us has an inner troll.

Either there’s a total shitstorm of assholes (that’s not a mixed metaphor, right?) or everyone is super careful and artificially nice.

Our early libertarian idealism resulted in gargantuan, global data monopsonies.

What if deeply reaching a small number of people matters more than reaching everybody with nothing? (p68)

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.

The imbalanced power relationship is in your face all the time. Don’t you feel humiliated using one of the Facebook brands, like Instagram or WhatsApp? Facebook is the first public company controlled by one person.32 I mean, I don’t personally have anything against Mark Zuckerberg. It isn’t about him. But why would you subordinate a big part of your life to any one stranger?

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward. The relative ease of using negative emotions for the purposes of addiction and manipulation makes it relatively easier to achieve undignified results. An unfortunate combination of biology and math favors degradation of the human world. Information warfare units sway elections, hate groups recruit, and nihilists get amazing bang for the buck when they try to bring society down. The unplanned nature of the transformation from advertising to direct behavior modification caused an explosive amplification of negativity in human affairs.

I’d deleted my social media accounts after deciding not to go back to school, partially because I knew I’d spend the rest of my life creeping on her and partially because what the hell would I post that mattered?

Usually Google has had a way of coming up with the creepier statements, but Facebook has pulled ahead: A recent revision in its statement of purpose includes directives like assuring that “every single person has a sense of purpose and community.”5 A single company is going to see to it that every single person has a purpose, because it presumes that was lacking before. If that is not a new religion, I don’t know what is.

Nuestra incapacidad para preservar un espacio en el cual inventarnos a nosotros mismos ajenos a la evaluación constante, eso es lo que me hace infeliz. ¿Cómo podemos tener autoestima cuando ha dejado de ser el tipo de estima que más importa?

There is no room for sentiment. Everything must go to enable you to combat this manipulative technique. Photographs. Burn all of the photographs that I appear in. Remove them from all social media, mobile phones, PCs, laptops and tablets. Yes, you may look fantastic in that picture with me (I am sure you can alter it so you are preserved and I am not). As you remove the pictures say “I delete you (say my name)” and this process of exorcising me from a visual part of your life will feel uplifting. All gifts, mementos, cards, letters and those little trinkets that we so often send one another must be removed. Burn them, shred them and dispose of them. Where possible, sell certain items and you will gain increased satisfaction from having made some money out of it too. Do

It might sound like a contradiction at first, but it isn’t; collective processes make the best sense when participants are acting as individuals. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle670-671). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

Cats are everywhere online. They make the memiest memes and the cutest videos. Why cats more than dogs?1 Dogs didn’t come to ancient humans begging to live with us; we domesticated them.2 They’ve been bred to be obedient. They take to training and they are predictable. They work for us. That’s not to say anything against dogs.3 It’s great that they’re loyal and dependable. Cats are different. They came along and partly domesticated themselves. They are not predictable. Popular dog videos tend to show off training, while the most wildly popular cat videos are the ones that capture weird and surprising behaviors.

AI is a fantasy, nothing but a story we tell about our code. It is also a cover for sloppy engineering. Making a supposed AI program that customizes a feed is less work than creating a great user interface that allows users to probe and improve what they see on their own terms—and that is so because AI has no objective criteria for success.

The foundation of the search for truth must be the ability to notice one’s own ignorance. Acknowledging ignorance is a beautiful feature that science and spirituality hold in common. BUMMER rejects it. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle1755-1757). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

The problem isn’t any particular technology, but the use of technology to manipulate people, to concentrate power in a way that is so nuts and creepy that it becomes a threat to the survival of civilization. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle528-529). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

If you want to be a real person living in the real world, the first thing you must do is get off the grid. Take the first brave step and delete your Facebook profile. After all, you surely wouldn’t want the words carved on your headstone to be: “I was registered with Facebook. I had 101 online friends (and I even knew a few of them). My current mood is: Sad.

You might not have thought about Google’s worldview or mission, but you buy into it when you optimize your presence to rank high in search or optimize your video for views. The purpose of your life is now to optimize. You have been baptized. 4 Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Posición en Kindle1769-1771). Henry Holt and Co.. Edición de Kindle.

A neon-pink 3 flickered and instantly disappeared again into the dark. The sight of it on my own device now made me sick. I held my finger down on the menu screen; each little app logo began to vibrate. I deleted the 3. I contemplated deleting everything. Cleaning it all away. The idea had a charm, a self-cancellation, many little suicides, a way to dispatch myself without actually going anywhere.

When you are a solitary wolf, you are forced to get directly in touch with the larger reality that doesn’t care about what a society thinks. You must find water and shelter, or you will perish. You have to scavenge and hunt for yourself. Your personality shifts; you must solve problems on the basis of evidence you gather on your own, instead of by paying attention to group perception. You take on the qualities of a scientist or an artist.

Facebook Sonnet Facebook is not just injurious to health, It's now a full-on humanitarian crisis. If you think it's just a harmless bad habit, You're fanning the flames of social necrosis. Social media ought to make people social, Not make pavlov's dogs out of humanity. Yet all that facebook actually does today, Is drive society towards clinical insanity. Social media is not necessarily bad, So long as it doesn't feed on our stability. Yet facebook has devised the perfect algorithm, To learn, pump and monetize human instability. Facebook is the definition of what AI must be not. Algorithm without humanity is mental holocaust.

Common Use Cases for Buy Old Gmail Accounts in 2025 ✅➤WhatsApp:+1 (928) 4065180 ✅➤Telegram: @usaoldsmm1 In 2025, the demand to buy old Gmail accounts continues to grow across various industries. These accounts offer more stability, higher trust scores in Google’s ecosystem, and greater flexibility for digital operations. Users from different sectors prefer older accounts because they help reduce the chances of verification issues, flagging, or account bans — especially in a time when Google’s security protocols have become more advanced. One of the most common use cases is in email marketing. Aged Gmail accounts have better inbox placement rates, making them ideal for cold outreach, newsletter distribution, and automation campaigns. New Gmail accounts often face strict sending limits and spam filters, while older ones tend to bypass these restrictions with ease. Another major application is in YouTube channel creation and monetization. Users creating multiple YouTube channels, especially for affiliate marketing or niche content creation, rely on old Gmail accounts to speed up the process. These accounts are less likely to be flagged when uploading content, commenting, or connecting to monetization tools like AdSense. In the SEO industry, old Gmail accounts are frequently used to register and verify accounts on web 2.0 sites, forums, directories, and backlink platforms. Because these platforms often require email confirmation, using a trusted aged Gmail account ensures better indexing and a reduced risk of bans or deletions. Social media automation is another growing use case. Users who manage multiple profiles on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn often use old Gmail accounts to create and maintain these identities. This is especially useful for digital agencies or marketers running campaigns at scale. Lastly, app developers and testers often use aged Gmail accounts to test user flows, submit reviews, or sign up for Google Play services. These accounts help simulate real-world activity without risking their main accounts being flagged or limited.

we love dogs, we don’t want to be dogs, at least in terms of power relationships with people, and we’re afraid Facebook and the like are turning us into dogs.

Delete your social media. It is the best thing you can ever do for your mental health.

This book is about how to be a cat. How can you remain autonomous in a world where you are under constant surveillance and are constantly prodded by algorithms

Mirza Masroor is not the Present Khalifa Of Islam He is only a cozener of a fake Religion --- Misusing of the internet and Google Search has become a beneficial tool for fake ones, and even such ones neither fall in international jurisdiction nor considered dangerous that damage others' values and realities. It is a collapse of the truth in the mirror and the context of the minorities' right to freedom, which is under the process of falsehood in all its directions and dimensions. The fake Messiah, or Jesus Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani and his all fake khalifas fooled Christianity and Islam, and they continuously practice on this false claim of the prophetic mission. Wikipedia, the unreliable and untrusty encyclopedia, facilitates the way of command to a minority of the fake prophet upon a clear majority of Muslims and Christians. The followers of a fake Hindustani Jesus Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani entered world media and websites such as Wikipedia to publicize their wrong and false mission. Qadiyanis are doubtlessly termites of religion, who have challenged, not only Islam but factually, also Christianity with the creation of fake Jesus. Virtually, I have been the victim of Qadiyanis during my contribution to the Wiki-project to maintain standards and neutrality of it; thereupon, a gang of Qadiyanis succeeded that I left Wikipedia, and they, with the collaboration of my opponent ones, also managed to delete my article in Wikipedia. Not only that, but they also tried hard to eliminate me from the net-world, but thanks to Google Search, which significantly displayed Ehsan Sehgal more than that it was. Consequently, they stayed humiliated with their actions of bad-faith. These days on social media, a non-Muslim, non-Christian; however, self-made and self-claimed, Mr. Miraza Masroor Ahmad is in Google Search as Present Khalifa Of Islam, which is indeed not only incorrect only; it is a shameless and false claim for provoking the real Muslims. As a fact, Qadiyanis are neither Muslim nor Christian; they are just grifters and cozeners. Qadiyanis know that they deliberately victimize Muslims theoretically to become practically victimizers, for achieving empathy and sympathy from Westerners stupids and idiots, who have even not a little knowledge and study about Islam and Christianity, except media discriminations and wrong interpretations with the ill-mental context.

Even when the readers are real, not fake, algorithms are routing them to particular content, so their choices aren’t really independent. The measurements aren’t valid, by definition. You can’t tell someone where to go and then claim that you discovered something new because you learned where that person went. This is yet another ubiquitous problem that’s as hard to see as air.

The foundation of the search for truth must be the ability to notice one’s own ignorance. Acknowledging ignorance is a beautiful feature that science and spirituality hold in common. BUMMER rejects it.

The core process that allows social media to make money and that also does the damage to society is behavior modification. Behavior modification entails methodical techniques that change behavioral patterns in animals and people. It can be used to treat addictions, but it can also be used to create them.

Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent”?

When writers become less motivated by the desire to reach people directly, but instead must appeal to a not necessarily reliable number-dispensing system, then writers are losing their connection to their context. The more successful a writer is in this system, the less she knows what she's writing.

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward. The relative ease of using negative emotions for the purposes of addiction and manipulation makes it relatively easier to achieve undignified results. An unfortunate combination of biology and math favors degradation of the human world. Information warfare units sway elections, hate groups recruit, and nihilists get amazing bang for the buck when they try to bring society down.

As I turn on my computer: Come to Me, I want to connect with you. As I make a phone call to talk through my stress with a friend: Call on Me! As I scroll through Facebook: Don’t follow them, follow Me. As I open up Instagram: Come to Me, open up to Me. As I binge watch another late-night TV show: Come. To. Me. As I start a text, complaining to a friend about my day: Delete that; don’t complain to her, come to Me. As I link over to Amazon Prime for a little retail therapy: Come to Me, I’m a Wonderful Counselor. As I run in to Starbucks for something sweet: My words are sweet as honey. Come to me. As I turn to comfort food: Come to Me, I’m the Great Comforter.

You commit a crime if you support and collaborate with hired members of the criminal intelligence agencies who approach you to eliminate the truth. Sure, you also perpetrate and exploit the rules in an unfair context; indeed, it obtains a desired outcome that victimizes the victim.” “As a human, I love and respect all people; I fight for others’ rights as an advocate of humanity; and I also bring to justice those who commit crimes and misdeeds, regardless of distinctions, even if I face the consequences and victimization. Despite that, I never hesitate to exercise and practice it, feeling and learning that if death is everyone’s fate and destiny, then why not accept it in such a glorious way?” After being victimized by fake accounts of Rumi and the son of a shit, Sa Sha, on social media, I blocked them. However, they cannot escape from the inhuman crimes that they have been committing on social media while living in a civilized society. He, the son of a snake, and she, the shit of a snake, disappeared, working together to victimize me for many years with the consent of criminal intelligence agencies and Qadiyanis, the followers of a fake religion of a fake Jesus. More than a decade ago, their profiles started with fake names; behind that were a top cheater, criminal, inhuman, sadist, pretender, and worse than a beast, with the conspiracy of other criminals. However, I became the victim of those criminals and inhuman nature who succeeded in putting me on the death list. In 2020, the criminal’s chief and his gang from Canada, Germany, the USA, Australia, the Netherlands, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and around the world, along with other criminals, succeeded in deleting an article on me on Wikipedia and sending abusive, insulting, and discriminating emails to my immediate family. They remained in their criminal ways to defame and damage me, but they significantly failed and faced the penalty for their wrong deeds by God and the law of the world. Despite that, they reached their mental match once to further victimize me; this time, they were directly on my social media, but through their team of evil-minded people to victimize, harass, threaten, and damage my writings, label restrictions, and lock my account every time. Read this underlined link in detail. As a result, I became compulsive enough to deactivate my profile on Twitter to stay away from all such scoundrels. Alas, deactivated Twitter account will automatically become deleted forever after thirty days; consequently, I will lose more than one hundred thousand tweets and my post data because of Elon Musk and his dastard team, who support the political mafia and forced me to remove a screenshot of a Wikipedia article that was illegitimately removed as they harassed me by tagging, restricting, and locking my account and asking my ID card to transfer my privacy to third parties of political criminals and to make my opponents happy. It is a crime to restrict freedom of expression through such tactics under the umbrella of community behaviour.

Mi descontento está relacionado con todas las razones vistas hasta ahora, porque Incordio me sitúa en una posición subordinada: es estructuralmente humillante. Lo que me molesta no es un determinado patrón de superficie - como ver que todo el mundo ofrece una visión distorsionada de su vida para hacer creer que es más adinerada, feliz y apacible de lo que es en realidad- sino el núcleo del sistema incordio. Estar enganchado y notar que me manipulan me hace sentir mal, pero eso no es todo. Incordio hace que me sienta juzgado como parte de una competición injusta y degradante, sin ningún propósito que pueda justificarlo.

¿Y si conectar a un nivel profundo con un grupo reducido de personas fuese más importante que llegar a todo el mundo de la manera más superficial?

Prohibitions are engines of corruption that split societies into official and criminal sectors.

Awareness is the first step to freedom.

Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Wikipedia --- * If you are jobless, you do not have the proper ability, even if you can’t get a cleaning job, join Wikipedia, or become an editor. You may knock all the educated figures, lawyers, professional journalists, academics, and specialists of the various subjects down by the Wikipedia rules and policies that contradict each other. You have a useful weapon, which is called consensus. Your friends can support you in winning all disputes. You can change from wrong to right and right to wrong. You can decide the reliability and assessment of subjects; however, no matter whether you qualify for that or not, you have multiple tools for harassing others. That means Wikipedia. * The duffer’s heaven is Wikipedia, where academic ones are the house arrested and used for their shelter of qualification. * Wikipedia is the best place for poor grammar. * If one desires to explore the unique idiots and fools, Wikipedia has that and such a place. * The scholarly world rejects Wikipedia as a reliable website because most of the world’s silly clowns contribute their ignorance within the garbage of Wiki-Rules, which also, indeed, contradict each other. * You cannot delete this, whether with due or undue weight. It is social media, not Wikipedia. * One cannot trust Wikipedia since its articles have minute or continual variant content in all subjects, which demonstrates a lack of qualification and vision. One may find the most authentic and reliable articles on websites that even have no editorial board. * Notability cannot prevail in any subject’s reality. * Virtually, Wikipedia rules are not the law of the judiciary, approved by the majority of the parliament that applied accurately and precisely within its context. Conversely, Wikipedian rules, in other words, tools are only garbage of the frustrated and ignorant heads, which support the blackmailers for blackmailing and comfort for its founding architecture, and also fools who have to execute nothing other than fighting, wasting time. Consequently, every second Wikipedia, having no established and qualified paid editorial board, stays as an encyclopedia of Idiots-Pedia. Thus, it endorses itself as unreliable and untrustworthy an ordinary website, where educationally-unmatured children contribute and decide one’s notability, alongside ignorant ones as well.

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Snapchat has a lot less social pressure attached to it compared to every other popular social media network out there. This is what makes it so addicting and liberating. If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it. Snapchat isn't like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you.

And in December of that year –five months later –The Guardian reported they’d got it wrong. The messages had been deleted, but it was probably done automatically by the mobile network after a set time, and possibly even as a result of the police listening to the messages as part of the missing person investigation. No one gave a toss, of course. That’s always what happens after a lynch mob –those who took part walk away, whistling, and don’t bother to clean up the mess they leave behind. All people remember is they were JUST APPALLED about THAT THING the details of which they CAN’T QUITE REMEMBER.

you need to know the Life Cycle Of A Lynch Mob: 1. Someone says something bad. 2. Someone else notices. 3. The second person broadcasts the offence. 4. Each of the people who hear the news spreads it again, allowing the original offence to multiply like bacteria on a body dumped in a cesspit. The lynch mob is named Something Must Be Done, and attracts people who are more offensive than the first offender. 5. The original offence is magnified by a factor of 50 GAZILLION and the lynch mob achieves critical mass. 6. The originator of the bad thing says sorry. 7. Half of the offended people say, ‘Well, don’t do it again.’ The other half scream, ‘IT’S TOO LATE NOW!’ 8. The originator of the bad thing deletes account, falls on sword, makes charitable donation, or commits suicide. 9. Most people grumble but decide enough’s enough. 10. 84 people are still offended and will be forever.

I am conscious. I have faith that you are also conscious.

You cannot delete this, whether, with due or undue weight. It is social media, not the Wikipedia.

Everyone always wonders when the end really is. How do we know when the right time is to say goodbye, the right time to walk away, the right time to let it all go. I don’t know if there really is a definition of ‘end’ when it comes to emotion. Is the end when the communication stops, or is it when you remove the photographs from the frames? Maybe the end is when you delete the person that you once stalked on a daily basis from every opportune social media site? Or maybe the end is when you’re more in love with the memories than you are with the person themselves.

Autocorrect: making Twitter pedants delete and re-tweet since 2007.

We need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.… It’s a social-validation feedback loop

Statistics are reliable, but only as idiot demons.

we notice one another’s reactions in order to help us each get our own bearings. If everyone around you is nervous about something, you will get nervous, too, because something must be going on. When everyone is relaxed, you’ll tend to relax.

A wonderful way to notice social perception is to travel to a country where you don’t speak the language. You’ll find that you are suddenly very attuned to what other people are doing and what they are paying attention to, because that’s the only way to know what’s going on.

And yet science reveals1 the2 truth.3 Research4 shows a world that is not more connected,5 but instead suffers from a heightened sense of isolation.6 The pattern7 has become so clear8 that even research published by social media companies shows how they make you sad. Facebook researchers have practically bragged9 that they could make people unhappy without the people realizing why.10

social media companies talk about this problem is that they’ll say, “Sure we make you sad, but we do more good in the world than harm.” But then the good things they brag about are all things that are intrinsic to the internet, that could—so far as we know—be had without the bad stuff, without BUMMER. Yes, of course it’s great that people can be connected,12 but why must they accept manipulation by a third party as the price of that connection? What if the manipulation, not the connection, is the real problem?13

It takes longer to build trust than to lose trust.

But the benefits of networks only appear when people use the same platform.

The more specifically we can draw a line around a problem, the more solvable that problem becomes.

When people are locked in a competitive, hierarchical power structure, as in a corporation, they can lose sight of the reality of what they’re doing because the immediate power struggle looms larger than reality itself.

It’s hard to quit a particular social network and go to a different one, because everyone you know is already on the first one.

Addiction is associated with anhedonia, the lessened ability to take pleasure from life apart from whatever one is addicted to, and social media addicts appear to be prone to long-term anhedonia.

The software that matters most is the most hidden, the least revealed.

The term “engagement” is part of the familiar, sanitized language that hides how stupid a machine we have built. We must start using terms like “addiction” and “behavior modification.” Here’s another example of sanitized language: We still call the customers of social media companies “advertisers”—and, to be fair, many of them are. They want you to buy a particular brand of soap or something. But they might also be nasty, hidden creeps who want to undermine democracy. So I prefer to call this class of person a manipulator.

the problem isn’t behavior modification in itself. The problem is relentless, robotic, ultimately meaningless behavior modification in the service of unseen manipulators and uncaring algorithms.

Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent”? BUMMER.

Here’s Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice president of user growth at Facebook: The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.… No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem—this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.… I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds—even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences. I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of, we kind of knew something bad could happen.… So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.2

Let’s suppose an algorithm is showing you an opportunity to buy socks or stocks about five seconds after you see a cat video that makes you happy. An adaptive algorithm will occasionally perform an automatic test to find out what happens if the interval is changed to, say, four and a half seconds. Did that make you more likely to buy? If so, that timing adjustment might be applied not only to your future feed, but to the feeds of thousands of other people who seem correlated with you because of anything from color preferences to driving patterns.

Because the stimuli from the algorithm don’t mean anything, because they genuinely are random, the brain isn’t adapting to anything real, but to a fiction. That process—of becoming hooked on an elusive mirage—is addiction. As the algorithm tries to escape a rut, the human mind becomes stuck in one.

Because the stimuli from the algorithm don’t mean anything, because they genuinely are random, the brain isn’t adapting to anything real, but to a fiction. That process—of becoming hooked on an elusive mirage—is addiction.

Similarly, a BUMMER addict eventually becomes preternaturally quick to take offense, as if hoping to get into a spat. Addicts also become aggressive, though they feel they are acting out of necessity. The choice is to victimize or be a victim.

Watch a cat circus online, and what’s so touching is that the cats are clearly making their own minds up about whether to do a trick they’ve learned, or to do nothing, or to wander into the audience.

The obvious example is that the BUMMER-addicted U.S. president, the social media addict-in-chief, turns everything into a contest over who can destroy someone else most completely with a tweet, or else who gets good treatment in exchange for total loyalty.

The poorest snowflake of them all, however, is Donald Trump, who exhibits the same behavior. I met him a few times over several decades, and I didn’t like him, but he wasn’t a BUMMER addict back then. He was a New York City character, a manipulator, an actor, a master at working the calculus of chums and outcasts. But as a character he was in on his own joke. Even reality TV didn’t really make him lose it. As a Twitter addict, Trump has changed. He displays the snowflake pattern and sometimes loses control. He is not acting like the most powerful person in the world, because his addiction is more powerful. Whatever else he might be, whatever kind of victimizer, he is also a victim.