Key Messages
The Allure Of Feline Autonomy: Learn How To Avoid Becoming A Dog Online
Have you ever felt like you’re being manipulated at every turn in your online life? Do you worry that you’re losing your autonomy in the digital world? Well fortunately, there is a way to gain back your control.
In the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, author Jaron Lanier explains how people can regain their autonomy online.
He makes an impassioned argument for why it’s so important to delete our social media accounts.
Not only does he discuss why these companies are manipulating us, but also offers practical advice on how to reclaim your online space and privacy.
Lanier talks about how randomness and unpredictability beats reliability when it comes to regaining our autonomy and avoiding dependence on major companies like Google and Facebook.
He goes further by suggesting tricks such as “owning your own data”, thinking outside the box with privacy settings and taking time away from all screens, for re-establishing our own sense of freedom and control online.
If we want to reclaim our autonomy online, start taking action now by hitting ‘delete’!
We Are Being Manipulated Through Social Media’s Algorithmic Cages
The first argument that Jaron Lanier puts forward in his book ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now’ is a compelling one.
He argues that by using algorithms to collect data on our online behavior, social media companies are able to manipulate how we act and think.
They compile this data from our activities, such as when we log in, stay logged in for long stretches of time or the items we purchase.
This data is then collected and analyzed to predict how people with similar behaviors will act, and then used by advertisers to tailor their campaigns for us.
Effectively, this allows these companies to exert a subtle but powerful form of control over our behavior – what we buy and even which candidate we vote for – without us even realizing it.
Furthermore, they do all this while selling your information to advertisers with no regard for your free will.
In short – if you’re concerned about your privacy, autonomy and freedom of thought, then it’s worth considering deleting your social media accounts right now.
Social Media Manipulates Us Through Moderately Unreliable Feedback And Adaptive Algorithms
Social media platforms are often designed with the intent of keeping users engrossed and engaged.
They do this by taking advantage of behaviorist knowledge and incorporating a level of randomness into their feedback systems.
Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, even referred to it as a “social-validation feedback loop” – people are drawn in by this element of unpredictability.
Furthermore, adaptive algorithms which aim to be as engaging as possible often take semi-random leaps to prevent themselves from becoming stuck at certain parameters.
This randomness coupled with psychological feedback make these platforms more addictive than many people realize.
Ultimately, social media’s desire for us to be hooked on them can lead to many people losing touch with reality and becoming addicted to the digital world they immerse themselves in.
This is why some parents in Silicon Valley seem willing to go the extra mile and send their children to Waldorf Schools that forbid electronic use.
No Need For A Digital Detox, Just Stop Using Bummer Services
We all know that social media can be an enjoyable and even powerful tool.
But the flip side of its convenience and influence is a dangerous business model called “BUMMER” – Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent.
BUMMER companies track your online activity, manipulate your behavior, cram personalized content down your throat and sell off your data to whatever advertiser will pay the most – sometimes at risk of exposing you to those with nefarious intentions.
At the core of BUMMER’s model are invasive data collection practices that make it easy for unethical actors to exploit people for profit.
We’ve seen this in recent years with malicious trolls using fake accounts to stir up unrest or campaigns on behalf of oppressive regimes like Russia’s.
Social media has allowed these toxic forces to flourish, giving them access to vast stores of personal information that they’d otherwise never be able to access so quickly.
It’s not enough just to be aware of this danger either; we need to take action and work towards limiting interference from those who would seek only to hurt others.
That means boycotting companies that adhere closely to BUMMER’s framework, such as Facebook and Google, in favor of more responsible services that prioritize user privacy over ad revenue.
It also means making sure our elected officials understand this issue and continue working against those who use technology for malicious purposes.
The Role Of Social Media In Encouraging Asshole Behavior
One of the arguments in Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now is that social media encourages asshole behavior.
This isn’t a new phenomenon; even back when social media was fairly primitive, people tended to act more like assholes when they used it.
On social media, users are often tempted to jostle for status and social recognition, which can lead to toxic behavior.
The author believes that people have a “solitary vs.
pack” switch inside them, but on social media the pack mentality tends to take over.
People become so obsessed with where they fit within a hierarchy that they become condescending and insulting, even over trivial matters like who knows more about piano brands.
Meanwhile, those who are more interested in professional advancement than trying to one-up each other tend to be more civil – as evidenced by the generally less hostile atmosphere on LinkedIn compared to other platforms.
So if you’re looking for an environment that’s free from assholes and trolling-behavior, then it might be best to delete your social media accounts right now before it affects your mindset any further!
How Fake People Are Warping Real-World Decisions In The Bummer Economy
In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Argument 4 is about how social media contributes to the mass production of misinformation.
As we all know, this isn’t a new problem but one that’s gotten worse as more people have access to social media platforms to share their thoughts and ideas.
One example of this comes from companies that profit from “fake-people factories”.
These companies make money by selling fake followers for Twitter accounts for around $225 for 25,000 followers.
This creates an artificial sense of popularity which can influence our judgements and decisions in ways we are not even aware of – especially as these bots often look and act almost identical to real humans.
Fake mobs, clickbait and memes also spread conspiracy theories like those concerning immunization or vaccines which can lead to potentially dangerous health decisions if taken seriously.
Social media makes it even easier for these theories to be shared with large groups of people in an instant – creating a digital echo chamber with little regard for the truth or accuracy.
It is easy to get wrapped up in false information on social media due to confirmation bias, groupthink and other psychological biases that distort our judgement – yet collectively, they can cause serious harms when left unchecked and unquestioned.
Bummer Abuses Context, Rendering Online Culture Shallow And Robbing Us Of Empathy
One of the main arguments in Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is that social media pits people against one another and disrupts our capacity for empathy.
This idea can be felt in the way people engage on social media by trying to ‘one-up’ or ‘stomp out’ others’ stories.
Instead of caring about what someone is trying to express, platforms like BUMMER direct us to focus on numbers such as how many likes, views or followers a user has.
The lack of context makes it harder to understand each other and identify with one another.
Algorithmic customization means we don’t have access to the same common experience that’s vital for understanding how someone else may feel.
When everyone’s personal feeds look different, it becomes impossible to recognize when other people are mad or sad – because there’s no way to know why they’re feeling what they do.
This issues takes away not only our capacity for empathy but also a sense of community as well as culture online, making our online interactions nothing more than shallow and pointless exchanges.
Essentially, without a shared context, conversations shedded from actual connection and become less meaningful than ever before, leaving us feeling frustrated and misunderstood.
How Bummer Companies Prey On Our Insecurities To Keep Us Addicted And Unhappy
It’s easy to forget the true purpose of social media platforms when we’re spending time or when our friends or colleagues are using them.
But the truth is, BUMMER companies, like Facebook and other social media giants, are actually taking advantage of our natural competitive instinct in order to drive profits.
They do this by manipulating our happiness levels – making us feel inadequate and comparing ourselves to everyone else on the platform, setting unreasonably high physical beauty standards and deliberately inciting negative emotions in their users.
Essentially, BUMMER companies rely on negative emotions and competitive behavior as their lifeblood.
Unhappiness is a surefire way to keep people coming back and engaging with them, which in turn allows them to make more money through advertising.
By keeping their users addicted to checking out how many likes they have received and comparing themselves constantly, these companies can twist what was intended as a means of connecting with others into an expensive enterprise where people compete against each other for attention – inevitably leaving one party feeling like a loser.
People Should Be Compensated For Their Data, Not Replaced By Automation
Argument 8 of Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now lays out a concerning reality: social media companies make a huge amount of money from the data and content that users give up for free.
The book explains that BUMMER (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple) tend to rely on users to contribute information through activities like enjoying content or translation.
None of these activities remunerate the user in any way, yet this data is then used by organizations to enhance their products and services.
Even more surprising is the fact that prominent tech giants turned down Ted Nelson’s digital payments model in favour of an advertising-based system back in the 1960s.
This resulted in people being attracted merely by ‘free’ services, unaware that they were relinquishing control over their own contributions.
We now know how much of a data-driven business social media has become, with us unknowingly trading away our privacy and content for nothing more than access to ‘free’ software.
The proposed solution is best summed up as paying a small fee each month for the content we consume- which would likely be met with uproar at first glance.
However, this solution has two major benefits: First, it removes the financial insecurity caused by jobs being replaced through automation; second consumers would also be able to make money from their contributions as part of an equitable system.
Ultimately, only time will tell if users decide a better alternative is worth paying for!
Bummer Reaches The Political Process, Turning Hopeful Movements Into Targetable Demographics
Argument 9: Social media platforms like BUMMER can have a major negative impact on our political sphere.
For starters, these types of platforms tend to favor assholes and lead to an increase in asshole behavior online.
This in turn has encouraged tribalism and animosity among certain demographics who were previously supportive of each other.
For example, prior to the 2016 US presidential election we saw enormous progress in terms of LGBTQ acceptance and rights.
Yet when assholes began targeting these groups with derogatory messages, suddenly it became acceptable to be less tolerant or more irritable towards them than before.
This has had a direct effect on our politics, leading to the election of what the author calls “astonishingly extreme anti-LGBTQ figures” into high public office.
It’s clear that social media can influence politics in a very negative way and until something is done about it, the political process will continue to be hamstrung by its presence.
Bummer Is Killing Our Souls: How Services Like Google And Social Media Are Replacing Our Traditional Spiritual Framework With One That Deprives Us Of Our Personhood
In the final argument of the Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now book, it is argued that using BUMMER services (the moniker used to refer to large tech companies like Google and Facebook) constitutes a new spiritual framework.
This new framework is one where optimization replaces traditional spiritual inquiries such as “Why do we exist? What is life’s purpose? What comes after death?” Rather than these quintessentially human questions, in this framework, optimization becomes the only concern.
By replacing traditional spiritual inquiry with one based on running algorithms and maximizing user engagement metrics, it is argued that the use of BUMMER services renders humans simply algorithmic outputs; identity and individuality – what makes us human – are thrown out of the window entirely.
In a sense then, BUMMER services turn human beings into something hackable.
The ethos of optimization strips away any possibility for an ineffable human experience by making everything quantifyable first-and-foremost; ultimately effecting a loss of our souls in pursuit of search rankings or followers.
Our greatest asset then – our ability to question why we exist and believe fervently in our answers – is at risk from this new spiritual framework: one perpetuated by constantly optimizing data streams instead of finding new meaning every day.
Wrap Up
In final summation, Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now makes a compelling case for why it’s time to take a vacation from BUMMER.
The underlying business model of social media platforms – which sells your data to advertisers and incentivizes asshole behavior – undercuts our sense of economic dignity, hampers the democratic process and erodes human connections.
The best solution is to delete your account until an alternative model emerges.
However, if that feels like a step too far, you can always try taking a break from them altogether – such as two weeks or one month – and see how it helps you.
Doing so may help you realize just how addicted you’ve become to online communication, as well as expose its negative impacts on your life.
