James Acaster’s Guide to Quitting Social Media, by James Acaster

I’d definitely only recommend this book to someone who was already a fan of comedian James Acaster, but even then, I think I would ask you, “Which James Acaster are you a fan of?” Do you like his quirky, far-fetched stories that begin by sounding like they might be drawn from real life but quickly spin off into absurdist humour, as in his book James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes (2017) and his Netflix series Repertoire (2018)? Or did you prefer the tragicomic searing honesty of his book Perfect Sound Whatever and his stand-up show Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 (both 2019), in which he turned his own very real struggles with mental health into revealing comedy and biting satire? Because your expectations of what you’re getting in a James Acaster book are going to depend a lot on your answers to that question.

Having enjoyed all of Acaster’s previous work, I definitely enjoyed the more recent stand-up special the most and felt like he was on a trajectory from the whimsical absurdity of his early work to the darker, more autobiographical material in his later work. I knew he actually had quit most if not all social media within the past few years, and with book I was expecting — yes, some quirky absurdist humour in the form of a self-help book, for sure, but threaded through with material drawn from the comedian’s real life experiences of being on, and then off, social media. It felt like writing about social media in 2022 would be a natural continuation from talking about having a mental breakdown in 2019, and I was expecting this book to be funny and twisted but also dark and revealing, a further step into the territory explored in Cold Lasagne.

This … is not that.

It’s also not a genuine self-help book about how to quit social media, although honestly, if that part wasn’t obvious from the title, the cover, and everything about the book, you probably are not prepared for James Acaster’s comedy and you should just back away slowly and go find something that’s more your style (comedy being so wildly subjective and all).

James Acaster’s Guide to Quitting Social Media returns to the wacky, offbeat spirit of the Netflix specials, in which Acaster writes in first person as a character who is … well, named James Acaster, but a sort of parallel-universe James Acaster. who deals with his addiction to social media by painting over the screens of all his devices with tar and leaving them in a storage locker in a small town in Wales, then returns to London to live in a castle with a bizarre band of misfits who are similarly devoted to the internet-free lifestyle. It’s absolutely bonkers, and lots of fun, as long as you weren’t relying on this book to actually teach you anything about quitting social media.