Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

No one ever knows exactly how what they’re saying will be received, but in non-BUMMER situations you usually have reasonable guesses. I speak in public sometimes, and I instinctively adjust my presentation to an audience. I say different things to high school students than I do to a room full of quants.4 This is just a normal part of communication. 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. This changes what can be expressed. When context is surrendered to the platform, communication and culture become petty, shallow, and predictable. You have to become crazy extreme if you want to say something that will survive even briefly in an unpredictable context. Only asshole communication can achieve that.