I agree with the writer on principle (yes leaving social media is good for you), but I’m not sure are these AI quotes to suppose to be just some cruel joke on any academic rigour? This type of vibe academia artsy nonsense serves no purpose and is just pseudo-intellectual clutter. Please just stop. Get a job at a gas station or something.

The author doesn’t discuss any of the particulars.

I once pondered why Apple wouldn't distribute their iPhone updates peer-to-peer and got multiple network engineers far more knowledgeable than me discussing why that would be a bad idea.

It was fun and genuinely social. My following on what is now X has halved in number after the Musk acquisition, but cut far deeper in reality. When I do find myself compelled to post on X, I have two former colleagues that heart and occasionally reply. This is the extent of the interactions I have on the platform.

I created an account on Bluesky account but in my several years of largely shadowing my X posts on Bluesky I've amassed all of twenty followers.

Talking to a friend about it, I was basically told I was doing social media wrong. No one cares about "dude wonders about tech" posts anymore. Fine I guess. I never really sought a following, it just kind of happened.

X in particular I find only really boosts big creators, whatever Twitters discovery algorithm was where I would find interesting posts by people with a couple followers is long gone.

Instagram and Facebook, once places I'd reserved for friends are now just ghost towns trying to fake life with AI slop.

I miss social media, I miss having genuinely deep discussions with people I did not know over shared interests. None of the current providers seem interested in providing an outlet for this.

I feel I suspect a similar grief over not being perceived as the author, but it wasn't really of my choosing.

I can run circles around everyone in any social gathering, and life in general, because I live in reality, where they live in a simulacra.

Of course, I don't openly brag (except here) about no longer being a node on the fear-grid; no longer behaviorally-programmed by salaryman-psychologists at Facebook, Apple, Google, and the other major state-adjacent surveillance companies.

Instead, I watch society from an anthropological perspective; with a calm detachment. Listening with quiet amusement to the smart-phone-people as they decant paraphrased versions of whatever madness they were told to believe that day by their 'feeds'.

There are now two new classes in society: Delineated by those who carry smartphones, and those who remain conscious. Those who are lost in the map versus those who still see the territory.