I’m reading a couple of books by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier at the moment. The first one is You Are Not a Gadget and the second is Ten Reasons To Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

They’re not the reason why I’m getting off social media as I’ve noticed that once we make up our minds to do something, anything we read or do, basically confirms the trajectory we were already on to make that transformation. It’s a lay down misère.

I know for me, nothing is spontaneous. Everything is pre-planned and calculated from months or years of reflecting about it to the point where I must decide a path ahead from now on and commit to it. That is, you reach that point in your life where you know you need to make a decision that has been building over time. That decision could have good and bad consequences either way but ultimately it means you have to commit to the change. There’s no going backwards from it.

I’ve had major points like this in my life a few times and each time I came out of them transformed for the better. More reflective, more appreciative and with a renewed and deeper understanding of myself.

Opting out of social media is a major decision point. It’s like cutting out that toxic narcissist in your life.

I’ve been reading at the same time, John Boyne’s novel called The Echo Chamber. If Jaron Lanier is espousing the nasties of social media in non-fiction format, Boyne reflects it as fiction format at the same time. You can see my review here.

The point is that both Boyne and Lanier represented the change in behaviours that our devices (well not the devices per se, but the platforms we use) and as you sit and read it, you tend to think of it more objectively – more sensibly – and begin to see that our behaviours using these devices have been made much worse over the years.

The question that still hangs over my head is what to do with my YouTube account? It’s mainly used as a dumping ground of videos and book reviews and I make it quite clear I don’t want subscribers, nor do I want followers but there’s a disconnect between the message and the action.

After all, why even have a YT account? What’s the point of it all? Another thing I’m thinking about is checking the WordPress memory limits and seeing if I can just post all my videos here. In effect, I want to keep all my stuff under my own “platform” that I’m paying for – not on free platforms at the whim of algorithms and advertisers?

So I’ll leave YT for now until I decide what to do with it. Ive captured my entire working life in video form since 2014 (many of which are private now) and it’s nice to go back and watch all the conferences I attended, people I’ve met and experiences I was a part of. They make me happy. So for now, they will stay where they are – for my own consumption.

Update:

So it looks like my Twitter archive is now ready to download. I’m still waiting on the rest of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram which will take 24-48 hours or so they say. Once I get all the archives, check their contents – ill delete them all permanently.