Computer scientist Jaron Lanier says we should avoid social media

Computer scientist Jaron Lanier says we should avoid social media.

He looks like a typical counterculture freak. A hippy. Frightening even. Wrinkled with a sagging eye. Morbidly obese. Dreadlocks like tentacles. A human cuttlefish. Who has morphed into some strange hybrid creature from a VR world. Or the science fiction universe of Dune.

But I believe him in some way. And I warm to him. A delicate and kind soul in this brutish world. The guy is a genius. A sage of the digital age.

I myself came quite late to social media. And to smartphones as well. Was never tempted and sucked in as a first adopter.

Both are indispensable to each other.

Think about it, the evolution of the phone:

Phone - Mobile Phone - Mobile - Smartphone - Phone

So now we have gone from 'phone’ back to 'phone’. In essence.

We don't say ‘mobile’ or ‘smartphone’ anymore. It's just 'phone’. It's taken for granted that your phone is now a portable, high-powered computer in your pocket.

I have a 'phone’. It is a goldmine of information. Especially when linked to location data.

But I don't walk down the road gaping into its screen. Nor do I madly text with my thumb, rapidly tapping my opposable digit like some kind of cyborg or robot. I find those habits strange. Pathetic. Annoying. And I'm not an old man.

Returning to social media.

Twitter is just an angry hive mind. A politicized outrage machine. Force-feeding you with progressive tweets known as 'moments’. Even if you try to avoid the outraged monster's rearing head and follow a curated feed, the 'moments' still appear in front of you, as well as 'trends'.

Because politicized Twitter wants to pull you into the conversation. Into the argument. To create 'engagement'. Buzz. Ultimately money for shareholders. I now avoid it. The constant fighting is just tiring. Exhausting. Boring. Mundane now.

I walked away, leaving the conservatives and the liberals to fight it out like two Godzilla monsters among skyscrapers on a distant horizon.

Instagram is full of horrible, deluded, beautiful, perfect, plastic and insane people. Women in tight jogging pants pouting in front of bathroom mirrors and toilets into their phones. Men with ripped muscles and bulging veins lifting weights in expensive gyms. Maniacs falling off cliffs, waterfalls or skyscrapers and killing themselves. All just to get the ultimate selfie.

But you can still find beautiful, creative content. Curate some lovely feeds. Just avoid the addictive, time wasting feedback loop along with the likes and hashtags. Because nobody cares about your beautiful posts. No matter how awesome. But if you're famous they'll love your mediocre posts.

Facebook is okay for keeping in touch with family and friends. You can curate interesting feeds. 

Just avoid being nasty in public comments as a way of getting attention. It's tempting. And a lure. Don't be fooled. And only friend those people you really know in real life.

I like certain people. But I never liked crowds. And social media is one gargantuan crowd.

I took Jaron's advice to some extent. I no longer engage with the mob on social media.

I'm thinking more. Writing more. Drawing more.

Feel like I've left the prison gates and returned to the real world.

Walking down the road with my small bag of possessions. Billions of prisoners still beyond the walls behind.