We’re Sorry to See You Go: How to Escape All Social Media Forever
I’ve been social media free for a few months now. The psychological benefit is greater than I ever imagined. It feels like real life is back. I don’t suffer the constant nagging drag of a mind in two places. I highly recommend it.
You already know why you should delete your social media accounts. At best it’s a waste of your time. But maybe the threats to democracy and life and free will also get you down.
Here’s how to do it. The following links go to the official support pages for each platform, so hopefully these instructions will be valid in perpetuity.
Delete your Facebook account (just remember to download your photographs first and check that you definitely have your elderly relatives’ phone numbers)
Deactivate Twitter (after maybe sending a few DMs to swap email addresses with people you met there before the enshittening took place)
Delete Instagram (because it may look friendly but it’s owned by Facebook)
Delete WhatsApp (it’s stupid and insidious and also owned by Facebook. Group chat might look convenient but email has been capable of the same thing for decades; if you have a webmail app you’re even still using the same device so the convenience is an illusion. Don’t be strongarmed by cunts volunteer platform evangelists)
Delete Snapchat (unless, of course, you’re 12 or a flasher. No wait, then you really should delete Snapchat!)
Delete TikTok (it’s worth nothing to you and everything to Xi)
Delete Pinterest (fetch will never happen)
Delete LinkedIn (I briefly had a soft spot for the squarest space of all and even Jaron Lanier says it’s a friendly option, but it’s turning to shit anyway)
Delete Reddit (don’t worry, you’ll still see it constantly thanks to its increasingly high place in Google rankings)
Speaking of which, you could always make DuckDuckGo your default search engine instead of Google and Brave your browser instead of Chrome. Here’s how to export and re-import your passwords if you do the latter.
Hypocrite’s Corner
Delete Substack (I haven’t done this yet because the platform is good and has helped me to grow my audience. I like how it prioritises longform writing instead of social media nuggets. I am yet to find a good non-corporate alternative. This, of course, might change.)
Migrate from Gmail to Proton Mail (I haven’t done this because Proton Mail is too expensive for me and I don’t like its search functionality, but it’s a good move if those things aren’t a problem for you)
Delete Tumblr (I share an account with my wife and it’s strictly ‘write only,’ a place to store photographs for free. It’s owned by Automattic who I’ve long seen as good guys of the Internet but there may be trouble ahead) May 2026 Update: I deleted Tumblr!
Each time you escape a platform, turn back briefly to say this:
Letter to the Editor: To Make The Trap Seem Inevitable
To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version.
Reader B writes:
I purchased a used copy of Escape Everything! and am devouring it. It’s remarkable how much I can read once my time and attention are not being sucked into The Trap.
I have also ordered copies for my parents — for them to acquire the understanding and vocabulary your work establishes — and for my classmate who is taking a “mini-retirement,” and whom I think would really be guided by your writing.
May I ask a question that you are uniquely able to answer, as both the editor and a former librarian? From page 92 of your book: “An Escapologist is a person who has become aware of The Trap, who has considered its mechanisms, and has resolved to escape.”
You acknowledge that most people are unaware of The Trap, but does your work analise the mechanisms through which The Trap keeps itself obscure? I found a partial answer on page 154: “The reason so many people think they need to work full-time is because of the staggering number of obligations they have: television licenses and/or satellite television packages need to be paid for, as do cars; home entertainment;…
This makes sense, but surely there are other strategies the ruling class uses to make The Trap seem inevitable — like school curricula and Hollywood — that normalise the consumer economy. But what else do you see that keeps The Trap so undetectable?
I suffered for decades from what I believe is toxic indoctrination first in the Northeast USA and then in a multinational professional services firm, and had to overcome resistance before I even knew to seek out works such as The Idler and the New Escapologist. My goal right now is to better understand how The Good Life was hidden from me to find any remaining “manacles” that still limit my thinking.)
Admiringly yours,
B
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Wow, what an email. Your question, alas, is huge and all-encompassing. The Trap captures us as soon as we plop out of our mums. I remember a “Tom the Dancing Bug” comic from about 2002 (I tried to find it today but couldn’t) depicting a baby with a barcode on their forehead and someone off-screen saying “don’t worry, little consumer, we’ve got it all planned out for you.”
You mention school. Yes, that is one way. They say school is there to prepare us for life and yet most of it is algebra and gym class and oxbow lakes and all manner of nonsense that will never come up again. It’s a very surreal place really. We aren’t generally taught how to cook, to change a lightbulb, to respect our lovers, to balance a household budget. Whether its by design or simply how it has gradually evolved, school basically gets us used to the idea of sitting still, doing what we’re told, and not thinking about whether this experience makes a blind bit of sense. Just like at work!
I suppose television is another thing. Ever since starting the magazine, I’ve suggested people don’t bother with TV. Read books instead. You’re more likely to come across a plurality of ideas in books than on TV, which (high-quality dramas, comedy and documentary aside) tends to parrot the usual old shit without question.
Social media obviously. Much has been written about that and how it establishes and distorts norms. Supermarkets because they present a limited choice and too many tempting ultra-processed foods that are bad for you. Toxic masculinity. Advertising. Certain phrases in language (“there is no alternative,” “it can’t be done”) that people parrot unthinkingly. Urgh. The list goes on.
It’s best not to get paranoid about this stuff though. Escape it the best you can, look into (or invent) the alternatives, and move on.
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The World Seen Through Social Media Isn’t Real
Following our practical post about escaping social media once and for all, a couple of people emailed to say they can’t quit social media because of reasons.
So don’t. I’m not telling you what to do, honestly. I’m inviting you to think about it and, if you want to, to gradually and calmly, piece by piece, extract yourself from the tangle in which you’ve found yourself. They kidnapped your time and attention gradually and calmly, piece by piece. That’s the way to leave too. You won’t regret it.
If you need extra strength to go against the grain, I find the following quote from Jaron Lanier very powerful. It’s almost like a mantra to me now. I carry it around in a backroom of my brain and I summon it whenever I idly think about re-joining social media to see how some kid from school looks like now or because there’s something for me to promote. Sorry, here’s Lanier:
You, you, you have the affirmative responsibility to invent and demonstrate ways to live without the crap that is destroying society.
I know it’s hard to swim against the tide when you have limited time and money and reach. But it’s important to do it anyway. The rich and powerful certainly manage it. In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell writes:
while seemingly every kid in a restaurant is watching bizarre, algorithmically determined children’s content on YouTube, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both severely limited their children’s use of technology at home. As Paul Lewis reported for The Guardian, Justin Rosenstein, the Facebook engineer who created the “like” button, had a parental control feature set up on his phone by an assistant to keep him from downloading apps. Loren Brichter, the engineer who invented the “pull to refresh” feature of Twitter feeds regards his invention with penitence: “pull-to-refresh is addictive. Twitter is addictive. These are not good things. When I was working on them, it was not something I was mature enough to think about. In the meantime he has “put his design work on the back burner while he focusses on building a house in New Jersey.” Without personal assistants to commandeer our phones, the rest of us keep on pulling to refresh, while overworked single parents juggling work and sanity find it necessary to stick iPads in front of their kids’ faces.
And here’s an additional thought that’s been rolling around in my head lately: the world seen through social media isn’t real. Zuckerberg might not know it but the Metaverse has been here for ages.
I recently started listening to the second series of Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart. It’s a piece of investigative journalism concerning the so-called culture wars.
When I listened to the first series last year it was with genuine curiosity. I’d heard of, for example, “pizzagate” but I didn’t understand quite was was going on. I knew about the right-wing Christian aversion to abortion but I didn’t know why it was suddenly all the rage beyond the American south. Ronson’s show made sense of these things.
I wasn’t naturally interested in those topics per se, but thanks to comments I’d seen on social media they’d snagged my interest. What was real? Was any of this a threat to me? Would it change anything in my neighbourhood? Did I need to know something about this thing to understand culture today? I wasn’t consciously asking those questions, but my amygdala was.
They were zombie thoughts. Automated fretful horizon-scanning when I could have been looking at clouds.
Now that I’m off social media (did I mention that?), the second series of Jon Ronson’s thing is hard to listen to. It’s boring and unpleasant. I’m no longer interested in “making sense of the culture wars.” They’re not relevant to me.
Let’s face it. The culture wars are made up. Usually by right-wing newspapers and technology firms, paid for by billionaires and oligarchs with an interest in destabilising free will and non-Russian public institutions.
Not being able to listen to that radio show made me understand that the world seen through social media is horribly distorted. Everyone knows this already, but now I know it viscerally because, for the first time in 20 years, I’ve been spending time in the world without the distortion lens.
Life’s much better without the distortion lens.
You also heal surprisingly quickly, which gives me hope. Delete your accounts. Go back to real life.
You too, Jon Ronson. Get back out into the field and quit with the Twitter shit. It’s enough already.
There’s a bit in The Circle by Dave Eggers where the Last Man Standing (i.e. a character not on social media and spends his days making authentic clay pots or something) is hounded by drones until he drives his car off a bridge. It never really rang true to me. Here in the real world, I don’t feel hassled by “tech.” The people Jon Ronson shows being bullied on Facebook are, well, on Facebook. You really can switch it off and get on with your life.
I’m not curious about culture wars any more. More interesting to me are Momus’ thoughts about how the algorithm might influence the real world. And more interesting still, are the actual affairs of the real world: things like ant colonies (literally, not metaphorically) and new live comedy, and publishing real books, using digital technology to make real things happen instead of distracting from them, and simply hanging out.
Real life, folks. I’m telling you. It’s unbeatable. Until it is! I’d say there’s “no competition” but the emails I get from people who “can’t” re-join us on the outside strongly suggest otherwise.
Listen to me preach about this, eh? I’ve only been free of it for six months. But that’s how good it is. Listen! I’m a voice from the other side and you don’t even need a ouija board to hear it!
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Radically Different
Here’s Derek Sivers, a prominent advocate for a nicer Internet, on his recent escape to the woods:
Last month, I moved into my new home in the woods. There’s no internet and no phone service here. It’s so productive.
It doesn’t have to be productive, Derek, but go on…
At first I thought I couldn’t move in without internet. But now I prefer it this way.
My thoughts feel more independent. I explore my own ideas deeper before looking for other perspectives.
Now you’re talking.
Derek spends 23 hours a day offline. Think about that for a moment.
It would certainly be an interesting experiment. As ever, I restate my opinion that the Internet is not the problem so long as you escape the shitter side of it, but to escape digital reality to such an extent, I think, would be to choose a radically different sense of consciousness. It would be as worth doing as, say, magic mushrooms, right?
Listen to me. “Radically different.” As if the Internet was always with us.
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Obvious Tech Tip
You know me. I like to give tips to help you escape the mire of social media and, where possible, get back to to the Old Web.
Today’s tip isn’t about the Old Web exactly but it concerns the quality of everyday online experience. It’s this:
Don’t link to the YouTube homepage and don’t visit YouTube by typing “yout” into your address bar. And obviously don’t Google it like a dumbass. Create a link or a bookmark instead to your YouTube subscriptions page.
I can’t believe it took me so long to think of this. Manage your subscriptions wisely and you’ll never again see any of the 20%+ of YouTube videos that are AI slop.
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It’s the Responsibility
This is funny! Another entry from the diary of New Escapologist contributor Dickon Edwards:
Archway Video offer me a full time position. After much agonizing, I decline. I effectively turn down an enjoyable job in a pleasant part of London, within three minutes walk from my bed. It’s not the money; I could do with the money. It’s not the use of my time which I could be spending on more creative acts; I know all too well that having nothing to do all day often means one ends up doing… nothing all day. Even Mr Larkin continued to stamp library books until he died.
It’s the responsibility. Working full time would mean me locking up at night, and I just don’t trust myself. My accident-prone Frank Spencer side would see to it that sooner or later Something Would Happen. I’d find myself counting the days to being sacked in disgrace. I just couldn’t take something awful happening on my shift. The place is unique. Much of AV’s back catalogue video stock is deleted and irreplaceable. When _Before Sunset_ (“one of the most romantic films ever made”) came out last year, AV was one of the few places one could get hold of _Before Sunrise_, the film it follows up. As you might imagine, many people wanted to watch this first film again. Rather startlingly, it was currently unavailable to buy on any format. Bit of an oversight on the film company’s part, I thought. Possibly something to do with rights. Regardless, the AV video copy suddenly found itself upgraded from Weekly to Overnight, and has been constantly rented out ever since. It can finally get a break soon, as both films are finally released on DVD next month.
Pretty much every paid job I’ve ever had has featured me breaking something, or ruining something, or getting told off constantly. At 18, I worked in an Ipswich video shop. One night, the police called. I hadn’t set the shop burglar alarm properly, resulting in a blaring siren waking up half of Ipswich. Which, as you might imagine, is no mean feat. I had to be driven into town to reset the alarm.
Then there was the time I worked in a convenience store in Bristol circa 1990, which also rented out videos. One day, I unplugged their computer from the mains, in order to plug in the hoover. Result: the computer’s entire video rental records were wiped. It was one of those old ’80s computers that needed to be closed down properly before switching off. I can still remember my tears as I was frogmarched to the filthy shop basement, plunked into a seat and told to wait till the manager arrived. Which he duly did, in a bad red tracksuit. The clothes some people wear when they’re not meant to be at work. He couldn’t sack me; they had trouble getting staff on their wages as it was. But the manager gave me this big pep talk – no, a lesson – about The Trouble With Me. About how I had “a monkey on my back”. Or was it my shoulder? He said, “Some day, you’ll thank me for what I’m telling you now.”
Well, I can’t remember a word of what he said. Just his appalling taste in clothes. That showed him.
Then there’s the soup I spilled on a customer during my shortest ever job. I was a lunchtime waiter in a Suffolk pub. Hired and sacked within one hour.
And then there’s the countless times I was Sat Down and Told Off about The Trouble With Me at Our Price, Hampstead _and_ Holloway branches. More tears.
I recall the time a friend told he’d met one of my erstwhile Our Price colleagues. “I used to work with Dickon, you know,” she said.
Pause.
“Everyone really hated him.”
I really did my best at that job to Get On and Work Hard. And if anyone I used to work with is reading this, I’m sorry if you hated me. I didn’t hate you. What was it I did that annoyed you? Or didn’t do? Perhaps you’d like to tell me about the Trouble With Me. Everyone other employer has. The usual email address.
Then there was the village pub washing-up job where I was attacked by their three small yapping dogs, ripping the bottom of my trousers to shreds. I wouldn’t have minded, but they did it _every day_.
You see, Dear Reader, this is all very amusing for you to read, but I have to _be_ me. This isn’t a sitcom, it’s my life. I’m 34 this year. I think I’ve effectively put the case for me being Unemployable in most normal jobs that other people find so easy to do. You can’t accuse me of not giving the things a go.
Ye gods, what a history of woe. And this is only a fraction of my Record of Employment. The more I think about it, the more I feel the world truly does owe me a living. So the deal I have made with myself is this. I only have the right to turn down a pleasant full-time job if I treat writing like one too. Really, this time. Get up and clock on. Songs, stories, and at least one diary entry a day.
Above all, I know Archway Video could do better than me, and I would feel guilty occupying a position meant for someone else. _I_ wouldn’t hire me to lock the place up at night, so why should they?
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Dickon’s diaries are being adapted for print. You can advance order it on Kickstarter or at the publisher’s website.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 82. Signs of Progress.
Dear diary, not much has changed since my last entry. I’ve been ill for over two months.
Read the rest of this entry »
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 79. 2024 Review.
Splosh! Time for an annual report to my imaginary shareholders.
But first an excerpt from last year’s report:
2024 will not be as fruitful as 2023 was. It can’t be.
Ahem. Well, that’s not what happened.
On Self-Help and Making the Bed
Every day, I make the bed.
It’s not a particularly onerous task and it can even be quite a pleasant one if seen in the right way, but I always feel slightly irritated by having to do it. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
There’s a self-help book called Make Your Bed and I occasionally think about reading it. I’ve really had my fill of self-help though. While it’s sometimes enlightening, one only needs so much enlightenment.
I’d rather read novels. I see fiction as something (top-tier life) and non-fiction as about something (second-tier life), self-help being almost a third tier since it’s just about fine-tuning reality instead of actually being an event in reality.
I have no idea what the Make Your Bed book is about, but I assume it tells you to make your bed because making your bed (a) doesn’t take very long, (b) makes a big difference to the vibe of where you live, (c) it actually quite a pleasant and mindful task you allow it to be one, and (d) acts as a mild physical warm-up for doing other things. I assume it is a metaphor for (a) tasks seldom being as bad as you imagine, (b) choosing your battles, (c) seeing things different ways, and (d) how activity can snowball once you’ve begun.
I will never look up that book to find what it’s really about. I have not read the review I linked to above. If you’ve read it though, tell me in the comments how right or wrong I am.
Anyway, those are some of the things I think about when making the bed. But why the slight sense of irritation at having to do it?
There’s another self-help book on the market at the moment with an ‘escape’ theme, just right for us to review in the next New Escapologist. I can’t be bothered though, so I asked someone else to do it for me. Thanks, Arie!
Arie came through today with his review and, among other things, it describes a way to overcome stress. You want to be “there,” when in fact you’re “here” is the explanation. Once you’ve accepted that, you’re on your way to overcoming stress.
Procrastinating slightly from making the bed this morning, I considered this. Why don’t I want to make the bed? It’s because I find it slightly stressful. Why do I find it slightly stressful when everything about making the bed is actually pretty good? It’s because I want to be “there” (a tidy world where the bed is made) instead of “here” (a messy world where the bed is unmade) and I can’t get “there” quickly enough.
Once I’d understood that, I asked myself why it’s so undesirable to live “here” in the messy world. It’s not so undesirable really. So I got breakfast and made the bed later instead. I did not feel the stress of the “make the bed” task hanging over me as I ate my breakfast. It works!
And I didn’t even have to read a self-help book. Though admittedly I had a unique way of learning from it anyway. Sorry Arie.
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New Escapologist Issue 16 is available now in print and digital formats.
Spiritual Contamination
From After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time (2023) by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek:
In the early 1900s, sociologist Thorstein Veblen delineated the existence of a ‘leisure class’ whose class status was, in no small part, expressed by their ability to withdraw from work.
Sounds nice. That’s what I’d do.
The aristocrats from the feudal era had also been able to separate themselves from the daily grind, and many from the new capitalist classes followed in this tradition. Whereas the lower classes — quite literally the working classes — were forced to work in order to survive, the upper classes were able to extract themselves from the ‘spiritual contamination’ of work. Instead they signified their social status through expressions of idleness, frivolity, and consumption.
In other words, it used to be fashionable to be “idle rich.” Maybe some people even aspired to it.
It’s bizarre how today’s rich do everything they can to avoid being seen as idle. They launch “brands,” lie to magazines about their impossible daily schedules, monopolise public discourse, claim to have the answers, run for president. Yawn. What a bunch of strivers.
Maybe liberal guilt or survivor guilt is at the bottom of it: “I know you have to bust your hump to stay alive; I’m sorry for that but even here at the top of the tree, we work hard too.”
Or perhaps it’s indicative of the total dominance of the work ethic.
Either way: fuck ’em. Stay at the bottom of the tree and work less anyway. Don’t aspire to riches, especially if it means hard work when you get there.
Don’t get your hands or spirits dirty if you don’t have to. Idleness and frivolity are the order of the moment.
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