If you complain about social media (especially if you post that diatribe on Twitter or Facebook), your friends will tell you one thing over and over: If you think it’s so bad, don’t use it in the first place. Criticism, they propose, is a waste of breath when all you really need to do is opt out. Consider the case of Curt Schilling, who was recently told by some that he should just “get off Twitter” after he struck back at those who had tweeted (truly awful) insults about his daughter.
Those who do manage to escape rarely fare much better: We often treat people who try to extract themselves with contempt, responding as if it were little more than an anti-modern affectation. When Iggy Azalea announced that she was quitting social media, many gloated, with a touch of disdain. As one entertainment gossip site sneered, “This chick doesn’t seem to be quite tough enough for the spotlight. … [S]hould we all just give her her wish and make her irrelevant? She said she’d be wildly happy about it.” Where some elicit scorn for staying, others generate just as much when they go, doomed to mockery either way.
In his new book Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, journalist Jacob Silverman argues that we’ve yet to develop a language for discussing what it means to really give up on social media. In a phone conversation (which, naturally, we arranged over Twitter), Silverman told me that responses to critics of social media tend to be strangely antagonistic, reminiscent of the “Love it or leave it!” proclamations that often chase criticism of the United States. And yet we often regard those who do extract themselves—and those who refuse to participate in the first place—as pariahs.
via Jacob Silverman’s Terms of Service and opting in to social media..
