I mean, from a certain point of view, you could argue this. Maybe not solely Zuck-specific, but close enough in terms of the framing.

Ultimately social media's "aim" outside of the many second order consequences, some of which most certainly aren't mere bugs, is to "connect people" and "unite humanity", which are very nice sounding things. I'm sure most people would agree that these are noble pursuits, and I also think they probably are. Who doesn't love the idea of everyone being able to talk to one another and living happily in a world of peace and prosperity?

(as long as you forget the Tower of Babel)

But ultimately, as I say, there are many second order consequences that come with the deal you make when you go onto these social media websites/apps, which offer this all to you under bright shiny and trendy designs. The devil comes dressed in Prada, as they say. Except it's the Prada you personally like.

Oh, and did they tell you that they'll give you this for free? What an amazing deal! Who doesn't love a good bargain?

But as the other old adage also goes: "if something is free, you are the product". In this case, your soul is the product for whichever corporation you pick your poison from. By soul, I don't mean literally, I mean the aggregate of all the information which makes you, you. Which is essentially your digital soul. I'm talking:

• Your social network of people you know.

• Where you are and when.

• What your primal subconscious instincts seep out when you are presented with an endless feed of shiny and personally targeted interesting things.

• Which unnaturally beautiful models you click on because it activates your libido at an unnatural rate with no real action made besides a like or, God forbid, a depraved comment or DM.

• Which ads you click on and throw your money at out of the induced impulse reaction to artificial scarcity.

• Which self-depreciating memes you find funny and send to your friends and seem to conveniently also match what you have spoken about when you met with them (isn't that funny? At least its definitely not the microphone, per the alleged company using the microphone)

I think you get the idea. This information is useful not only to businesses, it's also very useful to central authorities and the state. Not that any government, yours or not, would ever do anything evil with all your information, interests, and associates, of course.

My point is that, although this all may very well be included and signed for in the gazillion page terms and conditions document which none of us read when dealing with our devil, ironically we become Faust in that we are very easily bought under the very same promises of infinite pleasure and knowledge.

And even then, if it's not for direct personal gain in pleasures and gnosis, it's often made anyway out of the fear of exclusion/missing out, of being unable to speak to all the people we know who do make the deal so that we too can become a part of that unified vision of humanity under the global warmth of corporate gradient sunshine.

"Boo hoo, just install the damned app so I can send you reels, man. Stop whining".

This is often the reaction one gets when trying to make these points. Oftentimes, from the people I am reflecting a mirror to, since they are the ones who made the Faustian Bargain with Instagram or TikTok or X or whoever, and now are paying the price of living a more "hollowed life", chained by technology and almost always usually complaining about the lack of satisfaction they have, desensitised to the true beauty and wonder of the world because Sandrew Mate or whoever has convinced them that if you aren't on the grind and have all these material possessions, you are going to be part of the permanent underclass and never be happy ever again.

Bro, you already aren't happy. Turn the phone off, cancel the deal. You can choose to start getting happy at any time.

Ultimately, I think the struggle most people have is that they justify it all as tool use. I'm sure there is a way to perfectly use social media as a tool for whatever you need to get done, and then move on with your day.

But when your tools are literally designed like a casino with the intention of maximising engagement until you lose control, along with all the pretty dire second/third/fourth order consequences we all know and love… along with no incentive for the toolmaker nor the fellow users to begin fixing each of their own behaviours… what can you do?

Is it really worth just making the deal with Mephisto? Or should you not make the deal, and take the hard road to leave the network?

Either way, the network stays. Even if you got rid of one app, three more would take its place. So the masses use their networks, their actions echo into everywhere else from politics and your empty high street. Software eats the world.

I don't entirely doubt no one else thinks this. I just think most people would go: "I'd love to not make the deal because it's wrong and bad for me, but oh, dear Mephisto, you make it too appealing! Please, give me [personally interesting thing] endlessly! I find it so fun!".

Why is this? Because all resistance against such tools goes against every natural human tendency to stay part of the herd, as tribally the choice to be cut off and alone is a death wish. In social media, not being there is akin to being digitally dead.

As you have probably seen, I do have an Instagram account around purely because it's the norm that if you're a designer and don't have one, you are labelled "screwed". And yet, I hardly use it. I basically am dead there, outside of the few trips in I make to post my work and leave.

I've spoken of Beeper before as my solution to not keeping the app installed to still access my DMs, so I rarely ever actually need to go on the feed. Anyone truly important to me will be someone I chat with either directly, or meet with in person (the best method).

Anyone in my life, is in my life. Not a hallucination of someone who is in my life.

But still, what do I lose?

I don't see when or where someone goes somewhere on holiday or hangs out without me unless I ask them.

I don't follow the latest memes or even news, and only find out if its that important, or if I go looking for it consciously.

I miss out on knowing about an exhibition going on in my field unless I go looking for it.

You may, rightfully, argue this is akin to shooting myself in the foot, career wise. "You are waffling on your website which no one visits, to people who likely will skim the first paragraph and then go back to TikTok or whatever they were on".

But I give you another adage taken from Mark 8:36: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

I personally would rather be forced to consciously live my life and find stuff, letting boredom push me to for what I truly want and let "real" fate guide me to my choices, rather than passively have my destiny kicked around by a man-made algorithm which probably doesn't have my interests at heart.

If this keeps me more human with my soul more intact and at peace than that of someone fried by 18 hours of screen time per day and a hyperactive mind paralysed by infomania and early-onset cyberpsychosis… I don't think that's necessarily a bad deal.

It's a harder life, but one I choose to live, rather than get given to live.

And I most certainly don't feel bad for Zuckerberg or whichever devil is trying to bargain with me.

So what that I don't want to live life on his terms?

He's taken everything from the people around me, turned my society into an antisocial mess so that he can keep their souls online when they sign those T&Cs, for whatever incompetence or nefarious reasons he may have.

I decline such a deal, and you should probably think about it too. Whilst you still can.