The Opt Out Weblog

The Blog for Garrick van Buren's 'Opt-Out: The Survival Guide for This Modern Age' Book

Category: Modern Living

No, There is No Pony. Never Was.

Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to [...]

Stop Being Such a Good Host

“An optimally adapted parasite takes as much from its host as possible without damaging the viability of the host. In order for us to stay viable hosts for the media parasite, we need only enough waking hours away from media to make money and to spend that money on advertisers’ offerings and/or media’s costs (and [...]

“Except you can’t.”

“The [Facebook Home] ad is an apt, if sanguine, depiction of what I’ve been calling ‘present shock,’ the human incapacity to respond to everything happening all at once. In a rapid-fire, highly commercial digital environment, this sense of an overwhelming ‘now’ reaches new heights. Unlike computer chips, human beings can only process one thing at [...]

Just Stop Being an Unpaid Documentary Filmmaker

“The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of something, even if similar to the experience of many others, is unique and cannot be reproduced within [...]

Off is the new black

“The new connected is to be disconnected. Deadspots are the new hotspots.” – Liz Danzico

Get Better

“Like everyone, though, I did have relationships — a spouse, friends and family — and none of them got the best version of me. They got what was left over.…I didn’t have to be on my BlackBerry from my first moment in the morning to my last moment at night. I didn’t have to eat [...]

Blocking

“…my experiences show that after a certain point, material objects have a tendency to crowd out the emotional needs they are meant to support.” – Graham Hill

Adding by Substracting

“…each time I optimize for happiness instead of money, I have accidentally increased my financial returns as well.” – Pete Forde

And I’ve never had anything pierced

“Also, I still haven’t personally found a practical reason for the implant.” – Dan Berg

At least do the food justice

“Chef David Bouley often ushers people he sees snapping his plates back into the kitchen so they can get a picture on a marble background with proper lighting. He’s even working on a system that will allow users to choose from an array of digital images of his dishes that they can send to their [...]