False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Argument 10: Social media constitute a new 
spiritual framework that turns human beings 
into something that can be “hacked.”
It’s accurate to compare using BUMMER 
services to being in a cage, and to liken 
BUMMER companies to behavioral scientists 
who are constantly analyzing and manipulating 
your behavior. However, this comparison fails to 
capture the magnitude of the BUMMER 
phenomenon.
After all, it’s not just a few people being 
manipulated in a few isolated studies – it’s 
society as a whole.
In this sense, BUMMER is similar to religion. It’s 
an organized system that is influencing and 
guiding, in ways both subtle and overt, a huge 
swath of the world’s population.
Therefore, using BUMMER essentially amounts 
to adopting, in the author’s words, a “new 
spiritual framework.”
Traditional spiritual frameworks seek to address 
humanity’s most mystifying, and meaningful, 
questions. Why do we exist? What is life’s 
purpose? What comes after death? These 
questions are beyond the purview of science, 
and asking them is, to a degree, what makes us 
human.
BUMMER’s answer to these questions is 
comprehensive and simple: optimization is life’s 
purpose.
Google’s mission statement is, in part, “to 
organize the world’s information.” In Silicon 
Valley, this translates to “organize all reality,” 
since information, in tech terms, is reality. 
Meanwhile, social media users are in a constant 
struggle to optimize their presence by ranking 
higher in searches or making their videos 
optimally viewable. This ethos leaves no room 
for spirituality, no possibility for ineffable 
mystery.
The body is simply something that will eventually 
be hacked, and the same goes for the mind. 
Thus, the old spiritual framework is being 
replaced by a new one – the framework of 
optimization proposed by BUMMER.
This framework undermines society’s faith in the 
special nature of human beings. It puts them on 
a level with everything else – computer 
programs, robots and all the other optimizable 
gadgets under the sun. In other words, it kills our 
souls.
BUMMER not only impinges on your dignity and 
your privacy; it is depriving you of the ensouled 
experience that is personhood. In the BUMMER 
world, you’re nothing more than a set of 
algorithm-determined actions and behaviors, a 
sum of likes on your posts and the followers you 
have.
If you want your soul back, delete your accounts.