Goodbye to the shitty end of social media
(or: why I’m climbing out of the enshittification pool before the lifeguard turns the lights off)
I’ve reached that particular age, temperament, and neurotype where spending another minute doom-scrolling, rage-scrolling, or politely-pretending-to-be-interested-scrolling feels like stabbing my prefrontal cortex with a compost fork. So, after years of good intentions, bad platforms, and one too many algorithmic betrayals, I am stepping away from the shitty end of social media.
Not deleting. Not flouncing. Not seeking applause.
Just leaving the accounts alive, embalmed in their own corporate formaldehyde, while I redirect my attention towards places that feel like actual human spaces rather than behavioural-modification farms.
This is my farewell letter to Meta, X, and Spotify, and my love-letter to Substack, YouTube, and books.
It’s also a note to my fellow AuDHD brains who keep telling themselves I should be better at this, when the truth is simpler: you’re not broken. The platforms are.
Why the great unfollow happened
There was a time when social media felt hopeful. A time before the algorithms were weaponised, before engagement meant incitement, before everything became a dopamine casino where the house always wins and the punter always leaves feeling slightly worse about their life.
Then came the era we now politely refer to as enshittification.
A perfect word. Evocative. Accurate. A full systems-theory explanation disguised as a punchline.
Enshittification happens when a platform stops serving users and starts squeezing them. When the business model optimises for shareholder extraction instead of community value. When features vanish, ads multiply, trust evaporates, and the whole thing begins to smell like something died behind the fridge.
I was in the vanguard of social media for business, back when social media first started to get public attention. This was 2005 onwards. By 2009 I was being flown all over the world to lecture, to present, to run workshops on how social media was an incredibly powerful tool that businesses needed to get across. I was a true evangelist. I stayed longer than I should have.
Partly out of habit.
Partly out of misplaced hope.
Partly out of that old autistic loyalty reflex that whispers, Maybe it will improve if I am very patient and very reasonable.
It didn’t.
So here’s where we part ways.
The ethical crimes I can no longer pretend to ignore
And yes, crimes may sound dramatic.
But if a company behaves like a moral sewer, the least we can do is name the smell.
Meta (Facebook + Instagram)
Built on surveillance capitalism, profiling users with a level of granularity that would make the Stasi blush.
Enabled, amplified, and profited from political manipulation, ethnic violence, and disinformation on a planetary scale.
Aggressive behavioural-nudging designed to keep attention locked in, even when mental health goes down.
Consistently evasive accountability, “oops, our bad” apologies, and then more of the same.
I wrote about Meta earlier this year
X (formerly Twitter, now a billionaire’s midlife crisis simulator)
From imperfect civic commons to rage-click carnival.
Platforming extremism and harassment in the name of “free speech”, while suppressing dissenting views called “too political”.
Massive cuts to safety teams, verification turned into a paid attention-ranking scheme, and algorithmic preference for the loudest, angriest, least thoughtful voices.
A bizarre devotion to turning a globally significant communication tool into a private ideological playground.
Spotify
Built on an economic model that pays most musicians fractions of fractions of cents, while the CEO invests millions into AI arms-race ventures.
Facilitates pseudoscience and disinformation through high-profile podcasts with zero accountability.
Treats artists as content-serfs rather than creative partners.
And, crucially, their entire model is designed to funnel attention into their own ecosystem, not into supporting creators directly.
I can’t justify pouring my attention, creativity, or nervous system into systems built on such aggressively lopsided ethics. Even my usual “be reasonable, consider both sides” Protestant upbringing has limits.
Why this matters extra if you’re AuDHD
Here’s the thing:
Most social media platforms are deliberately engineered to hijack attention, distort reward pathways, and punish consistency. For an AuDHD brain, that’s not just frustrating, it’s destabilising.
There’s no dopamine consistency.
No clear structure.
No reliable rules of engagement.
No alignment between effort and reward.
Everything is unpredictable, intermittent, chaotic. It is the sensory equivalent of living next to a nightclub whose volume knob is controlled by a caffeinated toddler.
AuDHD brains crave coherence, depth, authenticity, patterns, stable rhythms, and actual intellectual stimulation.
Social media gives intermittent brain-shocks wrapped in colourful UI.
The mismatch is not your fault.
It’s the platforms.
Why I’m choosing Substack, YouTube, and books
These platforms have something the others have deliberately dismantled:
an incentive to treat creators and audiences as humans rather than extractable behavioural data.
Substack
Direct relationship between writer and reader.
No algorithmic manipulation.
No ad economy.
Long-form thinking, depth, nuance, and conversation over performance.
My AuDHD brain can hyperfocus for the right reasons, not because the system is hijacking me.
Ethical alignment with independent creators and community-building rather than corporate extraction.
YouTube (in its grown-up, long-form, use-it-for-ideas-not-clickbait form)
Actual educational value when used intentionally.
Searchable, archive-friendly, and built for depth.
A platform where well-made content has longevity, not a 40-minute half-life.
A place where I can create Mindblown Psychology episodes, VietLeadershipCoach material, and QuietHalf talks without needing to debase myself for the algorithm.
Books
The slowest medium.
The most durable.
Immune to enshittification because once printed (or once downloaded), no algorithm can rewrite it.
A space where complex ideas can be fully explored, fully held, and fully received.
And, perhaps most important:
My nervous system feels calmer here.
More grounded.
More connected to the work that matters.
Why I’m not deleting my old accounts
I’m not giving Meta or X the power of closure.
The accounts will sit there like abandoned shopfronts on a once-vibrant street.
People can find me.
But they’ll be met with a simple message directing them to where the real work now lives.
A quiet, dignified exit, not a tantrum.
A redirect, not a disappearance.
The personal truth beneath all this
I’m building a life in Đà Lạt that values depth, creativity, craft, and human connection.
And I cannot build that life on platforms designed to fragment attention, distort motivations, and reward superficiality.
My work deserves better.
My readers deserve better.
My brain deserves better.
And truthfully, so does yours.
So here it is:
I am done with the shitty end of the social media pool.
The enshittification era can continue without me.
I’ll be over on Substack, YouTube, and inside my books, building things that last.
And if you want to join me on the quieter, deeper, saner side of the internet, here’s where to find me:
Substack
YouTube
Amazon
Messenger (because Zuck hasn’t figured out how to monetise or bastardise it yet. Yet.)
Email
Eloquently expressed!