The Internet Is Not The Answer - Andrew Keen

"But today, as the internet expands to connect almost every-one and everything on the planet, it's becoming evident that this is a false promise." (preface)

" 'Instagram is focused on capturing the worlds moments,' System likes to say. But thats fiction - just like Instagram itself" (pg.104)

"Advertisements for Myself" - Norman Mailer - 1959

"Indeed, the only thing more retro than Instagrams filters is the pre-Copernican belief, encouraged by social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, that the new digital universe somehow revolves around us. Fuzzy technology leads to an even fuzzier sense of our place in the cosmos." (pg.105)

"In the Valley, the rich and famous claim to be failures; on social networks like Instagram, millions of failures claim to be rich and famous." (pg.105)

"The truth about networks like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook is that their easy-to-use, free tools delude us into thinking we are celebrities." (pg.105) narcissism

"epidemic of narcissism and voyeurism" (pg.106)

"our contemporary obsession with public self-expression has complex cultural, technological and psychological origins that can't be exclusively traced to the digital revolution" (pg.106)

Twenge and Campbell - Narcissism Epidemic

"Instagram is a useful symbol of everything that has gone wrong with our digital culture over the last quarter of a century. "I update, therefore I am," I once wrote, half jokingly, about the existential dilemma created by our obsession with social media. Unfortunately, however, the idea that our existence is proven by our tweets or our Instagram moments is no longer very funny." (pg.107)

"if we have no thought to Tweet or photo to post, we basically cease to exist" (pg.107)

"the shameless self portrait has emerged as a dominant mode of expression, perhaps even the proof of  our existence, in the digital age." (pg.107)

"The real myth is that we are communicating at all. The truth, of course, is that we are mostly just talking to ourselves on these supposedly 'social' networks" (pg.109)