I must admit: I'm having problems with the concepts of "self", "the world" and "reality" put forth by this article. They seem to be very much personally-defined, a perception sole rather than rational recompilation of the human experience — and even then, it feels so removed from the real feelings that I can't empathize with it.

"What is the self? No one really knows". We don't know what gravity is, either — and yet, we use and follow it. We don't know what consciousness is — and yet, we are conscious and are able to distinguish between the two states. One does not need to know what their (or the) self is to notice the patterns of reaction that go "I belong here" or "This is alien to me".

"How can I be myself?" is as useless a question as "What is the self?". It doesn't matter. If you're aware enough to retrospect and intelligent enough to make conclusions, you're beyond well-equipped for being yourself.

The author, it seems, confuses advertisement and social networking with the world, saying that it is intrusive when it's very much not. I stopped following the news a while ago; I don't have apps that send obnoxiously loud notifications on my phone or on my laptop; I hid most of the intrusive stuff away on the social network.

The world is what it is; you, however, have a choice what to look at.