Fair enough, man. Yeah, I'm in a shitty frame of mind today. It's unfair to take it out on you. I don't believe that choosing to focus on one facet of an article constitutes cherry picking; nor does it demonstrate anything about my grasp of the article. It was just a comment I made when I woke up and decided today was the day I'd speak up on hubski after some silence. Ultimately, my point: while the author makes good arguments about how all-encompassing these companies have become, it doesn't serve her argument to belabor minor inconveniences like not getting to share pics on instagram and having to carry cash and having to buy a paper calendar. At best, those arguments just make it sound like she's trying to make living without those services more inconvenient than they are. Which she doesn't need to do. At worst, they sound like some upper cruster sneering at the hoi polloi: "who has to pay their babysitter in cash anymore? What's the point of taking a picture of your child if you can't easily quantify how much people approve of the picture?" It's one quibble with one part of the article. Never meant for it to be anything other than that. You are welcome here, as I was when I wandered over, as is anybody. I encourage you to dig around a little and get to know people before jumping in.
All good. We all have off days. I wonder if the author was trying to represent the reader who would object to what she's trying to do with the complaints you pointed out. Is she trying to answer those questions by showing that she had similar issues, etc.
It's almost a rite of passage for tech journalists to do the performative cold turkey thing. Meanwhile most of the civil libertarians are all about "if you don't like Facebook, get off of Facebook." I myself have said "our lives would be no worse without Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Netflix." Articles like this point out that the hydra is so multi-headed now that you'll never cut them all off.