Science & Tech Quote by Jaron Lanier

Lanier’s provocation lands because it refuses to treat online cruelty as a mysterious new pathology. It’s older than the internet; the internet just learned how to summon it on demand. The “switch” metaphor is doing double duty: it frames tribal behavior as both deeply human (wired into “spirit,” not just bad manners) and dangerously easy to trigger. You don’t need a villain. You need a design choice.

The subtext is a rebuke to Silicon Valley’s favorite alibi: that platforms are neutral and users are the problem. Lanier flips that. If mobs are a “setting,” then someone built the interface that keeps defaulting to it. Anonymity, frictionless sharing, public metrics, algorithmic amplification, and the subtle gamification of attention aren’t incidental features; they’re levers. The “pack” is profitable. Outrage is sticky, belonging is addictive, and a swarm is easier to steer than a room full of independent minds.

Calling it “software designs” also smuggles in a moral argument disguised as engineering. Design isn’t aesthetics; it’s behavioral architecture. When comment systems reward dunking, when feeds collapse context into a single post, when identity gets reduced to a badge and a side, the product is effectively choosing which self you’ll be: person or member.

Lanier’s context matters here: a tech insider and artist who’s spent decades warning that the internet’s economic model degrades empathy. The line reads like a diagnosis delivered by someone who helped build the clinic. It’s not anti-technology. It’s anti-automation of our worst crowd instincts.