Two Million Americans a Month Are Trying to Get Out. Most of Them Have Nowhere to Go.

Almost two million people in this country every month type some version of the same thing into Google.

How do I delete my account.

That number comes from a study by GetResponse, which pulled U.S. monthly search volume through Semrush for every deletion, deactivation and recovery phrase across the ten biggest platforms. You can read the study and the methodology here, and they published the full dataset too, which I appreciate.

Here is how it breaks down.

U.S. monthly searches to delete or deactivate an account

Source: GetResponse, using Semrush Keyword Analytics, U.S. monthly search volume, 2025 ↗

Nearly 600,000 a month on Instagram alone. Nearly 460,000 on TikTok. More than a quarter million on X.

Two million people a month standing at the door.

And here is the part that actually matters. Most of them do not walk out, and it is not because they changed their minds. It is because everything they built is in there. The customers. The photos. The people who know them. Leaving means starting over at zero, so they stay somewhere they do not want to be.

That is not loyalty. That is a hostage situation with a nice interface.

I know that feeling from the other side. I built somewhere I could not be removed from, on purpose, and I want to tell you exactly what that took, because it is less than people think and more than one afternoon.

Here is the actual stack. No mystery, no gatekeeping.

The code lives in GitHub. Every version, every change, mine. If any other piece of this disappeared tomorrow, the site could be running somewhere else the same day.

The site runs on Vercel. It deploys itself when I push. I have never once asked permission to publish.

The data lives in Supabase. Articles, records, subscribers, everything you have read on this site. It is a database I can export in full, any time, for any reason.

The look gets built in Figma before it gets built in code, which saves an enormous amount of arguing with yourself.

The thinking lives in Notion and the files live in Google Drive. Notes, drafts, research, source documents, all searchable, all in one place instead of in seven apps and my head.

The work gets done with AI I actually control. A Claude account and a ChatGPT account that are mine, wired into my own files, not a chatbot on somebody else's website that forgets who I am every morning.

And the day gets captured with a recorder like Pocket or Fieldy, so the thought I had driving to Longview is not gone by supper.

None of that list is exotic. That is the point. Every piece of it is available to anybody reading this, today.

What most people do not have is the assembly. Nine tools that do not talk to each other is not a system, it is nine subscriptions and a headache. The value is in the wiring.

So that is what I build for people now, and I build it like a buffet instead of a package.

You do not need all nine. A church needs different pieces than an attorney, who needs different pieces than a guy running a fence company who just wants his phone to ring. You come tell me what you are actually trying to do, we walk the line together, and you take what you need and leave the rest.

The rule I hold to on every one of these builds is the same: when we are done, you own it. The repository is in your name. The domain is in your name. The database is yours and it exports. The list is yours. If you and I never speak again after the handoff, everything keeps running, and nothing I built can be held over your head.

That last part is not standard in this business. A lot of people build you something you can never leave. I got out of one of those. I am not going to build one for somebody else.

Two million people a month are searching for the exit.

The ones who make it out are the ones who had somewhere to land.

Build it once. Own it forever. Let it run while you sleep.