1660 || surveillance makes us docile

How do we feel like we’re not being watched, when we are being watched?

Studies show that citizens tolerate being surveilled, and eventually stop thinking about it. But we tend to act more docile + reliable after we forget. The camera makes you more docile. It makes you a better employee. But the camera has taken something from you. Your complex and unstable kinetic energy. Everyday it reanimates your body in predictable loops.”

The first time I realized I was being surveilled without my knowing, was at my first job. Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop. The rumor was they’d sit at home and watch us at work, but I didn’t believe it. One day, I mopped the front when I received a phone call saying, “you only dipped the mop once, the dining room requires three dips for a proper cleaning.”

Needless to say, 16 year old me was shook. I never mopped without doing it their way, again. I behaved differently on my shifts, from there on out. I feeling anxious and paranoid — but I’d completely forgotten about what caused it. I just thought, “this is what work feels like.”

So it effectively shocked me into submission, with very little effort.

The camera is a gun.

It’s about power. And we all recognize what the power a camera holds.

A video at our worst moment, can get you fired, arrested, or harassed.

We cope with this reality in our own ways.

We stop going out, we stop dancing, we stop interacting. We participate as viewers who critique and judge. Or we pick up the power ourselves, and turn the camera + surveillance and judgement to those around us.

How has the surveillance state affected your behavior?

Did you realize that the panopticon was affecting you at all?

The only way we can learn to cope + navigate without losing ourselves or our humanity, is if we’re willing to face it head on.

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