We’re Witnessing The Surprising Perks Of A Panopticon
How a heavily monitored society went from a doom-and-gloom conspiracy to humanity’s saving grace.
Did anyone else read 1984 in school? It was a book that was deeply prescient for its time. We all talk about how horrible that society was — the gaslighting, the all-seeing government eye, the fear of the truth…
It was a major part of my high school reading list. It was up there with Fahrenheit 451. At school, we were taught to fear the idea of an all-knowing government.
During my politics class in collge, we used to have murmured dialogues about the social credit system that was just starting up at that time. It seemed so scary when we thought about it: a credit system based on who you talk to and what you say.
Both of these topics surround the a bigger conversation — one that could only happen when Big Tech reached a certain level. I’m talking, of course, about the panopticon.
Let’s talk about what a panopticon is.
Could you imagine living a life where everyone knew everything about you? Where privacy was more or less a sham? A panopticon is just that: an all-knowing entity, the eye that never sleeps, capable of broadcasting your sins and prayers for all to see.
A society with a panopticon always has a certain way of revealing crimes to the word. The “all-seeing eye” is something that is absolutely terrifying for those who want privacy as well as those who want to be able to put parts of their lives behind them.
For years, I was warned about panopticon societies. I felt sketchy about joining Facebook because we would literally have all our information out in the open. I shuttered mine and stopped using it due to stalkers.
Panopticons are bad—or at least, that’s what we have been told repeatedly. Little did we realize that thanks to social media and the internet, our society has already become a panopticon society.
And you know what? I’ll come out and say it. I like living in certain panopticons.
While we often decry the end of freedom and privacy, there’s a serious silver lining to panopticons.
Did anyone else notice how many insanely powerful people suddenly got outed as traffickers, predators, abusers, and exploiters in the past 10 years? It’s hard to grasp how people who were once untouchable started to sweat.
We’ve seen the outing and downfall of many names that used to be totally golden, including:
Jeffrey Epstein. Once a billionaire modeling agent with a finance background, he was outed as a sex trafficker. He “killed himself” in prison.
Diddy. A rap mogul who trafficked women on the side is currently in jail, ready to sing like a canary to get out. He, too, was untouchable because of the sheer amount of blackmail he had.
Mr. Beast. A mega-millionaire YouTuber got outed as sexually abusive, exploitative, and tied to creepiness beyond the pale. He was once the “golden child” of YouTube.
Multiple Politicians. There’s the guy who outed himself as a “Black Nazi.” There’s JD Vance. There’s Donald Trump. Then, there’s also the leaks from the Supreme Court. Every little detail about a politician’s life can be outed these days.
Elon Musk. I mean, the dude tells on himself, but he was once the darling of Silicon Valley. Today, he’s regarded as an angry, racist, misogynistic edgelord.
Bill Cosby. He was once known as “America’s Dad,” but now has become famous for using Quaaludes to get women into bed.
That’s a lot of people being outed. But, it gets more impressive when you think about how many times the US public proved to politicians that they can’t be gaslit into believing what politicians want them to believe.
For example, look at the UFO issue. The government kept denying UFOs existed until hundreds of videos surfaced on social media showing things that are clearly not of this world — or just not entirely known to us.
Eventually, the US government capitulated and admitted that there are crafts they are aware of, but have no idea what they are or where they’re from.
Or, you can take a more mundane approach and look at police activity. People are in an uproar over police behavior these days, and much of it is due to bodycam footage. Long-time police captains are now going without jobs because of their behavior.
These events are not coincidental.
I’ll be honest with you: most of these things would never have happened 40 years ago. Most of these things would have been covered up. Witnesses would have been called “crazy” or “bitter,” and then made fun of.
People who were victimized were shoved aside, called unstable, and the perpetrators would get on with their lives. In some cases, the whistleblowers would get killed and it’d be brushed off as a suicide.
For much of society’s history, that was the status quo. The Big Dogs with the money had the power. The Little Dogs just went with whatever the Big Dogs told them to do, often believing the Big Dogs as gospel.
As it turns out, having the panopticon known as the internet changed all that.
For the first time in history, society is reckoning with a true panopticon for every echelon of society.
The person who was called “crazy” for what they saw before now has a powerful tool: the internet. They can upload text conversations, video footage of what they’ve seen, as well as find others who can confirm they saw the same thing.
You’re no longer “crazy” if you have visible, verifiable proof of what you have seen. You’re no longer “bitter” if you have proof that every single thing you say is what you and others have experienced.
Evidence is getting harder and harder to refute. People are waking up to realize that the super-wealthy and super-powerful have been lying to them in ways they never even conceived possible.
And, as it turns out, those panopticon experiences are forcing people to reckon with the consequences of their actions—good or bad. For some of us, it’s been a good thing. This is doubly true of those who society wronged.
For others, it’s been a living nightmare. Many bullies rely on cultures of secrecy and a lack of evidence to continue what they’re doing. As it turns out, they seem to be the ones who have the worst time in a panopticon.
Panopticons are great for those who have been wronged by mainstream society and terrible for bullies.
Having an “all-seeing eye” makes it hard for bullies to survive. The social and economic ramifications of dealing with consequences for being outed are massive these days — and that makes it harder than ever to get away with cruelty.
Don’t believe it? Check out Reddit’s r/byebyejob to see what I mean. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person while cameras are rolling is reason enough for a job termination.
Think about it. Would you want to hire someone who you found out did a hate crime? Would you want to hire someone who you saw stealing from a homeless person? Probably not.
But those individuals used to get away with it not to long ago. Hell, I still remember hearing rumors of police “making people go away” as a side job in the 1970s. Mandatory bodycams make it impossible to do that today.
Nothing quite evens the playing field more than a panopticon, which is why so many bullies are so against filming incidents as they happen. It takes away their freedom to oppress others.
A panopticon emboldens people to speak out against others. It gives others a chance to unmask the “good” people who do atrocities to others for no reason aside from shits and giggles.
Perhaps the other big perk a panopticon has is the humanization of those you never thought of as people.
I really find this video to be endearing and fascinating. Why? Because it features presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the kitchen, having fun, making a tuna sandwich.
This doesn’t seem like a big deal to most until you realize how often a pre-panopticon society tended to pigeonhole others. It wasn’t too long ago that finding a person’s social media and hobbies too prominently online could be a career-ender.
We tended to typecast people as their careers or jobs.
When people discuss retail workers, they tend to ignore their hobbies, their families, and more. We often (wrongly) assume they’re high school dropouts with no future.
The internet panopticon is putting that era to a close. Today, we can broadcast that. We can show others the human side of ourselves. It’s made society a bit more empathetic toward retail workers.
For many of us, seeing these posts and videos is a stark reminder of the person you might discredit. And, if you’re a politician like Kamala Harris, that can make potential voters fall in love with you just a little more.
Big Brother is not as scary as we made it out to be.
As it turns out, Big Brother is not the scary mofo that we thought he’d be. Big Brother isn’t the despot. It’s the people who are in power — the people who have been abusing their power behind closed doors for decades.
A world where everyone can see evidence of everything is a world with Big Brother. That’s a true panopticon. That’s the type of panopticon the internet offers. We can hear others talk about their experiences, see videos of it, and more.
What we’re seeing now is a real Big Brother — and Big Brother holds people accountable as his way of protecting his Little Brothers. Big Brother is a big, shining light that reveals the real muck of society for all to see.
That’s what the internet has become.
The concept of Big Brother was meant to be a means of control for corporations and politicians alike.
If you ask most CEOs and politicians, the idea of being able to watch adversaries’ moves is very appealing. Heck, even getting the browsing habits of fans can help them get more power and control.
I mean, that’s literally what made Facebook (erm, Meta) such a powerful company. The information we put into that social media became a product so powerful, it influenced elections.
It’s easy to see why people assume Big Brother would be controlling. The potential for control is clearly there, but people forget there’s a caveat to having that Big Brother openness.
A controlling panopticon has a timer on it — just like fascism.
There are a lot more citizens than there are people in power. If 80 percent of citizens refuse to comply with their government and refuse to entertain fascism, governments won’t have much choice but to drop their agenda.
You can’t run a government where people give you no power. Threats and violence only go so far. A country that has a control-crazy government is always on a timer. Just ask Ceausescu. It didn’t work out well for him in the end.
Big Brother might be scary in despotic situations, but that’s not really Big Brother. That’s the Toadie snitch every bully has who tells bullies the scoop but doesn’t help the bullied.
Big Brother means everyone can see everything. In fascism, you can only see what you are allowed to see. Traditionally, fascism made it possible to erase the truth and hide things.
The internet has a way of kneecapping fascist information control, even in countries that have nationwide firewalls. After all, we still get leaks from notoriously secretive countries like North Korea.
Being able to see the misdeeds and cruelty of others makes it way easier for consequences to happen.
Would you continue to support Diddy knowing what he did? In the past, police would look the other way because he had money and power. Having so many eyes on the case, though, changed that.
Police and politicians can’t just squiggle away from the evidence anymore. There are millions of eyes watching what they do — and they know it’ll be egg on their collective face if they don’t do something.
People often underestimate how much of a driving factor shame, shunning, and protests can be in keeping people in line. They also underestimate how much consequences can be a deterrent.
Think about it. If you could do whatever you wanted and were basically guaranteed no consequences, wouldn’t you do something heinous? Many people would say yes.
Diddy, Epstein, all these other people who did shady dealings behind closed doors? They grabbed their power during the end of an era when privacy was guaranteed and all we could rely on was personal credibility.
Of course, evil men undermine the credibility of good men when it serves them. So, they liked the status quo they had. They were ready to do anything to keep that status quo in place.
The panopticon of the internet crushed it — and unlike the way things were in the past, no PR team can save them from the truth being leaked out. I mean, you can’t hide that much video evidence.
Our ability to share videos, corroborate evidence, speak out on social media, and share stories from people who out wrongdoers is a major tool that’s upending the status quo.
You’re going to see a lot of the rich and famous get caught doing horrible things. That number will increase until it becomes blatantly apparent that what was once a free-for-all is no longer the case.
It started with #metoo. It’s continuing with the outing of open secrets, corporate graft, and political heists.
I, for one, welcome the panopticon.
Sometimes, the things we feared the most end up being our biggest allies for freedom. Who’d have thought?
You make an interesting argument, but I’m not completely convinced by it.
One thing I’m thinking of is this: those in power increasingly attempt (often successfully) to seize control of the panopticon, and make it a one-way view, by them of us. I welcome the cameras on them, but they don’t and are doing all they can to forestall that.
There are panopticons and then there are panopticons.
Let’s not forget that the original idea of the panopticon was for the powerful to monitor the weak they’d characterized as miscreants.