Let's Bring Privacy Back

An essay

People are no longer just creators or watchers of social media, they’re creators and potential topics for discussion. The Panopticon Theory affirms that people can be controlled when they believe they are being watched, even when they categorically are not. Based on the panopticon prison watchtower design, the theory gives credence to the idea that after believing they have been watched for so long, people will start to “watch” themselves and police their actions as if the guard is currently inspecting them. For example when you’re a child who gets caught going into the cookie jar and your parent tells you they always know when you’re up to something, you will instinctively stop trying to go into the cookie jar for fear of being caught again. However on the internet, the panopticon has reared its head in increasingly disruptive ways.

The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan

People online have placed a high emphasis on inoffensive personal branding. The clothes are similar ( the New York Uniform trend is a good example), the takes are the same, and more and more people are listening to the same artists leaving little room for smaller acts. While it’s easy to place blame at the feet of algorithms pushing people towards whoever pays the them the most for our attention (there is definitely that going on) I think we have to look back at the panopticon for a deeper explanation.

In 2024, it’s easy to become the internet’s “person of the week”. Even if you’re a completely private person, something you say or do can drum up enough ire to mean that your entire life will be combed through for content. What does this mean? Well the results may vary depending on your controversy. Last week, a woman went viral for living in a one bedroom home with her 6, soon to be 7 kids and husband. In just the span of a few days, dozens of tiktoks have been made about her life with many digging into her past, her husbands past, where they live, etc. This invasion takes the guard out of the watchtower and places him directly in your cell, shining a light on you while you change. It makes sense then that you would strive to smooth out any edges you may have so you don’t end up like that but in doing so, you diminish who you are as a whole in preparation for a dragging that may never come.

Art by Daniel Garcia

This also means that the way we engage with our environment changes dramatically as well. I have seen so much content of people getting made fun of for doing something innocuous. Maybe its a dance video and a woman is in the background laughing (we aren’t there so we don’t know at what) or making a stank face (again, we don’t know for what reason) and all of a sudden she’s the perfect example of the jealousy older women have for young women enjoying themselves. Or someone is at a festival dancing wildly and now people are online debating their drug use. Not only are people not permitted to live freely anymore but the responses to them living are over the top and jump to harmful conclusions. Mostly because people have to try and up the anti with their takes to set themselves apart. Once a horrible fate endured by celebrities, we all now have to act like we’ve been media trained and coached by a stern publicist, lest we see our own average lives ruined.

I also believe the fear induced by constantly being watched ensures that less people feel comfortable making close friends. According to the Pew Research Center, 30% of adults in 2023 said they have 2 or less close friends. I have no doubt that some of that is as a result of not putting ourselves out in fear of being made to be content. How many “How I cut off my toxic friend” storytimes have you seen. If it seems like everyone is experiencing toxicity in their friendships and or being dragged online for it, it makes sense that you’d avoid friendships all together. It’s one thing to deal with the trials of friendship in real time but it’s another to have thousands of strangers weigh in on every conflict you may have.

Personally, I believe we need to rail against the filming of everything and everyone. Privacy is important for self growth, comfort, and also as we move into even more politically trying times, organizing. Being able to live without being under constant scrutiny means we’re free to make mistakes, embarrass ourselves to a reasonable degree, and learn from them. I also believe the constant urge to perform is also harmful and means that at any given moment, we don’t know if our interactions are genuinely or part of a larger plan to protect ourselves. I hope we can figure it out soon because I have a sneaking suspicion that there is going to come a time where we all need to be incognito and find that it is impossible to do.

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I’ve been thinking about this a lot and how its made floundering through your 20s almost impossible. Instead of devoting my attention fully to figuring myself out, I spent a lot of that time trying to figure myself out in a way that is inoffensive to others. I sometimes think about how far I would’ve gotten if I was able to just.. be? Anyway the older I get the more I just sit around and ponder.

Thanks for being here!

-whit