Culture

How Our Current Society Functions Like A Panopticon Prison

327 Comments

Have you ever wondered how much you control yourself due to the risk that others might monitor you? That you almost feel like a ”free prisoner” in the sense that you are not physically incapacitated but in practice mentally deprived of some of your basic freedoms, such as the First Amendment (or equivalent constitutions in Europe), and that some things that you might say or write would have dire consequences for your career and private life?

In any case, welcome to the ”mental prison” that is the panopticon version of 2017. I will guide you through some of its historical tenets and current features.

Panopticon as concrete way to monitor people

The panopticon model was designed by the British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The construction implies that all (pan) prison inmates can be watched (opticon) by a single officer.

As the French left-leaning scholar Michel Foucault stresses in one chapter of his book Discipline and Punish (1975), the process was linked to economic and material effectiveness. It is less expensive if a single person almost simultaneously can monitor all inmates instead of having multiple guards on duty.

Thus the model was indeed a very concrete prison building with concrete dimensions of surveillance, but few prisons have actually been constructed in this particular way. It has rather been the case that a significant share of modern prisons, as well as mental institutions, have been influenced by the pantopicon model to some extent, but most have been built without a circular center in a horizontal and “decentralized” fashion with symmetrical corridors where inmates dwell.

But some have indeed more or less copied Bentham’s outlines and do still remain (whereas others have been demolished). Koepelgevangenis [cupola prison] at Arnhem, the Netherlands, was constructed in 1886. An American example is Stateville Penitentiary, near Joliet, Illinois, built between 1916-24.

Panopticon as a symbol for real monitoring and self-control

After the birth of more complex monitor systems, such as surveillance cameras, the physical dimension of the panopticon has become more obsolete. Instead we can talk about a general trend of ”panopticism” in the modern Western society. This has happened in parallel with the birth of so-called biopolitics, the will to control a population’s way of thinking and acting to a greater extent than in earlier times. This is not because human nature has changed but due to that modernity comes with improved technology, in conjunction with faster information processing and more rapid human migration.

The modern man is indeed more free in some regards. He can travel to another country and start a new business and even become a citizen overseas. With more disposable income and increased standards of living he has a lot of real agency.

However, he is also really or potentially controlled by others, as well as himself, to a greater extent. Modern ideologies like Fascism and Communism, which severely curtailed individual freedoms (at least in times of war), have vanished, whereas the proponents of liberalism, neoconservatism and cultural Marxism have continued to control people by means of digital surveillance and subtle self-controlling mechanisms in the late-modern era.

Therefore one may say that control is manifested in three major ways: state surveillance (police and military), establishment power, and self-control by the individual citizen himself.

If you are a real threat, then the state will intervene (and that is often a good thing). As the German professor of law, Carl Schmitt, describes in his work Politische Theologie (1922), and the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in his book State of Exception (2005), a truly sovereign state dictates the exception from common law in times of political crisis. The term ”legal civil war” encompasses this particular dimension of law and politics.

After the USA Patriot Act was implemented October 26, 2001, any general attorney has the lawful right to ”take into custody” anyone who appears to endanger the security of the United States.

If you are not a real existential threat, and thus a real enemy according to Carl Schmitt’s political distinction and terminology, but has said or written something that goes against the current ideology, then media, social media or their helpers among the populace will step in do the work.

Thus the ”panopticon” of today is not necessarily a centralized unit but rather a fragmentary way of supervision (yet more or less linked to the establishment), which uses digital platforms in order to discipline and punish their political opponents.

As ROK has covered in many articles, verbal dissent can result in what I refer to as quasi-ostracism, meaning that people are deprived of their livelihoods, at least in medium to high-status occupations such as law, journalism, academia and teaching, for being “racists,” “sexists” or even anti-globalists. Even smaller private businesses can take a hit after the Pavlov’s watchdogs have responded to their masters rhetorical conditioned learning.

It is like a soft totalitarian ideology. Instead of sending them to Gulags or expelling citizens (i.e. real ostracism), the fear of being deprived of income and/or social status are the main incentives to keep oneself in check.

For that reason the wise man knows not to say everything he has on his mind in “public” (the distinction between public and private are indeed blurry in current times). Self-control is generally a good thing, but when it becomes a tool for serving an ideology that one does not necessarily agree with then it serves a bad end and is problematic in itself and in blatant opposition to the First Amendment. It is a question of evaluating the consequences but regardless of how you choose to act, you are still a “free prisoner” within the global, or at least national panopticon.

Conclusion

Surveillance and self-control can be good things in many ways, and I do not encourage anyone to say, write or do something stupid just to make a point, but these processes have taken a stronghold over a significant part of the West.

Read More: Beware Of The Coming Surveillance State

327 thoughts on “How Our Current Society Functions Like A Panopticon Prison”

  1. This is the reason underground movements are the best way to disseminate forbidden knowledge. Any movement that is centralized or works in the open runs the risk of getting shut down. You can think of “Fight Club” as a probable model.
    The more information you reveal about yourself online, the more the ammunition you are giving your enemy. They cannot use what you do not give them. While it is easy to control the masses, it is much harder to control the individual. So spread information on the individual and personal level to minimize digital backlash.
    BTW, First!

      1. I’d say it’s more like Little Brother is watching you – one is far more likely to get viciously pranked, trolled, mocked, or ratted out than to be ‘disappeared’ by sinister government agents (who frankly don’t need any real digital proof to fuk you over!)

    2. as long as they dont take me down- down to chinatown, Ill be okay

      1. I thought going downtown was the pinnacle of being booked and becoming a memory. What happens in Chinatown?

        3. Great movie with a red pill resolution. Still in my Top 20 movies to see. Maybe my Top 10.

    1. I think the have an off- the- wall definition of rape in Sweden, i.e., you can be charged if the woman all of a sudden feels uncomfortable, even if you havent engaged in intercourse yet

      1. Yeah. I heard that if the woman says “stop” but the man continues for even one thrust, it counts as rape. How in the world is anyone going to prove that?

  4. The power of the surveillance state is vast and quite intimidating. Years ago, I posed a hypothetical question on a gun-building forum about how the government might or could react to a massive civil disobedience. I was promptly audited by the BATFE on my C&R collector’s license. They WERE watching. Since then, it has only become more pervasive. We are always being watched by the government and the SJW types, who are always on the lookout for offenders to publicly beat down as examples to the general population. Soft tyranny, my ass – it’s pretty blatant, if only you open your eyes to see it.

    1. Correct. Co-Workers who are overly compliant do it. Websites can do it. Your Friends List on Social Media can do it. Your current phone does it. Your entertainment devices do it with their random system updates that have them turn on their own. That is just mostly covert surveillance. Unless if you live off the grid entirely, someone is collecting data out there on you.
      Sites like Spokeo used to be a huge deal since they collected your data when you voted likely. Now there are several other sites just asking you to type in your name to see what they have, and they have plenty on you.

      1. another reason to turn off location services in Facebook(or delete the app entirely from your phone): you will get friend recos even if you arent logged in. A shrink was getting friend recos who were his patients. Since they were all sitting in the same waiting room, FB decided they all should be friends

        1. I was wondering about that. Lately Facebook has found a way to put either lays, potential lays, or general girls who are nearby who I may find attractive, as options of women I should be friends with. It got to the point where if I knew I was around a lady I were attracted to, I was sure Facebook will get the scoop. Invasive beyond measure before getting a chip implanted becomes mandatory. Scary times man.

        2. my location settings are set to:Earth. keep it as broad as possible

        4. broader? I dont think theres a milky way galaxy setting. although it would be cool if FB sent me friend suggestions on Titan

    2. just out of curiosity, what is the force and weight of an audit by BATFE on your C&R license. I mean, other than bothering you in a hypothetical kind of way did it cost you money? Time? Did you have to do something? Or was this a passive thing? Like did they check you out, see you were a good guy posing a hypothetical question and move on?
      The reason I ask is because I don’t really see it as even passingly odd that on a gun-building forum an anon user talking about how the government would react in the case of massive civil disobedience that there would be an eyebrow raised and someone might look into your background. I am not saying come to your door, suspend your license or even make things hard for you, but an audit? Yeah. I would call that vigilance. When anon people who are armed are talking online with other anon people who are armed about government response times in the case of civil disobedience I think having an audit on your license is perfectly in order even if it is just a one time thing and if it was a pattern maybe even more serious consequences.

      1. That “audit” lacks due process. You don’t get to do background checks because somebody asks a generic question about massive civil disobedience. There has to be intent shown to trigger a warrant.

        1. you hold a license, as far as I know but with this stuff I don’t so I am curious, at the pleasure of the licensing committee. If someone is on a gun forum talking about how the government responds to civil disobedience and the government casually looks into the holder of the license of the person who said that I would say good.

        2. You reply so quickly that it’s automatically bad when you didn’t ask about the context of the hypothetical question. If I had advocated violence? Sure. Can they audit without a warrant? Sure – it’s in the conditions and terms of holding a type 03 FFL (C&R license). But when a question such as “how would they KNOW if everyone turned in their high-cap AR-15 mags if they were banned, and how would they check to see if people didn’t?” gets an audit, that’s beyond ‘protecting safety’ and being prudent. To me, that’s into the ‘intimidation’ arena.
          The one plus was that the agent they sent was eminently bang-able. Really hot redhead. However, when BATFE is auditing you, it’s really not a time to run game on their agent ….

        4. the hypothetical question and context don’t matter to me. The government is largely a bunch of time clock morons. They don’t understand context. I would be most of them are following a book of instructions not much different than Rajeet in “texas” when you call tech support ya know. If 1000 people are bugged by some hot redhead and made to feel that life is unfair for a few minutes just so one idiot doesn’t do something stupid I am fine with it. As for a warrant, I don’t know. I am sure getting this license had paperwork you signed and that paperwork had a lot of legalese written in it. Did you read it. A drivers license record can be audited every time you are pulled over for a minor infraction that wouldn’t even warrant a misdemeanor charge. License plate histories can be checked by patrol men in cars on their computers for 0 reason whatsoever. If they are at a red light behind you and bored they can run your plate numbers. It says so in the paperwork you sign when you get your plates. If you were audited for this comment I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there is a piece of paper somewhere with your signature with you acquiescing to it regardless of if you read it or not.
          As for the bang-able redhead. I wonder if people would complain about government as much if every single person who worked front of house and dealt with the public was an 8 or better. lol. I think I can run for office on that platform.

        5. Being licensed doesn’t forfeit your right. Further, I’ve read a lot of gun legal items, none of it mentions “You can’t ask generic questions about XYZ topics”. I have a CHL. I’ve read the paperwork. There’s nothing there that states that I can’t ask regular questions anywhere I want. The triggering of a warrant, or even something actionable from licensing, requires some signaling of intent by the person who is to be targeted for monitoring.

        6. Now see, you’ve just moved this out of “I have nothing to hide and I waive my right to privacy” to “I don’t mind if you’re monitored unconstitutionally”. That’s a wholly different thing.

        7. Heh, yeah, I thought the same thing. Do the bang then send the BATF a thank you note for door step delivery.

        8. I have nothing to hide has to do with me putting a blocker over my laptops camera. I am perfectly fine with the feds monitoring online groups and taking note on a group targeted towards gun hobbyists where one user is asking about government reaction to “massive civil disobedience”

        9. I will take your word for it mostly because I am too apathetic to even begin looking up the agreement and what the licensee consents to. I will say that if your hobby is guns and you are online talking about massive civil disobedience that I would be fine with the government investigating you.

        10. Talking about perpetrating it, sure.
          Asking about it in a generic sense? Mind your own fucking business.
          It’s the American Way. The 1st and 4th Amendment, not to mention the 5th, are in full force.

        11. That is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. So now you’ve taking your valid “it’s about me” and extrapolated it to “and you too regardless of Constitutionality”. Bad path.

        12. to be honest, and I know you feel very differently, I don’t care if it is unconstitutional. That is like telling me that it un-curious George.

        13. Well I do care, and your apathy about it suits me perfectly since it means that you won’t fight people like me in court when we challenge this stuff. So basically it’s a win for both of us.

        14. where do we draw the line? We aren’t talking about smart analysits…my guess. We are talking about the same tech support morons with a binder and a bowl of curry saying “did you try to turn the power off and on”
          Somewhere in a room someone saw something that met some criteria for suspicion and it sparked an audit.
          Fine. I say job well done.

        15. The only thing legally actionable for an audit by the government which is the only thing in question, is stuff that shows intent of illegal conduct. Asking generically “Dang, I heard some dudes talking about civil war, how in the heck would they even begin to go about that?” is not legally probable cause.

        16. that’s my favorite part…win win. You want to waste your time fighting in court go ahead. Doesn’t bother me one bit.

        17. agreed, there are levels where something is innocuous speech and something raises an eyebrow. I think we would agree that somewhere out there exists a line and we would disagree just where that line is. That’s really not all that bad for a days work. However, another agreement we have is that the type of government employee making this decision is probably about as smart as most dmv workers….and then again disagree when I say that they should air on the side of caution.

        18. The causes I fight for and regain my liberties do in fact pay off for me many times. It’s us silly “waste your time” types that have kept us from becoming a complete police state with armed machine gun toting government thugs on every corner in our neighborhoods. We value things you don’t. You’re free to continue descending into a police state as you wish.

        19. I like my little police state here. The police are courteous, armed, plentiful and make the city safe.

        20. Can we also agree that there are probably a lot more important things to be focusing our limited law enforcement resources upon than a guy asking a question on an internet forum? A group of people using a forum to plan something — that’s different. But running down every guy who asks about civil disobedience? That’s not about crime prevention, that’s about intimidation and power.

        21. The line is very clear. It’s “intent”. You can talk about why people would want to kill somebody all the live long day, for example telling people it’s wrong to do and that they should simmer down, etc. But if you start with “I’m gonna….” then there is a clear legal problem. You can talk about generic ways to pick a lock all day long, but if you say “Hey, somebody show me how to pick XYZ lock, I’m planning on hitting some houses this weekend” then that triggers a warrant.
          It all comes down to probable cause, which is pretty easy to define and agree on, no “erring on the side of caution” required. That’s why it’s called “law” and not “police opinion”.

        22. And I don’t and thus when I “waste my time” to prevent it here, and do, then everybody’s happy. It’s only a waste of time to you, is what I’m saying, so saying that I’m wasting my time is in fact false if I’m getting the desired results that I’m aiming for. It’s only wasting my time if I’m butting my head against a metaphorical brick wall and getting nothing in return.

        23. “butting my head against a metaphorical brick wall and getting nothing in return.”
          that notion seems strangely appropriate to this dialogue…

        24. in NYC? The detectives-yes; the uni’s? not so much. Like everywhere else, they’re the goon squad.

        25. The goons treat me well. They know who pays them. Since my time going corporate I have never been treated any way but courteous by a police officer.

        26. Thank God you’re not a lawyer. That sounds more like infringement of civil liberties than it does a job well done.

        27. You probably should have gamed the agent. It would have taken brass balls to do, this making it that more likely you would have succeeded had you only tried.

        29. Funny you should say……lol
          Sorry if it offends you. I like it when nuts don’t have guns so much that i am ok with some legit gun owners being slightly inconviemeved time to time.
          People enjoy their guns. I get it. It’s like crossfit. They get all excited to tell you about it. But we have a civilized world to run here.

      2. I’ve never heard – and no-one else that I talked to has heard – of a C&R license being audited. I lost time to that, and if all the i’s hadn’t been dotted correctly, nor the t’s crossed, I would have at minimum lost my C&R. They could push for a felony if they so desired.
        The question was not in the slightest about illegal weapons; it was phrased something like how would the government react if there was something like a peaceful civil rights campaign about gun rights.
        There is such a thing as freedom of speech so long as I wasn’t inciting treason or violence – which I wasn’t.

        1. but if you’re talking in my house, don’t expect me not to react. See you’re using THEIR telecom stuff, assume their listening.

      3. so in an article on the all seeing eye, you’re demonstrating sympathy with the guys doing the all-seeing? I think you might need to renew your nihilists license

        1. I am not demonstrating sympathy with anyone other than my own enjoyment of life which is in no way hampered by the all seeing eye and has in some instances be increased by it. The unseeing eye (which isn’t exactly what the panopticon is but nevertheless) has done me right so far.

        2. out of interest how has the all seeing / unseeing eye increased your enjoyment of life? Wouldn’t you like to be the one doing the seeing?

        3. I don’t believe anyone actually does the seeing so we can scratch that notion. It is a dream without a dreamer. Foucault is tricky that way. The simulacra of constant surveillance allows the continuation of society…someone viewing the footage is unnecessary.
          That said, and more to your question: I live in what is often here called a “police state.”
          So, for instance, there are mandatory minimums if people are found carrying an illegal firearm. No my first offense. No extenuating circumstance. If you have a gun with now license to carry it you are going to scary prison for 3 years minimum. Further, the cops here can at pretty much any time say “open your bag” and then rummage through it. Say what you want about “muh rites” and “muh freedums” but as someone who lived through the 70’s and 80’s in NYC I am telling you that this is a hell of a lot better and once we get rid of this faggot mayor I hope we bring a law and order guy in who extends the power of the police to stop and frisk at random as well as supports them against civil rights claims.
          How else? My internet experience is made better thanks to google algorithms which spy on me. My grocery store, my drug store, the hardware store, hell even the liquor store spies on me and all to my own convenience.
          Further, at no point has government intrusion on privacy….ugh….even caused me any inconvenience or discomfort. Even the TSA, notoriously uncourteous, has never been more than a minor inconvenience and usually not even that much.
          To answer your question about me doing the seeing…fuck no. I have no desire for that kind of knowledge. I hardly read my own emails let alone want to know what everyone else is up to. I don’t want to rule the world and I don’t want to know people’s secrets. I want to enjoy my life and have it be as hassle free as possible.
          Might I turn the question around on you? Has the all seeing eye hamstrung you in any way?

        4. “I don’t believe anyone actually does the seeing so we can scratch that notion. It is a dream without a dreamer. Foucault is tricky that way.”
          Well, we’re only really discussing Foucault’s ideas to the extent that either as ‘technology’ or inspiration they’ve been operationalised within society. The all-seeing eye doesn’t have to have Sauron on the other side looking into some crystal ball or viewing apparatus in order to perform it’s intended function. It only needs to see what it needs to see, or pull the information it needs to pull, and indeed if seeing or extracting data isn’t the point, but governmentality alone is, then it doesn’t need to do either of those things: the all-seeing eye functions as effectively as a God that doesn’t have to exist so long as there are sufficient believers on the ground. The question as to whether God or exists or whether the all seeing eye exists is a different discussion, even if it may not be unrelated.
          I understand your argument that sometimes a particular kind of regime or variety of law and order works better than another – as in the case of an anarchical new york that was synonymous with crime and murder (although cop shows helped in that regard) – I am not saying liberal is better, but with respect to the systems of surveillance and if you like ‘discipline’ that are emerging they present the promise of an increasingly totalitarian system: to see everything may or may not be to control everything but it’s a step in that direction, and as such it is certainly not an accidental but a very deliberate step, taken by control freaks who seem to care very little for the freedom of thought or movement of those they would govern. We know that observation always has an effect, and on the conscious subject that is even greater – indeed as I’ve argued the mere belief that we are observed is enough to have that effect. Those who believe in God have a God shaped morality. Those who believe they are being watched by an all seeing eye, of whatever nature will likewise adjust their behaviour to their conception of the beast in question – a beast that – as in Plato – may be pleased or displeased, and to the extent that one believes in it – will reward or punish accordingly. So it doesn’t really matter if its a dream without a dreamer at the operational end if the sheep that aren’t being dreamt about believe it’s really real.
          I am actually just a little bit appalled (and disapproving!) that you welcome those google algorithms that spy on you; that you’re ok with your grocery / drug / hardware store, etc violating your privacy simply because it makes your life more convenient. Obviously you have every right to sell yourself out, but since when has minor improvements in convenience been worth sacrificing your most fundamental rights to freedom of privacy, something which amounts to ultimately also to freedom of thought / conscience / religion etc…
          You ask how the all seeing eye has hamstrung me? I would say it does so to the extent that any kind of observation (or belief in such a thing, reasonable or otherwise) inhibits or impacts upon my behaviour. Perhaps it may have effects for the good – civilising / restraining effects perhaps – but why should I give it the benefit of the doubt, when every indication is that the purpose of the reality or the dream / nightmare that is peddled is to control and shape (my) behaviour. In the cases of those algorithms etc. the purpose is to fleece me and you and to make money. In more secular terms i.e. with regard to the commercial aspect of this increasingly totalitarian system I would say the fact that companies, or stores I approach etc. often already have information about me (that has been shared often without any kind of informed consent) or can match my tel number with a history of enquiries etc does have a deleterious effect and promotes monopoly and prevents competition.
          Seriously I just don’t get how you can be so sympathetic towards the new world order or whatever you prefer to call it: you might as well be their marketing guy

        5. “present the promise of an increasingly totalitarian system”
          The thing about totalitarianism is that it isn’t so bad for the totalitarians. I am a valuable member of society. The protections that strip people of their rights are there specifically so I can continue being a consumer which I what I am…and what I enjoy. The system is set up specifically to protect me so that I keep earning and spending and earning and spending in a non stop cycle…I do it well and I like it.
          As for the way things have hamstrung you I think you are being unfair with your answer. You asked me that question and I gave you concrete, pragmatic, real life ways in which my life is markedly better and in turn you are giving me abstractions. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good abstraction and you do it better than most, but I don’t see anything in what you wrote which constitutes any real world issue for you in the way that safety and convenience is a real world issue for me.
          As for the new world order, the elites, COBRA or SPECTRE or whatever…look, I am going to be 45 in a few months. At BEST (and this is an unlikely shot it is the absolute best and almost assuredly I am shooting over the top) I have 60 years on this rock. IN those 60 years I will work for 20 years and I will sleep for 20 years. IN the 20 years remaining I will spend half of that time doing mundane chores, traveling from point a to point b, shitting, having a flu, going to funerals, talking to people I would rather not talk to, waiting on hold for tech support and all sorts of other fucking things. The 10 years of life I have to enjoy I would like to enjoy unfettered by petty or serious crime, I would like it to be civil, decent, fun, safe…I want lots of cool toys, I want the internet to know me and make life easier, I want laughs and orgasm and money and things and food and booze to be handed to me in plenty and with high quality and the world, as it is now, is giving me that opportunity and the things it asks for in return I simply don’t fucking care about.

        6. ROK is on the surface a site about getting girls, getting laid etc. Maybe – well presumably – that’s what attracts you to it, in addition “to the lulz” that is, but for many of us here that rationale – getting girls, getting laid or whatever – is no longer really sufficient, not just because it seems superficial or vacuous but because simply “working the system” or whatever so that it meets such basic needs no longer seems really viable in the way that perhaps it used to be: “the system” that we are supposed to work no longer seems capable of meeting such needs.
          You say that same system keeps you snug, well-fed / satisfied etc, but for most of us here the realisation that there is something very wrong here was probably the starting point for looking at the bigger picture – the wider politics etc. Obviously in this we might in part be projecting our personal failings onto some convenient scapegoat and failing to take responsibility for our own lives etc. (for the sake of argument lets take that as a given to some degree) but even if one allows for that there is still a fundamental difference of perspective here. You say we should work the system, give into it, and it will reward you for your surrender / appeasement / compliance / cooperation – call it what you will – but almost everyone else here sees that we’re moving in a direction where to simply ‘go with the flow’ would be a disaster: the returns are diminishing, and complacency and passivity will only hasten that process.
          You write: “the thing about totalitarianism is that it isn’t so bad for the totalitarians. I am a valuable member of society. The protections that strip people of their rights are there specifically so I can continue being a consumer which I what I am…and what I enjoy. The system is set up specifically to protect me so that I keep earning and spending and earning and spending in a non stop cycle…I do it well and I like it.”
          I have to commend your honesty here – at least with regard to that paragraph. Maybe you’re just humouring me – it’s a disarming way of arguing to concede the main point of contention: I argued that we are heading towards a totalitarian system, and instead of disagreeing you respond by saying effectively we already live in such a system and it is designed to keep you safe and happy so you can be a good worker and that we should all follow suit and give in to the Man or the new world order because to the extent that we do so, we will live rich, stress-free lives full of wealth and pussy.
          As indicated above I think that analysis is flawed, but I also think you’ve overestimated how attractive that scenario seems. Maybe you were only talking about yourself, and you’re rationale for getting up and going to work every morning – you’re a philosopher by training who seems to have drawn conclusions about the world about him and has worked out a utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy designed to produce the maximum benefit for yourself and – should it be a factor in your calculations – perhaps the least harm for others. I get that intellectually – but the rationale – I just don’t think it’s very persuasive. A man does not – and cannot – live for pussy / carnal delights alone, all the more so if one realises (or accepts) that those are the incentivisations of a control system designed to dominate our lives. Of course I allow for the possibility that what you said was just for the sake of argument and that you don’t really believe in a totalitarian system, or that you don’t believe such a system as described – a system of generalised surveillance designed to inhibit and direct thought and behaviour – really exists (although equally for all I know you do and believe it is for the best). But to make such a thing a premise for arguing the pros and cons seems to me quite bizarre: after all even if we admit that most people don’t want to get beaten, murdered or robbed is that really what we’re talking about? Does anyone else here believe that the war on terror was about keeping Americans (and Brits and Europeans) safe? No-one but the hopelessly naive believe that the safety of domestic populations was primarily what the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan and Syria etc etc was all about. Yet the war on terror was what provided the rationale for the surveillance state, and for control of borders and airports and all the other repressive measures against ‘terrorism’ that was pretty much non-existent prior to the first gulf war. So I’m really glad for you that New York is safer, and maybe a bit of extra CCTV and zero tolerance law and order was necessary for that to happen but I am not buying for a moment the idea that the NSA etc. needs to know everything we do in real-time – just because of a few jihadis and extremists.
          But then of course you already admitted that the totalitarianism wasn’t really about any of that – so maybe I’m arguing a straw man – because as you said it’s about keeping the money system going. But you also said it was about ‘safety’ and presumably ‘managing risk’ etc – you talk about keeping new york safe from thugs, but within the public discourse, that is translated into keeping the public safe from terror, which is largely a sham. So if it is about keeping people safe, it’s about keeping the elite safe, not presumably the ordinary folk like you and me.
          But you asked me to give you some quid pro quo with regard to how the all seeing eye or whatever has affected me personally. Well, unlike you I don’t readily dox myself, or describe personal issues in the way you do for the most part – precisely because of the nature of the kinds of issues we are discussing – it is simply not safe to do so – but I will tell you that over the last decade ro so, as I have become aware – along with most others – just how every form of privacy has been eroded and violated I have changed my behaviour very substantially, in terms of habits, in term of what I am prepared to write online, or even on my computer, or to store in the cloud, or to share in an email (totalitarians around the world should be high-fiving at this point). If that was just down to changes in technology etc. then I’d say we all needed to just work around it and adapt, but it isn’t, it is all about control – something we seem now to agree upon. As I say I don’t buy the idea that is making us safer, not even those at the top ultimately, because in the real world it is eroding the very possibility of trust; it is engendering paranoia and fear, and if you think that is a sound basis for anyone’s safety in the long term you are very mistaken.

        7. Just read this whole exchange between you two. Interesting angles. I saw a friend hadn’t seen in 18 years or so the other day. Asked what he’s been doing, responded with the cliche “Living the Dream..” but he paused for a moment after asking what I’d been up to. As I collected my thoughts, and in a mildly demeaning way he added “you know, nightmares are dreams too.” That really sunk deep into my psyche and echoed, not in a self reflecting or personal-image way, but rather questioning what have we become, especially men?
          There’s a compounding issue with surveillance via public data mining, and it’s quite simple really. All computer coding / algorithms are written from logic. And what else has a heavy logic base? The entire French-Norman legal system we live under the control of. In that respect, the two are inexorably bound. Ironically, all law was codified by the 1950s because so many laws were written, with such complexity, almost no one without a legal degree could stand trial defending themselves anymore, you had to become a legal-code-master, AKA Attorney.
          Both codes, both logic. If you’re very, very wise you can upon occasion use case law that pits amended statutes against themselves to combat existing laws, and access components of common law to find the cracks in their logic veneer, exploit them, and defend yourself. The government has established no responsibility to notify the public of changed or added laws (codes). If you don’t know them, or that they were added or altered, it’s your own fault. So, breaking them accidentally becomes so easy you must have an agent(s) to defend yourself in the Federal Reserve Note Tribunals we call courts. Yes, your county courthouse has American flags with gold fringe around them. The fringe denotes military jurisdiction. Meaning, any ruling by a lower court can be overturned by a federal court, and they’ll use the full military force as desired to enforce the decision. Scary right?
          So as it stands in our current state of society, we have federal, state revised, and local codes based in logic, that are exercised by the legislative & judicial branches, tied to governments who openly surveil with high powered, high storage capacity computers running coded algorithms to scan and collect stored data “just in case” someone “might” be a bad guy, AND they can change these laws without notifying the public, then argue it’s in the code, you just have to know where to go find it, so it’s your fault you broke the code. The media then steers your attention towards certain mainstream legislation and world events, the perfect smoke screen, and the devli’s in the details a savant couldn’t memorize… very complicated details at that.
          Thus, with the flip of a switch a “social trend” can instantaneously be made legal or illegal, and enforced…. I believe this is where we’re headed. With corporations running the government, and lobbyists the A&R reps, there’s nothing unavailable to them at this point. It’s already here.
          Now I did say logic was the basis, however, since law was codified it frightened everyone into believing the actors of the federal reserve note tribunals – judges, cops, lawyers, et. al – were the only salvation to escape from its grasp, and an increasingly submissive society, dumbed-down to a level devoid of logic has emerged. The new game is redefining logic itself. A prime example, Confederate Monuments being removed. Winking at a girl is rape. Raping a girl as an immigrant is excusable. I think for a chick-game website it’s very rational to shift gears and stay there with this crap status quo. Imprisonment fear is very rational.
          I believe they’ll have hand-prints, then in essence finger prints, not only of many people’s bio scans on digital devices – you’re fucking stupid as shit if you use those.. seriously – but your behavior in general, tied directly to your social security #, which is the debt-code you’re given at birth for the national debt to pay off in taxes. Don’t like the way behavior sub-group 1XT7242-404 is producing? Create an insta-law, flip the switch, and make it impossible for them to exist within 3 years or less, or just imprison them for cheap prison-camp labor.
          Losing your rights, constitutional or common law, happens in just small enough increments, over just long enough periods, the scope can’t be grasped by small-minded people. Moreover, the order of magnitude of the change isn’t even considered, before, during, or after the change. True sheeplism is upon us. You think 1997 wasn’t considerably “freer” than 2017? It sure as shit was. The changes have happened so incrementally people’s memory begin to fade after 20 years, and that submissive code-beaten dog kicks in, they acquiesce, then acquiescence turns into shift of mores, and eventually norms…. and no one even remembers what the old rights were, or the freedoms attached, because after all norms are in essence values being acted out, and living an organized, structured life takes too much time, detracting from rights-stripping awareness.
          I believe we are now living in the first generation – Millennials – where the aggregate values have seen more than a 10-15% change in major life-altaring, society devolving categories.

        8. the simulacra of constant surveillance allows the continuation of society…someone viewing the footage is unnecessary.

          Don’t worry, that’s what AI and the array of algorithms and devices in the works are for.

        9. Interesting post and take on things. I haven’t thought about it like that really, but the comparison is certainly a fair one: computer programs run on code and so do societies. In either case we have some kind of agency involved in programming, and periodically updating that programming, at least with regards to how to follow rules: computer engineering and social engineering by this reading are analogous, and the main difference as you describe it is that when there’s an update to a computer system, or a programme, generally we are asked to assent to it; to confirm that we have read the small print and agree to the new terms and conditions. An exception to this is where we have something like ‘automatic updates’, where typically we have authorised the update facility in advance. When we do so of course, it’s not necessarily because we trust it (or them…microsoft, apple etc) but because the possibility of reading and understanding the terms of conditions are daunting (and of course evaluating the actual changes in codes and the implications would be virtually impossible without guidance). Thus we tick ‘agree’ on account of convenience and pragmatism.
          When in a supposed democracy we appoint ‘representatives’ to make our decisions for us, something similar is in play. I think you are on the right lines when you emphasise the complexity of how the system works: legal systems are arguably deliberately byzantine, and codification tends to add to rather than detract from complexity – case law, precedents, statutes etc build up accretively when they do not explicitly revoke what they have succeeded. It is no coincidence that politics is (and probably always has been) a lawyers game, and that lawyers are skilled precisely in administering the opacity they themselves create. I am not saying all law is made to obscure rather than rationalise, but certainly some is, and particularly where the law changes to facilitate or engineer change then that opacity is what conceals and protects the nature of the change from public scrutiny and indeed from any kind of substantive democratic input. Indeed one could make the case that societal and political change driven by legal reform may well be fundamentally antagonistic to democracy for the very reasons mentioned – ordinarily people cannot consent to what they cannot understand, and ‘representive’ governments, where the representation in question is typically performed by that breed of sharks and shysters we fondly know as lawyers, should in a state of rapid social change be considered at high risk of being fundamentally undemocratic verging on the totalitarian. We still call such a system democratic because a ‘social contract’ is deemed still to exist, and democratic elections pay lip service to this mechanism for alienating our rights to what effectively a professional class of manipulators.
          So I agree pretty much with your picture of how legislative reform stymies the ‘rights of man’ by creating increasing complexity, but it’s worth also considering how very one-sided this is. The legalism that is likely to trip us up because we didn’t know the law had changed, or new rules were in place etc., has another side to it, which is the complete suspension of the rule of law (and democracy) whenever it suits the law-makers. That’s just as much of a problem here. Those who make the laws, particularly at the higher levels – government, supreme courts – are the arbiters not only of what is legal / not legal, but also what should fall within the law and what must fall without. They control the boundaries of the law, and as such also the exceptions to the rule of law. This article refers to Agamben’s state of exception argument for example with regard to how certain types of necessity, states of emergency or other ‘exceptional’ states may in extreme circumstances and on a discretionary basis justify the breach of all the kinds of protections that were we to understand them properly should actual protect us rather than threaten us. The most obvious situation when the law that these shysters preside over may be effectively broken in such a state of exception is any kind of emergency state – such as the situation following the 9/11 terror attacks and the declaration of a war of terror, the chief effect of which within western nations was to compromise certain basic legal (and in the US constitutional) rights, and to pave the way for mass surveillance by the intelligence community. That surveillance may or may not be legal / have been legal, but it doesn’t really matter, because if they can argue that they have cause they can do whatever they want, and even if they’re found to be acting outside the law, they can just continue regardless. As such there is a very thin line between democracy and autocracy / totalitarianism
          https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/does-the-patriot-act-allow-bulk-surveillance/392651/

        10. I’m disappointed but not surprised that the poster boy for the system didn’t reply to your cogent and all-encompassing post.
          He reminds me of this fella from the Matrix:
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9b7f774d65f063fc3aa74bb886127035809164fd59e4ffcc29ff8129abd8d934.jpg
          He ended up becoming an agent for the matrix.
          But if you follow the discourse between him and GOJ below you will see that GOJ is like a Neo in the matrix but worse- freedom does not come from within the Matrix by defeating all of the Mr.Smiths.

        11. Lolknee is a very intelligent man, but he’s the very proof that all those HBDs are just idiots unable to think things through. Intelligence cannot be a guide for what’s moral or inmoral, correct or incorrect. Pragmatism and reason can justify whatever one wants to justify, no matter how horrible, as long as it’s the most efficient way… One can just see Lolknee’s argument and see the problem with Nihilism…there is no future hence “why worry if a bunch of pyromaniacs want to know all the nooks and crannies of the building I live in to burn it all and everyone in it in 1 year if I am gonna be dead anyway and in the meantime they offer the best cleaning services available and make the shopping for me”. That’s in a nutshell what Lolknee is saying.
          I can’t claim to know myself very clearly what might be right or wrong in the long term, however if I don’t suffer my girlfriend trying to check my phone or emails, how in the name of all that’s sacred should I suffer politically correct fat bureaucrats and/or marketeers know everything about me and my whereabouts or suffer their delusions of grandeur (censorship, imposition of PC thought etc.). I think this quote is the best one that defines the position of Lolknee:

          The final school of thought is not a school of thought at all, but an exhausted rejection of thought. This is Nihilism, and it is the dominant philosophy of our age, and the unspoken assumption underlying nearly every major social policy debated or enacted today.
          Nihilism is the metaphysical posture that no truth is actually true. If no truth is true, life is what you yourself have the strength of will to decree it to be, like God separating Light from Darkness at the dawn of time, by fiat. If no truth is true, no flag is truly worth dying for or fighting for or even arguing about, and no marriage is final and no contract is binding and your word of honor means nothing, and you owe
          your friends no loyalty.
          If no truth is true, the only impermissible sin is to believe and preach and practice the truth.
          …. The Nihilist lives in a formless void, and believes only in himself, his willpower, his self image and his self esteem. His motto is that life is what you make it.

          Notice that the devil is in the details…

        12. I don’t think anyone would doubt Lolknee’s intelligence or that the fact that he is a consistently entertaining contributor here, but I have to agree with your assessment. Lolknee’s nihilism may well be philosophically viable – pragmatic even – but as an approach to the kind of problems dealt with on this site they are likely to be disabling and inimical to our interests.
          I don’t know where you found that quote but it is a very good one and pretty much sums up where he appears to be coming from. Lolknee is a philosopher, so he is careful not to make metaphysical assertions but still what exactly is a metaphysical posture? Why is it less metaphysical to claim there is no truth than to claim that there is, or at least remain agnostic on the issue? If it is nothing more than a posture, and cannot claim the status of truth why should it in any way command our attention or respect? Nihilism may well lie at the root of the spiritual emptiness of our world, but that sounds to me like the diagnosis of a problem not a basis for culture or morality. And indeed I might well ask who exactly is rejecting thought in a state of exhaustion? I’m not, and if a bunch of clever nihilists are then why on earth should I defer to them – I thought we had to take responsibility for ourselves not slavishly follow the cleverest guy in the room?
          I get the idea that there is a sense that taking responsibility for oneself may involve “the strength of will” to decree life to be whatever you want it to be or whatever, although those words taken by themselves could easily have been spoken by Allister Crowley himself. The fact is strength of will in the situation we find ourselves in probably has a lot more to do with standing up to those whose will may differ from our own or even be directed against us rather than just going along with the flow and working the system in a state of atomistic self-absorption – which is what it pretty comes down to. In fact I can’t think of any philosophy that our elites would welcome more than one that reduced us all to dog eat dog consumerist materialism, and as such the question needs to be asked whether if we take up nihilism as recommended is it really our own will that we are serving? I suspect not.

        13. I don’t know where you found that quote but it is a very good one and pretty much sums up where he appears to be coming from.

          Well, that was taken from http://www.scifiwright.com/2013/09/the-glory-game-or-the-bitterness-of-broken-ideals/
          It’s a long essay but it describes a supposedly natural evolution of the Weltanschauungs that have taken root after the demise of Christianity in the society. I encourage you to read it, even though neither you nor me would agree with it completely. According to the progression described in the essay Nihilism comes to be the last one, hence the “exhaustion” as part of this philosophy according at least with that description.

          In fact I can’t think of any philosophy that our elites would welcome
          more than one that reduced us all to dog eat dog consumerist
          materialism, and as such the question needs to be asked whether if we
          take up nihilism as recommended is it really our own will that we are
          serving? I suspect not.

          In reference to what’s happening now and the influence of certain groups that seem to be pushing for the acceptance of X and Y philosophies and lifestyles when it suits them, you are completely right IMHO.

        14. Thanks for providing the the source. I have to admit I thought you’d actually taken that from one of Lolknee’s comments, which I suppose reflects well on him. That doesn’t alter my position though on the ideas conveyed in that passage, but I will try to read through the whole essay properly when I can. It doesn’t do to be too dogmatic when it comes to such things

        15. Well to be honest, if memory serves, Lolknee commented that when it came to morals he is his own god and has set his own code of conduct for himself, when I stated that without an external restriction to one’s behavior, morals and ethics are a matter of taste… So in that aspect, his own description matches the one I quoted. About dogmatism you are right on that one.

        16. “because if they can argue that they have cause they can do whatever they want, and even if they’re found to be acting outside the law, they can just continue regardless” << .. an accurate application of your aforementioned point, “controlling what does or does not fall within the boundaries of law.” It really comes down to an argument for cause, and in essence broadening or shrinking what can be considered “cause” based on severity, or “perceived” severity of the crimes committed.
          The end game essentially being crimes against humanity, mass murder. If they can mold the atrocities of Auschwitz, repackage and apply them to a causation vehicle like 9/11. totalitarianism in the social sense, whether applied in a hard or soft (current) format, is nonetheless totalitarianism and surfacing / resurfacing with reliable historical frequency as the de facto clutch of each world-ruling empire, regardless of government type.
          Incidentally, if a small group of terrorists opens fire in town square, killing 10-100 people, and one American with an Assault rifle shoots back, kills all three, but just one of his bullets misses or passes through said terrorist and kills a civilian, he can be charged with manslaughter potentially, maybe worse. I say “soft” totalitarianism because the many sharp edges of our rights, that cut through the b.s. and make life productive from a self-sovereign prospective and the quality of service we get from the enormously (now) wasteful and expensive (bloated taxation) government have markedly declined in utility and overall value. We’ve left little escape for self-reliant individuals, families, and small communities to escape the soft totalitarianism. It’s, well, almost “Complete” the world over.
          I’m now installing dash cams – front and rear facing – in my car to level-up my defense. I had an incident on Interstate Hwy where a black women definitely racially profiled me and started road rage out of blue this Monday. Her husband, driving another car actually HIT my car with his because I wouldn’t let his out-of-line wife pass me on the shoulder…. me going 65, her going 90. Their social flare-up was a creation of the media, and the government. He’s being charged with a criminal act. I still got a low-level reckless opp (kinda like a domestic violence, you can be defending yourself but both get charged automatically). The black cop said:”This is how people get shot in this country,” referring to the guy who hit me. He also said, “we’ll just review the video tape.” I guess I knew it but you don’t think about it, the entire Interstate Hwy has video cams of every damn mile through my state, and it’s ALL being recorded.
          – I appreciate your well though-out reply last time. Cheers Michaelmobius1

        17. You’re welcome. That run in with that black couple sounds like it was pretty hairy. Surveillance, be it, government run or self-imposed certainly has it’s uses, and obviously crime is one of those uses ,but obviously the costs have to be considered against the benefits. I would say governments – and a great many political movements, institutions (the United Nations, the EU, the federal government etc.) etc. justify themselves in terms of guaranteeing ‘peace’; of achieving a safer, less crime ridden, less terrorism plagued world. Attacking extremism (of any kind), combating ‘hate’ and waging the war on terror are all examples of that. I think people dwell too much on things like the nature of world war II, or the holocaust or 9/11 etc. – things that can be debated endlessly. All that we need to know is that such events can and do get used – both sincerely and cynically – to prop up politically useful narratives. As Ulrich Beck realised we live very much in a “Risk Society”. He was talking mainly about economics, but risk and the management of risk is central to all aspects of life, and it should be increasingly clear to us that governments and political players engaged in risk management are rarely invested in simply reducing or minimizing risk, but are also incentivised to increase anxieties (the perception of risk) in order to be able to manage them. That’s why with regard to external threats, extremists, whether they be nasty misogynists mouthing off online, “hate speakers” or the kinds of people who – like the Manchester bomber – actually do hurt and terrorise people – the PTB are very rarely if ever simply engaged in trying to minimise the problem but are always ‘managing’ the risk presented. This is where their power comes from. They amplify the problems in order to be able to be seen to be taking action, and to be able to control the populace they claim to be keeping safe. It really is time to start looking hard into how governments and existing power structures are themselves invested in systems of risk rationale that actually work to increase levels of violence in the world. With something like 9/11 for instance trying to discover if it was an ‘inside job’ or whatever, is probably going to completely distract from investigating how even a government that was completely innocent (i.e. wrongly accused by conspiracy theorists) might still be making the situation vastly worse because of its wider “investment” in pushing risk narratives (remember the PNAC people consider how useful another pearl harbour would be?). The whole war on terror could be seen in those terms even if there was not an iota of truth in the notion of it being an inside job.
          So returning to your nasty road rage experience I would say the bigger picture is about both weighing up the pros and cons of surveillance / government interventionism but also considering the extent that the situation may be being set up so that we all feel we need that surveillance etc. I don’t think we’re anywhere near to living in a totalitarian society yet, but the tendency is always towards greater surveillance, greater intervention, greater control etc. and this is only justifiable if they can, as we’ve discussed, demonstrate that they have ’cause’; that it is all necessary for the greater end of effectively managing risk and keeping us all safe.

    3. Remember the world when the internet was only for nerds? I did. Would love to go back to that era. The internet started becoming a thing in the 1990s and gradually only got bigger.
      That being said, as I lived in both worlds, I loved the pre-digital era way more than the one now. I found my face to face friends to be much better company than people I met or converse with online.
      Most people who followed sci-fi of the pre-digital era also tended to have a more optimistic vision of the world of the future. I notice all the sci-fi in this time period showcases dystopian societies on the edge of collapse. The original Blade Runner was considered dystopian for its time period but has nothing on many of the current sci-fi films.
      That and the former are more likely to be honest and upfront while the latter will blow smoke up my ass.

    4. Its naive to assume privacy on someone else’s phone lines, satellites, servers, etc.

      1. Well, it is YOUR phone. You’re leasing the service, but the phone belongs to you. Makes it a bit stickier.

        1. My phone, their everything else. Sure I’d LIKE to
          believe that they’re being fair and ethical, but I certainly don’t trust them to be.
          Just like I wouldn’t hang out in your house blathering all manner of evil shit and plots of mayhem and expect you to keep silent about it.
          (though maybe…)

        2. Oh, agreed. That’s why I turn off the electronics and put down the phone from time to time. It’s my life and privacy and I don’t need any reason except “Because I want to”.

  7. Nice to see a little Mikey F theory making the pages of ROK. Very cool article, very much on point philosophically, incredibly relevant and bringing in a much underappreciated thinker. One of my favorites in a long, long time. Way to go William Adams!

    1. When I first saw this I thought “i should do the same” I mean say what you want about Zuckerberg, if he put that tape there then he did it for a reason and he, as you say, is in a position to know. Then I thought it through. I don’t do anything subversive. Hell, I don’t even fap to porn. At most if they log on my camera they will see me on this site or others rolling my eyes. SO I said f it. I imagine a guy like Zuckerberg, if he is caught taking some cock in the ass from a male prostitute, stands to loose half his fortune when he is divorce raped and so if there is anything in the world he has to hide this might be a good idea. But I have nothing to hide, I have no fortune and I have no wife to divorce rape me. Go on nsa….if you want to see the look on my face when I choose between strawberries and blueberries on fresh direct have at it.

      1. okay dude, so when the one enemy you have hacks your webcam and blackmails you with footage of you doing heavy squats in the nude whilst singing showtunes, get back to me

        1. I have no enemies: one
          I have nothing to be ashamed of: two
          I will say, however, if I were to ever have a party at my house and I knew some people would be doing drugs (I don’t do them but I don’t judge people who do so long as they aren’t bums…I know loads of finance guys who snort tons of coke and I am fine with it) I would absolutely cover that camera up for the party

        2. why not cover it up now? I still cant believe your one of these “I have nothing to hide” guys- thats not the point; point is, you can be snooped on, inside your home

        3. If lolk did that he’d probably become a viral hit and he could make a ton of money fulfilling the depraved fantasies of millions of lonely fat women with cats.

        5. OK big boy, if you dont give us access to the info, then we WONT release this viral video of you!

        9. You might find one or two of your videos on pornhub. lol
          “old man bangs 5 coked out women in living room”

        10. I have often thought of going full big brother coverage in my home wrt camera and audio as a safeguard against false rape charges but then I realized that the best way to safeguard against false rape charges is to be mean to women and fuck them well.

        11. its not just about you.
          maybe you have nothing to hide, but your nephew does. got a scholarship to college, but someone has dug up convos of him bragging to others how he cheated his way into school. they approach you, saying they wont ruin his life if youll do a lil corp espionage on their behalf…

        12. my nephew can worry about himself. If he is doing things which compromise his future then fuck him.

        13. yeah just you WAIT till you get fired for
          “being a frequent commentor on a known anti-semitic, pro-rape website….”

        16. you could be Vlad Putin’s executive secretary for all I know. you are gonna wreck my life bem

        18. I’ve thought about that. If it happens it happens. In the meantime I haven’t been fired. I don’t hide my personality at work I make it an asset at my job and I make myself a part of a team that is worth more than these stupid principles. I also work around adults who don’t think that message boards and twitter constitute the real world.

        19. I hear ya.
          The people I work with and for would not be remotely surprised by my comments here, most of which they’ve heard live!
          Then again, if I’m stupid enough to use THEIR computer and THEIR time to do this (which I do), I really have no recourse. It would infantile to assume personal privacy on THEIR devices.

        20. Question then. Why do you not use your real name as your Disqus handle?

        22. mostly because of the assholes here 🙂
          I will avoid headaches where necessary. I am not going out of my way to look for problems. But I am also not going to go out of my way to store canned goods and other paranoid nonsense because I am afraid big brother is watching.

        24. This wasn’t really about stockpiling. Wanting a veil of privacy at some level then IS good. It’s not just about government, as you note, there are real life people who can become an absolute problem in life if given too much slack.
          The main collectors of information are private organizations, staffed with people in real life who may or may not know that you post here. Maybe some troll here works for Disqus, or Apple, or some other company whose device or services you use.

      2. If you work in a company that has competitors, and you have access to sensitive information that could damage them, or alternatively if you are in a position that could harm or help that company and there is information that if known could be used to blackmail you, then yes lolk, you have “something to hide”. Its not a stretch to activate your microphone and listen in on a sensitice conversation from a distance, and its not a stretch to give lolk a phone call warning you that if you dont want X, Y or Z to know about something you did then certain things have to happen.
        But thats an extreme example. A more pedestrian example is a third party app gaining access to information that if hacked could be used by criminals to get your bank account, break into your house when you arent there, etc.

        1. Oh absolutely! I am not saying there is NO reason to do that, just that I have no reason to. There are many circumstances in which I think it would be perfectly valid to hide that…everything from the corporate example you give, to marital infidelity to, shit, if I was going to, as I mentioned below, have some people over my house who I know do a little coke now and then. The fact of the matter is that my life is fairly dull and routine. I go to work, pay my taxes, spend a lot of time in the gym, ride my bike, go to restaurants and hotel bars and fuck women. I am single, no kids, my business isn’t one with trade secrets or anything, I don’t do drugs, I drink but not to excess…fuck I weight the amount of food I eat and know my macros. I would bore you to death if you were watching with the exception of the whores that pass through my life and since I am single there is nothing wrong there.

      3. The point of privacy isn’t to just allow bad things to happen. The point of privacy is to afford you your own space that is not intruded upon by others for no good reason. You don’t ever have to be doing things wrong to want privacy.

        1. no, you are right. You don’t have to be doing things wrong to want privacy. So get rid of your lap top, your smart phone and your smart tv. Otherwise, you take the good with the bad. If the NSA can be flummoxed by some duct tape I am not particularly worried. In the meantime, I really don’t care enough about them looking at me to bother cutting the piece of duct tape. If you do, you are more than welcome to do so and like I said below, if I was going to do something shady I would cover up the cameras too.

        2. Privacy is on demand, not total at all times, and that’s a feature not a bug. I can and do turn off those devices at times. Sometimes I don’t care about privacy, such as when I’m walking down the street whistling (meaning, I don’t care if people see me out in public doing things).
          The point of constant surveillance isn’t really to catch you doing some small thing wrong either. It’s to amass a whole lot of evidence, circumstantial and real, in case the ptb want to some day come down on you. That’s why it’s just recorded and stored, and not analyzed (unless you’re under an actual investigation).
          You’re free to waive your right to privacy, no problem. I’m just noting that it’s not only for people to “do wrong things”.

        3. well thankfully duct tape is easy to get. Just seems to abstract for me to care about on a spring day.

        4. Not that its any consolation, but I’m certain the vast majority of data gathered on someone is in the cause of selling them more shit they don’t need.

        5. That’s just repeating the “privacy is only for wrong” mantra though. Like I said, you’re free to waive that right, but carelessness and putting it in the back of your mind except when you explicitly wish to break the law (or do something wholly immoral) makes it real easy to forget about it when you’re doing something wrong but don’t really consider covering things up.
          Not trying to convince you to cover or not cover, just pointing out some of the issues here.

        6. I knew a guy from the Russian Space Agency who told us about laws under the USSR. The only reason for the laws was to make it impossible to NOT break them routinely, so the state had an excuse to nail them anytime they wanted. Can you honestly tell me we’re not in the same boat?

        7. We are absolutely in the same boat. Lawyers will even tell you that at any time, any place, you are likely violating one or more laws without “doing anything wrong”.

        8. That’s true. The problem is that in addition to the private things, which you’ve likely explicitly agreed to when you hit that “Privacy and Terms Of Service Agreement” (which then, hey, that’s on you), but NSA is openly stating that it collects all internet data and is storing it out in Utah. That’s where the issue is. That’s a warrantless search, in addition to an invasion of privacy.

        9. There are indeed legal, constitutional issues in the data-mining/storing operations (regardless of being couched in any ponderous, unreadable agreement foisted upon me) which warrant (huh) examination by Legal Minds that are far above my paygrade…
          In the meantime, I’ll opt-out as much as possible.

        10. Also, technical note, don’t use duct tape. That shit will stick and leave a glue residue on the camera making it likely un-useful in the future. A post it note works fine and you can tear it into a piece small enough to cover, and leave no glue residue behind.

        11. Right, that’s basically my issue. We can say that we do or don’t have things to hide, but in theory rule of law dictates that the government needs probable cause to do what amounts to an electronic search and surveillance of individuals. It’s pretty clearly spelled out in the Constitution. Doing wrong or being boring has nothing to do with the issue.

        12. “In his book Three Felonies a Day, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day”

        13. but the problem is this sort of thing wont end until most americans pick up their constitution, read it, understand it, and then realize that most of the big gov stuff they support is unconstitutional as well. Until then the best thing to do is to be away from the tech as much as possible or pull a kneeman and not care.

        14. I’m not cut out to not care when my freedoms are infringed. Not in my genetics.
          Privacy can be pretty easily had if you put down devices. But that doesn’t mean becoming Amish. Just use situational awareness and put down the devices when you actually want privacy but use them when it doesn’t matter to you.
          This is not some binary equivalency.

        15. I agree. I was just pointing out that the only way this unconstitutional big gov stuff will end is when most people realize that most big gov things are unconstitutional. As long as people support a bloated federal government this stuff will never completely go away .

      4. It’s not whether you’re actually doing anything wrong; it’s the whole principle of privacy and being free from surveillance. Ask anyone under about 30 and most have no clue and are willing to let themselves be bugged and monitored and don’t care. Idiots.

        1. “its the whole principle” is when I lost interest. I don’t care that google monitors me. I opt into it. they make life easier. Principles? Fuck that. Might as well tell me it is “college sports” or “women’s rights” or something else I care about less than which toilet paper I buy

        2. The thing is that you made a choice to opt into that. How much surveillance do you NOT have a choice to opt out of?

        3. Likewise you opted into a license which is controlled by an oversight agency which, I would bet, has some fine print about auditing that license. I am not going down the tinfoil baseball cap road of living my life in fear of government agents spying on me. Next thing you know I will be living in a bunker surrounded by cans of beans and jars of my own feces. I think I will just go on living my life.

        4. Don’t try and conflate wanting a normal level of privacy with being some wide eyed hoarder type, man, that’s not even vaguely a valid comparison. Even you want a level of privacy, you’ve said as much already, when it’s appropriate.

        5. no, I wouldn’t do that. A normal level of privacy is one thing. But do you really, honestly, truly think that the government is taking over the cameras in your laptop or the audio on your phone…or mine….or any of the people we talk to and spying on us? My guess is that Zuckerberg is more afraid of a private eye finding out he is getting his ass piped out so that ugly wife of his can take half his money (a legit concern of wealthy and unfaithful men would be wives who are just looking for a hammer ya know).
          A reasonable amount of privacy? Sure. If a guy in a laundry truck is parked outside my window every day I am going to wonder why. To think about the possibility that my devices are being monitored by the government is where that leap goes from “wanting a normal level of privacy” to “being some wide eyed hoarder type”

        6. Dude, you need to keep up on news. It was reported a few years back, by all of the mainstream media, that NSA is in fact storing digital information on the bulk of the nation. There’s a data storage “warehouse” out in Utah where they have vast farms of hard drives where it’s being stored. This isn’t conspiracy stuff any more, the source wasn’t David Icke/Alex Jones, it was the NSA itself, they said it right out in the open.
          The way it works is that the U.K. monitors us and then trades information with the U.S. for information on Brits, to avoid constitutional warrant issues here and there.
          This is old, old news. Here’s a report from The Guardian about 4 years ago on the matter, and The Guardian is about at the tippy top of “respectable” to most people. It was ALL over the news at the time.
          You may need to update your “wild eyed kook” thing a bit.
          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/nsa-prism-records-surveillance-questions

        8. I am absolutely not keeping up on the news. Also, I don’t know what this “Utah” you speak of is, but if they are storing stuff what is it? Video cameras on corners? From flight terminals? who cares? I am of no particular interest to the government other than that they want me to pay an exorbitant amount of taxes. Worrying about being video taped or warehouses in supposed states full of audio and video is nuts. Are they recording every conversation that everyone has all the time? Fine. I don’t care. Are they video taping every single action every person makes all the time? fine I don’t care. My guess is that it is less than those two things but even at the absolute limit I just don’t care. Don’t break the law. Do your job. Pay your taxes. Enjoy the world. The rest is all bullshit

        9. They are storing whatever they wish, including digital phone calls, internet use/sites visited/posts made, and anything else digital that they wish to get, and they are doing it in a blanket way across the nation. You may not care, but you’re trying to make a concern about this legitimate Constitutional issue seem like it’s clown shoes. Ten years ago, yeah, the stuff of camo wearing kooks. But now it’s out in the open. It only makes sense to oppose it legally.

        10. I really don’t care and I think that it is actually clown shoes. You are free, at any time, to opt out of all of this by becoming Amish. Right there in Pennslyvania. Move on in. You are tall and strong and have a furry chin, you will do well with the beard growing. But you like the toys…just like I do. You like the smart phone. You like the computer. You like having the worlds knowledge at your fingertips to peruse at your leisure and pictures of hot chicks in bikinis when you are done with that. You like being able to communicate globally, instantaneously. These are good things. They have a cost. Just like I spoke with Jim Johnson about yesterday wrt marriage/being single. There are ups and downs to both, you pick your poison and accept the consequences. You want to walk around with a super computer which contains a high def video camera and an audio recording device while being wirelessly connected to a global web of information and commerce? Well…that’ll cost you. If you don’t want to pay the cost then toss the thing in the ocean and live without it. But the same way that marriage will explode if you try to be married and single at the same time you don’t get to have it both ways. Talking about some 200 year old piece of toilet paper and how it isn’t constitutional doesn’t mean dick.

        11. Take this red herring out. It doesn’t matter if you care or don’t care. You’re making a concern about a now legitimately exposed issue out to be like only crazy people believe it. It is public knowledge, not the realm of crazy kooks now.
          The “cost of business” only applies to private agencies with regard to the agreements you accept by using their devices. I don’t mind that because you agreed to it. Where it does apply is that it is now a huge legal issue because the government is now doing it without your consent. You don’t care, well who cares if you care, this is a legal issue, not a “lolknee is apathetic” issue. You’re free not to care, but it’s not clown shoes to care about it now for normal people who do in fact value what’s left of their freedoms.

        12. in the end, this is the way it is and there isn’t dick you can do about it other than opt out and go amish. You paid good money for the collar and are complaining it it chaffing you. If you really cared personally it would seem to me you would opt out (which I know you enjoy doing on occasion but could pretty easily be done permanently). When you say “value what’s left of freedoms” all I hear is “boola boola go Bulldogs!” “Freedom” is an idea sold to people to keep them quiet and docile.

        13. False.
          Taking action on things like this legally many times does pay off. When something like the NSA crosses a clear legal line, then challenging it legally is just logical. To allow it to continue usually results in lawlessness and tyranny.
          Accepting serfdom with a shrug will get you…serfdom.
          At least in trying to fight, and winning sometimes, I’m taking an active part in the world around me. Whether you believe in freedom or not is irrelevant to the discussion.
          As already noted, privacy is situational, not a permanent state. If you “erect a barrier to create an environment of privacy” then that should be all you need to do legally. The government has taken this decision out of our hands. This needs legal challenge, regardless of what you personally feel about those of us doing it or whether you believe in abstract concepts. You don’t care, fine, then don’t care, but that has no bearing on the argument in the least.

        14. ok well I wish you well in your battles. Imma just be over here living life. Its all too…I don’t know….hokey for me. You want to file a lawsuit you go ahead I wish you the best of luck with it. “Fighting the good fight” seems a lot like college sportsball and beer and big screen tvs to me…but to each their own.

        15. Fighting the good fight got carry rights restored in Ohio after decades of neglect. Fighting the good fight has gotten some companies out of the Obama debacle. Fighting the good fight when it’s realistic and you have the law and resources on your side is always logical if you desire the outcomes of a win. Accepting serfdom just gets you…serfdom.

        16. Let me give you another reason why you might want to care.
          You just admitted on this forum, on a public thread that you’ve had people over from time to time who you have allowed and will allow in the future to do cocaine, in your house (apartment, whatever). Ergo, you’ve just admitted to not only allowing a felony to occur on your property with your consent, you’ve also stated that you’d cover cameras, etc. in order to aid and abet the crime.
          That information is now stored in Utah, through illegal surveillance.
          Your IP is recorded and your ISP will have your name directly tied to the IP with a time/date stamp that correlates with the time/date stamp on the Disqus post.
          There may be no analysis going on, but if there need be a time for it to become an issue, guess what gets searched by district attorneys looking to put you in the clink for, I dunno, whatever you may do wrong in the future (which given your colorful past, you have to admit, is a possibility, heh).
          One false rape accusation (no matter how much you think that you can dick them out of a girl, one gets mad when her 8 weeks are up and it doesn’t matter how well you dicked her) and your goose is cooked. All those pretty assets, your bank account, your job, your trips to Tropico Island Inc., kiss them goodbye.
          This is why it matters.

        18. I suppose. IN the end my guess is that it normally comes down to who is valuable to the gub and who isn’t. I suppose there exists some small possibility where that can cause problems. It is so unlikely it is absurd but always possible. I am not going to live my entire life in fear and terror because of some abstract possibility or because someone says I can’t take my toys out to the grocery store or because there is a theoretical possibility that an off hand comment on the internet will haunt me in the future. That seems pretty chicken shit and childish to me.
          Life will happen. Who knows, maybe one day ill get shafted thanks to things. Then what? Will I sit around regretting I didn’t cry about it more?
          Here is what I am going to do. I am going to live my life. I am going to be as successful as I can and enjoy the things I enjoy and try not to bitch too much and take in some sunshine and fuck pretty women. All this stuff has become progressively more easy. The quality of life has risen every year for me….always…without fail. I have no complaints. I certainly am not going to live my life like a scared schoolgirl because of some offhand possibility that the government will get me one day.

        19. That’s fine. I’m only telling you the danger that actually does exist, that you already unknowingly put yourself into in a very real way, and which will become much more of an issue in the future, unless people like me who waste our time fight this stuff in court. I’d hate to see you lose everything and spend years in a suicide proof cell with some guy name Enrico who thinks that you sure have a purty mouth.
          As to the very little possibility, you may not be familiar, but divorce attorneys routinely do huge web searches against husbands/fathers in preparing for cases and have caught some truly awful stuff to use against the poor stiffs during proceedings. I know that doesn’t affect you per se and never will, but the precedent is already set is what I’m saying, it’s not an unusual thing.
          So basically, hey, sometimes shit actually does matter.
          Live life is great. I do that to. It’s not a binary thing, I can live a great life and still support causes that fight these kind of things. That’s the great thing about freedom, wot?

        20. You’re forgetting that the “200 yr old toilet paper” is partially responsible for your ability to live your life the way you do without government interference/harassment/impedance. You couldn’t have lived your life in most of the world. When and if the government or parts of it start to color outside the lines, its best to speak up.

        21. Yep, and in doing so, we keep the ability to live that life intact for everybody that chooses to live that way, or any other peaceful way. It is indeed, very important, not just altruistically, but from a self interest standpoint as well.

        22. That is fair enough. But at the same time lots of dangers exist that I simply not to make part of my life. I can be run over by an ice cream truck on my way home from work. I eat my pork pretty rare. I can be hit by lightening. How far am I really going to go to protect myself from every unlikely circumstance that could possibly happen but in all likelihood never will? Home insurance? Sure. Suing the government because they audited my gun license after I was online talking about their possible reaction time if there was civil unrest? Come on now.
          The divorce stuff is way different which is why I specifically said in my first comments on this thread that a rich guy (who is probably a fag) like Zuckerberg I totally understand him covering his camera…if not from the gub then from private eye his wife might be hiring to just find that one that that means she gets to be a billionaire in her own right.
          Having the possibility of divorce hanging over you is a game changer and turns things from hypothetical bullshit “muh freedums” to a real and practical issue. But that doesn’t mean it matters…it matters to people for whom it matters.
          You say you can live life while “supporting causes” but what kind of support are we talking about here? Commenting online? Saying things in bars or to buddies? Sure, of course, no problem. but when you start taking time and money and going out to DC to protest or to file a law suit…then there is a little coo coo bananas.
          As for the great thing about muh freedums….yeah, I mean, terrific all that hypothetical stuff is terrific. I am free to make money so long as I pay my vig up to the gub. So far it’s been a fair enough deal for me not to complain.

        23. yes, good show. They did a nice job. I haven’t seen anything bad enough to cause any complaints as of yet. Let me know when they want to quarter soldiers in your home. That fucking queen of England will be in big trouble.

        24. Right, but KEEPING that deal fair takes a bit of vigilance, and sometimes some bitching/pushing back on The Man.

        26. I’ve actually done real life activism, went out and got petition signatures for ballot initiatives, talked directly to several state reps in an official capacity to help get bills proposed and contributed financially to organizations (usually local and not megalithic) that provide pressure on reps to push certain agendas. It has a great track record so far. Stop trying to make civic activism for legitimate concerns out to be crazy, it surely isn’t, and our Republic was set up such that civic activism is required to get things done, it’s a participatory process.
          As to protests, I’ve only went to a couple, and those were actually very influential in letting representatives know “Hey, look, there are 10 thousand armed people standing here saying ‘you better not vote for gun control’” which as it turns out, was highly influential according to representatives in news interviews, in helping them decide not to take their lives into their own hands. But those were local too, DC protests always strike me as pointless.
          Real life isn’t hypothetical, and while freedom is an abstract notion, the application of freedom in a practical way is in fact real life, and if you don’t guard the ability to practice it, you lose it. That you are free to do the things that you do is not by accident and the freedom to do those things didn’t happen out of apathy.

        27. Right? It is and was designed as a participatory system. There’s nothing crazy or hypothetical at all in ensuring that you participate to keep what you feel is important safeguarded. Had our grandfathers not done that we’d all be living in way worse circumstances now than we currently are.

        28. “I’ve actually done real life activism, went out and got petition signatures for ballot initiatives,”
          hippie

        29. meh
          freedom, or whatever you want to call the silly simulacra, is purchased with wealth. Everything else is college sports.

        30. Well then less esoterically:
          Consider the Constitution or the law in general as a contract, again, a ‘fair deal’. If one party starts fukking around, changing the conditions to be less in your favor, you say/do something, no?

        31. depends on how they change the conditions. Obviously if they change them to hurt me I would care…but I don’t see that happening.

        35. Nah pork in the us is fine rare now. The old issues aren’t relevant anymore. Pork Chops? Medium rare

    2. love how he has tape over the webcam- just like Mulder in the recent XFiles miniseries. what is that encircled on the bottom of the pic?

        1. is that “audio jack”
          or like “it’s the audio, Jack.”
          Because if the later then bravo. I think we need to bring back calling people Jack…got it…..Jack

    4. the 4th amendment protects!
      which is why I say without remorse or trepidation:
      he looks so like a pedo cuck.

    5. Jesus Christ, Zuckerberg is just so damn punchable!
      His goofy sperg face triggers me.

      2. That sniveling little thieving weasel is a prime example of everything wrong with the world today. In no sane society would he ever have become what he’s become here.

  9. Too much tech is toxic. I’m actually a tech buff but I understand that for men to be consumed with it is not healthy. While I enjoy technology I often ditch the phone and go camping on weekends. A couple nights of camping by a lake, fishing and cooking what you catch does a lot to restore a man’s soul. I recommend at least once a week unplugging from your phone and doing some sort of outdoor activity or just going out with some friends to shoot pool or go bowling. While you’re at it ditch the bitches too. If your buddy brings his woman along after being told you’re having a guys night then by all means make him wish he hadent. A man needs to detox from everything that’s wrong with modern society at least once a week. You will come back refreshed, more positive and more productive as a result.

    1. excellent advice.
      Many a man, or group of men-friends, wish they’d have adopted this policy.
      Very common for the women to isolate their man-slaves

    2. I recall in my younger years in the 70s and 80s our idea of a high tech future were flying cars, robots, laser guns, and space flights to the moon for ordinary folks.
      Some movies at the time showed an early 21st Century America with such technology. Not all of it in a positive light, such as Blade Runner which takes place in 2019. And that film shows an extremely high tech society, far more advanced than the United States right now in 2017.
      But besides the point is that most the technology that is developing seems to be used for thought control and propaganda such as the internet, digital TV, smartphones and tablets. The elites that use this know there is a possibility of alternative info sources because of such devices and are doing whatever they can to police thought and speech through these devices.
      Still I would have preferred living in a 2017 with flying cars and space travel, not the kind of globalist, turn your first world country into a third world prison nonsense.

    3. It used to be that Boy Scouts provided this break from tech and women as part of boys learning to be men – before they caved and became the Gay Scouts. Even before that, they caved to the feminists and let women be Troop leaders.
      There are very few places where men can go these days to socialize with other men and get away from the nagging of females.

      1. From what I am told, though I have no real first hand knowledge this is just my cousins talking, golf is still a place where this happens. My cousin goes golfing with his other married buddies, they drink and have a good time and there are no women….until they get to the bar after.
        One of his friends asked if I played golf and he responded for me…”lolknee doesn’t need to play golf….he is single.”

      2. That’s on the individual men though. Tell the wife/gf “I’m going out with my buddies to do some bowling/golfing/hunting” and then go do it. There’s nothing stopping men from socializing with other guys as they wish, without females tagging along.

        1. I read his comment as saying that even if you do what you say which will get you away from your women there are precious few places where there are no women. Back when I was in my early 20’s there were bars you could go to that women just wouldn’t go to. Cool old places with pictures of boxers on the wall and tough looking guys playing pool and drinking whisky. Seeing a woman in one of these places was unheard of. There were a lot of them. A lot of married guys not looking to get laid and just looking to get out would go to places like this (There is one called Station Café which is still in woodside for those of you who know queens). The problem is that when they tell their women “see ya” and go to these places they walk in to the bars, the bowling alleys, the hunting alleys or wherever and there are a bunch of you go girls there now and it takes away from the male only atmosphere. That’s kind of how I saw what he was saying at least.

        2. Well you brought up golf, and I agree. You are with other men in a group, but you’re never likely without any women on the course. The point I think is that men can still gather without having to include women. I doubt he’ll find any you go grrrls at a hunting camp, heh, or like we do here, just head out four or five of us and hunt land that each of us own, without women tagging along. Also I manage to go out with my uncle, cousins and a few male friends fishing now and again, no women around. The trick is to go places women find icky, and most women wouldn’t be caught dead in the places we fish or hunt.
          As to commercial/clubs, that is a problem, but I think as far as private clubs go, that legal issues can be worked around (not commercial though unfortunately). I’m still curious why so many who want men only clubs don’t just go and start some. There’s one here that I’ve thought about joining for a while now. Has a $2500 initiation fee and a $400 annual fee, but it’s all men, straight men, and they routinely rent places to have cigar and Scotch gatherings, or go to private trap ranges, and have giveaways of good hootch and guns, etc. No legal issue whatsoever.
          Point being, I think sometimes people like to complain more than look for solutions.

        3. I remember my father telling of a bar in his college days where men had sawed off shotguns under their coats. Now its a hipster quesedilla place.

        5. the thing about golf that keeps the womens away, I think, is that it is active. Women can’t just sit there and have men buy them things. They have to do stuff. Lol. This keeps them away in droves. Men can def gather without women, the trick is finding where and you are right about icky. I have always thought it would be cool, if I had a group of 9 or 10 friends that I liked and that I could trust, to rent an inexpensive apartment, split the rent 10 ways so it is basically nothing, set up a bar and a poker table and shit like that and just make a club house.
          Private clubs are a great option. I go to some here, but they are all coed. I don’t mind that because I am single. If I want to go someplace with no women I can sit on my sofa, argue with you and get drunk on scotch which is perfectly enjoyable. I like the club having women because it increases the number of wet things I can put my genitals in to. However, there are a few men’s only clubs here.
          Oddly enough, the strip clubs here now all have a lot of women going to hang out.
          agreed on complaining over solution finding in general, but some people honestly just don’t know where the good stuff is.

        6. The odd thing is that they are still here and many of them look exactly the same (at least in the boroughs) only they have become ironically hip

        7. btw speaking of ironically hip…on new years day I do the Coney Island Polar Bear Swim. I toss on my speedo and low top chucks and go swimming out in Brooklyn. When I first started it was a couple of lunatics like me but the vast majority were fat old men. Over the last few years it has become very hip and now the new years swim at Coney has thousands of people, the VAST majority being young and hip, who are making snow angels mostly naked, jumping in the water and having a blast and then doing a bar crawl after. In this particular case I think the experience has been enhanced and if you want the straight up old man swim you can go every other sunday of the winter…but the point: watching old man stuff become hip and young is very odd.

        8. “if I had a group of 9 or 10 friends that I liked and that I could trust,
          to rent an inexpensive apartment, split the rent 10 ways so it is
          basically nothing, set up a bar and a poker table and shit like that and
          just make a club house.”
          We’ve discussed this almost every day for 15 years, a few of us at work….

        9. This still irritates me for some reasons….again it’s the friction (possibly only in my head) between actual residents and jerk-off ‘tourists’ play-acting in ‘New-Yorky’ things….

        10. I totally get it. It has some upsides though — particularly if you own property which is now worth a lot more than you purchased it for or if you like being able to walk around the city. I mean, yeah, in an odd way having the Hell’s Angels in the lower east side was gritty and cool…but I really like having the Nouvelle Scandinavian Restaurant next door to the upscale bar better in the end.

        11. Yes of course. We’ve been over this…..nobody REALLY wants all that crime and filth and suffering that came part in parcel with the more interesting aspects.

        13. Yep. Now it’s all bullshit, primarily made of guys that look at the ground while holding a can of Bud Light and waiting for some medicated damsel in distress.
          Bud Light. A guy might as well put on a dress if he’s going to buy that slop foam.

        14. Hunting, shooting, motorcycling, drag racing, are all heavily male. Also, coin collecting, gun shows, car shows. Fireworks and metal detecting too.

    4. I spent much of my twenties in nature, camping, fishing, etc. I have far better memories of those days and weeks than I do of **anything** I’ve seen on a computer screen.

      1. Summer I graduated high school, we had a pretty big quarry just outside town that few people even knew existed. About 8-10 of us would go there individually or in small groups. Occasionally cops or quarry personnel would show up and kick us out.
        I spent many summer days basking in the sun, and lots of large mouth bass fishing. Night time kicked ass too. Top water fishing with Zera Spooks and Jitterbugs. Listen for the gulp, splash, pause a second, then reel. Killed it.
        I’ll never forget one night 3 of us got some really clean, good acid. Dropped it just after sundown in the middle of the summer. A massive thunder & lightening storm in a straight storm front missed the quarry by maybe a mile and rolled through for hours with a spectacular light and sound show while we all caught 20+ large mouth a piece top-water.
        Talk about a memorable priceless experience that gave purpose and connection to nature. The party favors were just bonus enhancement.

    5. My husband is camping with the guys right now; it’s nice every month or so for him to do his thing for a few days with the guys…I clean the house, fresh sheets on the bed, and always make a delicious 6-hour crock-pot roast, so the house smells delicious and inviting when he comes in the door; I know he enjoys ditching this bitch for a few…but I think he looks forward to coming home too; it’s good to miss each other, every so often.

  10. I was going to write down what I really thought about our police state, but I feared being criticized, ostracized, institutionalized and lobotomized. So instead, I’ll just write, gee, our way of life is great and everything is like, sooooo wonderful!

      1. I’m just here to do what I’m told, keep my nose clean, and kiss ass. Thank you sir may I please have another!

    2. “subtle self-controlling mechanisms”…
      “self-control by the individual citizen himself”…
      “people are deprived of their livelihoods, at least in medium to high-status occupations such as law, journalism, academia and teaching, for being “racists,” “sexists” or even anti-globalists. “…
      Today I had a talk with my professor because I am near completion of my thesis. Part of the findings of the research I conducted was that there is a very strong correlation (Pearson’s r = 0.81) between the noise annoyance of a nation and its average IQ.
      From the countries I examined Japanese people show the steepest dose-response curves, south africans show the flatest.
      Now you have to know that my Professor is a german babyboomer, an outspoken proponent of the EU and a hater of Trump and nationalism.
      To sum it up, he is a globalist cuck.
      So you can imagine what he said to me today when I showed him my thesis…
      “You either delete the racist nazi part that says something about IQ or I will talk to the universities president and we will exmatriculate you.”
      I swear to god, I was so full of anger and nearly said things like ‘You’re such a cuck.’ and ‘Hitler did nothing wrong.’ because I was furious.
      But when I drove home I hit on the idea to replace nationalIQ by HDI and it worked perfectly fine (Pearson’s r = 0.79).
      So now I just replaced IQ with Human Developement Index and I should be fine with this.
      But what’s the difference actually?
      a) National IQ shows that blacks are retarded while b) HDI proves that blacks are underdeveloped subhumans.
      If B is more politically correct than A – okay, I indulge.
      Meanwhile the german government wants to force internet companies like facebook and google to show the articles of german state media on top of everything else – because the progression from a socialist welfare state to a communist totalitarian state needs to be accelerated:
      http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/die-spd-die-medienaufsicht-und-das-netzgesetz-von-heiko-maas-15022336.html

      1. You showed tremendous self-control. That is something that is invaluable, especially in the face of enormous, virtually immovable obstacles.
        Whenever I lose my self-control and lash out in anger (which is rare, thank god), I always chastise myself. Because anger is really an outgrowth of self-pity. Whenever I lash out, I do it because my feelings got hurt…one of my pet frogs got stepped on.
        What’s truly ironic about you changing your thesis (a fact which is not lost on you), is that if your thesis is accepted, you will prove exactly what the cucked professor doesn’t want you to prove. So you will get your point across either way.
        I get confronted with similar situations in business. For example, a client for whom I make a tremendous amount of money, will start acting like a megalomaniac, and they will say something in response to a proposal I make them, and their response will piss me off for a few minutes. Let’s say the client pays me $36,000 a year in sporadic payments over a 12-month period, and I will propose that he pay me $3000 a month on a one-year contract, and he says, “No, no, I can’t afford that…” It makes no sense given the math involved, but they will frequently do this. So after I get angry, I will regroup and do what you did – go about it a different way, in order to get exactly what I want, and then some.
        It’s bizarre, it’s frustrating, and it’s illogical, but we are dealing with demented human animals, who are more akin to robots, than animals. They are machines and they don’t realize it. So kudos to you for understanding that you are dealing with a demented human professor, and for having the guile and the enormous self-control that it took to shift tactics, in order to achieve your objective via a politically correct avenue. Because, in the end, all that matters is achieving your goal – the avenue you take is irrelevant to the cause.
        What is that old saying…”When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” (Well, that may be true, but this one holds sway as well – “Stick to you guns and your guns will get bigger”.)
        Learning how to circumnavigate the dictates of petty tyrants is an invaluable skill – because we are literally surrounded by them. If you don’t learn how to defeat them, they will defeat you, and stop you from becoming what you can ultimately become…so win, dammit. Win your own battles and eventually you will become an unstoppable force. Nothing can stand in the way of single-mindedness, and that’s exactly how you can defeat any petty tyrant. You just have to want it badly enough. Petty tyrants have no self-control. And that’s exactly how you beat them – by exercising self-control.

      3. Regarding that professor of yours…I wanted to add this snippet from a book that holds a few keys to this oft-encountered dilemma that you are facing –
        “The mistake that average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make.
        “Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.
        “To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control. Instead of feeling sorry for himself a warrior immediately goes to work mapping the petty tyrant’s strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behavior.
        “To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline. A perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming feature.
        “Forbearance is to wait patiently–no rush, no anxiety–a simple, joyful holding back of what is due. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.
        “Timing is the quality that governs the release of all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
        “Forbearance means holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It doesn’t mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it.
        “To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
        “Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.” – from “The Fire From Within”, by Carlos Castaneda

        1. Thanks for your posts! You know, I just had to vent a bit after what happened today…and I had to get your guys opinions because ypu are the only ones I trust…
          It really doesn’t matter if I use IQ or HDI…and I will publish my very own redpill blog in german language talking about the chosen few, race difference in intelligence, women and other stuff…there is no need to get into a dispute with my professor while I’m dependent on him when I can write about it and publish it on my own site instead.
          “A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.”
          These quotes are great. Saved them on my harddrive.

        2. Hey, you’re quite welcome. Brothers help brothers…it’s what they do.
          You just gotta let it out and vent sometimes. Otherwise, there’s no free space inside yourself to be filled with something more important.
          I kind of pity your professor. He’s a lapdog with no future. You, on the other hand, have options. Glad to hear you will exercise them on your own blog…and elsewhere.
          Carlos Castaneda was the man. There is so much good shit in his books it’s mind-boggling.
          Good luck with your endeavors (although you don’t need any, you just have to make your own luck – single-mindedness, my friend, single-mindedness…nothing can stand in its way)…

        3. Neer heard of Castaneda…have to take a look at his works.
          Yeah, my professor is a total cuck. Once his wife came with him to university and you could see in less than 3 seconds that she’s the one with the balls in that family. He actually rambled on about how females have higher IQs than males which is total nonsense and he clearly has no knowledge when it comes to IQ tests… but I let him have his 5 minutes of bossiness…dunning-kruger-effect in full display.

        4. Pathetic. But you are learning a lot from him, though. You are learning exactly how you don’t want to be (you don’t want to be like him…heh).

  11. What steams my beans is how all you people rushed into this surveillance
    state headlong – you couldn’t WAIT to get smartphones and gps and all these ‘conveniences’. And now that we’re all bound to them in differing degrees you bleat about the death of privacy and isolation.
    Bitch, bitch, bitch….

    1. you mean “steams my clams”, right? or is that a new england thing?

      1. I dont even remember where I picked up that little gem. Just thought “grinds my gears” was a little too over-done.)

    2. Exactly. I always laugh when people complain about the surveillance state while using their Chrome browsers or iPhones.

    3. That’s a false analogy. I doubt everybody who rushed out to get this stuff even knew when they were initially getting them that there would be surveillance. Further, lots of people who actually care have taken steps to erect a privacy barrier. It’s doubtful you’ll find the majority of people giving a shit.
      Now on social media, I agree. That shit is just stupid.

      1. It was fairly insidious thing… as the technology advanced and became prettier and shinier, the tracking and surveillance aspects increased as well.

  12. What’s that old saying…he who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither? Man, whoever came up with that one must have been the biggest ass-hat in history. Probably never had a Smart Phone, or DirectTV, or a Facebook account, or anything of real value.

      1. See! Look at the hat that guy has on! Does he bang girls from Tinder? Does he watch “Dancing with the Stars”? I don’t freakin’ think so!

        1. Apparently, he had an insatiable libido and, consequently. had numerous mistresses and ONSs.
          “In the letter, which was entitled “Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress,” Franklin advised: “In all your Amours, you should prefer old Women to young ones.” He goes on to explain that with older women they tend to have more discretion, will take care of you when you’re sick, are cleaner than prostitutes, and that “there is no hazard of children.” He also offered that you can’t really tell who’s old or young when you’re in the dark.”

        2. Ben Franklin was THE MAN…sound wisdom. One of the top-tier Fondling Fathers (er, “Founding”) to be sure.

        5. They set things up the way they did for a reason…but due to all the EMF waves, and GMO food stuffs, and fluoridated water, I’ll be damned if I can remember what that reason was…

        8. What’s up with that pose, and that right hand. Was George a member of some secret society. No way. I refuse to think of George as a Freemason. And the bitch in the other photo, she has a weird pose going on, too. You’ll probably tell me it’s an Order of the Eastern Star pose, or a Rosicrucian pose. But I will just put my hands over my ears and sing “La-la-la” in a very loud voice if you tell me that…because that’s cray-cray. Totally.

        10. And don’t forget the greatest lawyer of them all – Perry Mason. Earle Stanley Gardner was a Craft member. It’s hard to get anywhere in life if you aren’t a Fellow Traveler…hard, but not impossible. For example, if you’re Jewish, that helps. Or connected to the mob, etc.

        11. He had seventy children. SEVENTY. Many of them in France during his ten years as ambassador.
          Literally the father of our nation. (ba-DUM)

        13. Really? You mind sharing the source, please. I searched but I couldn’t find anything.

        14. I don’t have a definite source, and I doubt it’s verifiable anyways, but that was the estimate of a historian. Maybe it was only fifty, lol.
          We do know for sure that he 1) sired a child out of wedlock in his early twenties, 2) later got married at 25, 3) was a well-known flirt, 4) was rich and famous, 5) travelled constantly, 6) lived in France for ten years, and 7) also lived to age 84. Put all that together. Maybe there’s a reason he turned to older women — he got tired of impregnating younger ones.

        16. Hey, you just might be…like 0.1% or something. And the way anybody who is even 10% black is “black”, that might bear some fruit for you. Hell, I might be 1% Jewish for all I know. I’m heading to the local synagogue to see about signing up…

        17. He looks Crafty as well…but yeah, that’s a no-brainer. I’d drink with this man. Heavily.

        18. I guess living in France for 10 years should be enough of a reason, lol.

        19. 1) through 7) – that sounds like every politician and/or rich person in history…

        22. Yeah. Quite the bummer. But hey, I believe in reincarnation so I wish in my next birth I’ll be born a nihilist Jew in New York and bang hundreds of chicks without a care in the world!

        23. Ha! Get me a Band-Aid my sides are splitting! (That was seriously funny.)

  13. All I can say is… I hope they like what they see! Stick around, there’s more.

  14. What’s really humorous in a very dark way is the fact that a certain percentage of any guy’s online forum friends just might work for the government as paid board trolls. So right now, right here, a bunch of guys are openly and animatedly discussing the freedom vs. security issue with somebody they think is a good guy, and that “good guy” just might be sitting in front of his computer in a command center, while getting prompted by a supervisor to slam one of the targeted person’s comments, or divert the conversation in one direction or another…now THAT is fucking FUNNY.

  15. I always wondered if a program or type of browser could be created to randomly go to websites and click links at various intervals of the day to overwhelm metadata collection on your web surfing habits. Thus clouding the overall “picture” of who you are to marketers and social media outlets that profit from selling the data.
    I understand it would be difficult to do this against the NSA, but at least this would prevent or severely hinder the ability of facebook, twitter and google to build accurate profiles of their users to monetize.
    If they are going to monitor us, and its not going to end….then can we overwhelm them with static?

    1. I’d venture to guess the jr high school students of the US are doing a fair job clogging the net with useless bullshit, without even trying….

  16. Oi Bob, I think your suspicions of paid government employees on this thread might be correct. Your comment got deleted.

    1. You mean this one:
      What’s really humorous to me in a very dark way is the fact that a certain percentage of any guy’s online forum friends just might work for the government as paid board trolls. So right now, right here, a bunch of guys are openly and animatedly discussing the freedom vs. security issue with somebody they think is a good guy, and that “good guy” just might be sitting in front of his computer in a command center, while getting prompted by a supervisor to slam one of the targeted person’s comments, or divert the conversation in one direction or another. And the targeted guy is blathering on and on about how conspiracies are ridiculous, etc.
      Now that…is fucking…funny.

      1. I’d REALLY be pissed if my so-called government was wasting MY tax dollars playing footsie with THIS lot of goons….

        1. No way in hell that’s happening. I was being facetious. And after it comes out in the media that this very thing happens all the time (which has already happened, it’s a known fact), the average guy will say, “Yeah, I already knew that”…and that’s even fuckin’ funnier.

        2. They fight the great meme war against pepe, Fight memes with memes, countermeme. Meme magic is scary is some kind of mind control and now is unregulated and without restriction as it should be. Richard Dawkins definition of meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” if somehow you pollute the process you can shape culture.

      2. Man that fogs my eyeglasses. There’s got to be a way to shit test who you’re disquing with. Natural intuition is stronger than the biggest fattest meanest motherboard computer with a hundred mormons and two hundred jesuits behind it. I still say go FLDS. More wives plus they’re realer mormons than the data center mainstream cookie eater mormons.

        1. Ha! First time I hit this forum, I thought – “This person is a paid troll, and so is this one.” A year or so later, it’s more than obvious I was right. Now, I don’t object to that – a guy’s gotta eat. They’re just doing their jobs. But still, it’s funny…

        3. I used to visit this, oh, let’s call it a “conspiracy” board off and on for a couple of years. I figured the board was operated by an intelligence asset. Make that, I knew it. So I buddied up with him. Got to know him a bit. And I asked him point-blank, “Dude, I would love to get paid to sling shit in here, and I just gotta figure you’re on that team.” So he emails me after a couple of days and writes, “We can make that happen for you.” I was really busy so I passed, but there are tons of jobs like that out there. Ask some of the regs in here about it – they might turn you on…

        4. The paid trolls on the webz are like sled dogs for the globalists without real power. They can pull or they can sit there and be consumed – or – they can be driven silly, out of their gourd interacting with the crowd on here. The harder they try to steer THE ALMIGHTY PATRIARCHY into the ground, the more expended their substance becomes. Like the withering defeated feminist. Patriarchy is growing in the west whether the detractors like it or not.
          Then there’s your ‘laah’ (law) and order trolls. They believe we’re a ‘society of laaah (law)’. Horseshit. What we are is a people browbeaten with selectively enforced law by aggressive predatory bureaucrats and regulators. I haven’t heard a bot ever repeat that ‘we’re a society of law’ after I corrected them that it’s ‘selectively enforced’.
          But once again ‘THE ALMIGHTY DICK’ is the supreme law!

        6. The one thing they never stop to think about, is, who will they spy on, who will they troll, if their bosses get their way and “win” the overall battle. Then they will become the useless eaters. On which rung of the hierarchical ladder does disloyalty end. It doesn’t. As above, so below. Their bosses have as much or more contempt for them, as they do for the sheeple. It’s all lessons, nothing personal. And a guy’s gotta eat. But we all pay for our education, one way or another. It’s a law.

        10. What if Bem used to be Keanu Reeves…and now he’s…aw crap this is too confusing…

        13. I thought we agreed to wait a bit, before spilling the beans on that one…
          (I, of course, am really Bem.)

        16. On the 4th floor of the NSA:
          “Ok bem, we got a guy by the name of Bob Smith we are keeping an eye on. You know what to do.”
          On the 7th floor of the NSA:
          “Ok Bob, we got a guy by the name of bem we are keeping an eye on. You know what to do.”
          On the 22nd floor of the NSA:
          “Ok lolknee, we got a couple guys by the name of Bob and bem on the take. You know what to do.”

        2. Will do…so long as they aren’t your friends. I don’t want to get you in trouble…

        3. That smotherandcover.com bit made be laugh out loud! I can almost imagine the guy getting squished is the “French Bald Cuck”

        4. It probably is the Frenchman. He celebrated with some fatty sex after voting for Macron!

    1. Herr Zuckerberg really rocks that outfit…I like the cut of your jib, sailor. Etc.

  19. A major aspect of the “panopticon” prison that is not discussed in this article is the amount of intelligence gathering done by private groups like corporations and marketers.
    The amount of information about users that apps collect and send to companies like Google, Apple, etc. is staggering. But even smaller, no name companies collect and store as much data on users, consumers, customers as possible. Vast amounts of data — including your usual physical locations, your shopping preferences, your daily contacts, your eating preferences, your viewing habits, your browsing habits — all of that is collected and stored by multiple different private companies.
    This is directly related to the “police state” concept because virtually all of that information is accessible by the government and law enforcement. In other words, the NSA really doesn’t have to bug 80 million phones, they just have to bug Apple and Google.
    This is indirectly, and more insidiously, related to the controlling of individuals because of how it is and can be used. Much of this information is aggregated to build profiles about you, to try to predict what you are likely to consume and when. The fact that some of the information may be bad — you may have run an errand for someone else or erroneously bought something you didn’t mean to buy — means that the profile they build about you can be incorrect.
    But as these companies build a profile about you, they begin tailoring what they present to you to take advantage of what they perceive to be your preferences. You’ve seen the most simple examples of this: search for “flashlights” once on Google, and then the Google ads on every website you visit for the next week will be about flashlights.
    But as these profiles become more advanced and the marketing becomes more tailored, it will be used to actually change the articles you read and the news you see. We’ve all seen the examples of the same “news article” with two totally different headlines posted on different websites for different audiences. Take any particular story about the Comey memo, change a few facts and words around, and you will have a pro-Trump version and an anti-Trump version, then distribute those to consumers based on whether your algorithm tells you they are pro- or anti-Trump.
    It only gets more insidious from there.
    For those of you who think this is getting all tin-foil hat… well, guess what? This kind of thing is already being done. It will only get worse as people become more and more reliant on their devices and the algorithms become more and more sophisticated.

    1. But that’s all stuff you’ve voluntarily opted in with for the most part. I don’t like Google’s monitoring, for example, so I use DuckDuckGo or StartPage, problem solved. iPhones, computers, software you use, all come with legal agreements that you accept in order to legally use the product. Plus, you can always put those things down and turn them off.
      Most of the commercial tracking doesn’t bother me too much since I agree to it, plus it helps tailor things to my tastes (which you mentioned) and I kind of like that. When I’m searching a firearms forum, I really don’t want the advertising facing me to be about Ben Gay, balms and medicinal herbs.

      1. I love it when I write an email to somebody, or talk to them on the phone, about a specific thing, and I’ll be damned, shortly thereafter, I’m on the Net, and I’m served an ad for the very thing I was discussing “in private”…happens to me quite frequently. And the “thing” we had been discussing, is pretty unique…bizarre.

      2. Everything you said is correct. But it doesn’t change the fact that these tactics are being used against us, and most of us are totally unaware that it is happening, and that it is happening increasingly.

        1. “butbutbut I have nothing to hide”
          “its keeping us safe”

        2. GoJ actually points out a really important issue here… ‘1984’ was about a government imposed Big Brother. State controlled surveillance imposed upon us by the government at the point of a gun. Brutal, inefficient, costly.
          What is happening now is that we are willingly choosing to let ourselves be watched and tracked by anybody and everybody — including the government — and we are paying for it ourselves. We are happily paying for the privilege of a government and corporate surveillance state in exchange for some cool gadgets and social media likes.
          As much as we look back and laugh at the Indian tribes that sold great swathes of land for a few trinkets, people in the future will look back and laugh at us for selling our privacy and individual rights in exchange for Candy Crush and SnapChat.

        4. Right, but it’s an easy battle to fight. No troops needed, no marching shoulder to shoulder to burn down the Capitol, none of that. Just educate people. Once enough people know, those that care will take actions to shield themselves, those that don’t can continue to be an all day sucker.

        5. There is really very little they can do to shield themselves except to totally unplug. Even turning on the privacy mode or turning the thing off doesn’t really help.

        6. It is very easy to unplug. And it’s situational, unless you want to literally (Hitler) live in a cave. I mean it really, really, really doesn’t matter to me if I carry the iPhone to Krogers and back and somebody “tracks me”. Ok, whatever. But if I’m going out on a long ride with buddies, I put the phone down on the dresser, grab the cash on the night stand to spend for the day and fire up the motorcycle and I’m off. I become an actual ghost to the system, short of them sending out human beings to find me.
          As you’ve read below I’m certain, I’m all about battling illegal surveillance that the government is doing. But private stuff, eh, easy to unplug and walk away and go read a book under a tree anytime you wish. Live like it’s 1987 and you become The Invisible Man to “The Man”.

        7. I’m not disagreeing with you. I just think you underestimate the amount of aggregate information on someone that is accessible. Making a few cash-only day trips without your phone won’t make much difference to the average person who is otherwise tracked 15 different ways on every other day of their lives.

        8. But, again, how much of that time matters and how much doesn’t, regarding tracking that *they agreed to*?
          I’m not minimizing this, I’m saying that it’s nowhere near as bad as government surveillance. You can step away anytime you wish, for as long as you wish, up to and including permanently switching off all the tracking, and still be none the worse for wear. I think a lot of people just assume that they “need” to have a phone on them at all times, and that they need to have a television on at all times and that they need to be playing ‘entertainment’ at all times. They don’t. Just walk away if you wish. Point is, you can just walk away, it doesn’t require legal action or force of arms to win this battle. It only requires educating people, which is pretty easy.
          Yes, there is a staggering amount of information kept on us. I don’t like it sometimes, sometimes I don’t care (really, honestly, I don’t care if someplace tailors ads to my preferences, I consider that a convenience, not a hindrance). I do know that I can stop that collection today, right now, permanently, without actually affecting the real quality of my life and get on with my day unhindered.
          There are psychological advantages to having grown up in a world where there was no such thing as cell phones and the www. Heh.

        9. “There are psychological advantages of having grown up in a world where there was no such thing as cell phones and the http://www.” – Beautifully said! I repeat this sentiment all too often to those around me.
          I’m so glad I grew up in an era that allowed for the development of hobbies and interests that today, don’t require having to be “plugged in” – no need to look over my shoulder to do the things I enjoy.

        10. Just take a look at what the german government is doing…they want to declare the internet ‘broadcasting’ which would force youtubers to get licenses from the german state and it would also force internet companies like facebook and google to put state media coverage on top of everything else…this is some nasty shit.
          The german government is probably the most despicable of all time…they are so opprobrious but in a nice way…like a sociopath.

        11. To me, there isn’t much different between private “agreed to” surveillance and government surveillance, because the government usurps and uses the private surveillance all the time.
          You say you can completely stop the collection of information on you, permanently, without actually affecting the real quality of your life and get on with your day unhindered. I find that difficult to believe. But if you say it is true, I’ll accept you word for it.
          I know, however, that I cannot stop the collection of information on me without it having an actual negative effect on me and my quality of life. I think most people are closer to me than you on that end.

        12. Going partly (or fully) off grid is best, but one can use things like CyanogenMod to re-work Android phones, SilentCircle’s Blackphone (GSM svc only, not CDMA), or the Librem laptop. I know very little of electronics and need to research these things more.

      3. I have learned to game the google ads to service my aesthetic tastes regarding the things I see on the page not directly related to its content.
        Still refining it, but soon enough I hope to have ads reflect my tastes in art and lifestyle, not so much in terms of consumer goods, such that their shit isn’t felt like an unwanted intrusion, but merely decoration.

      4. I’m not very computer savvy, but I refuse Windows 10 with it’s ‘default’ keylogging and audio/video monitoring. I won’t buy a new computer until I figure out how to get around that shit (or use Linux). It would be great if some hacker could crack the source code on Win10 and remove all that spyware shit AND permantly disable the automatic updates.

      5. Slightly off-topic Ghost, have you looked into bullet swaging using Corbin equipment? I’ve heard of people making their own jacketed bullets, but I thought it was more of an ‘esoteric’ corner of the shooting world. Turns out, it’s easier and cheaper than I thought. No more worries about green-tip 5.56 bans should the Dems re-gain control.
        corbins.com

    2. “In other words, the NSA really doesn’t have to bug 80 million phones, they just have to bug Apple and Google.”
      Excellent point.

    3. Those things havs pretty much already been covered in several ROK articles, including one which I hyperlink to (How Complex Systems Science Affects The Manosphere). The particular thing about the panopticon is self-monitoring.
      When you don’t know if you’re being watched or not, and cannot see those who are watching you but it is likely that they are “there”, then you keep yourself in check (like the inmates in a panopticon prison). One “racist” or “sexist” post and you’re done in the Matrix if you’re not protected somehow.

    4. May be the part-conspiracy theorist in me, but I see no reason to believe key-loggers aren’t installed on everyone’s computers and digi devices at minimum. Seriously, when you push “Yes proceed with update” The app both downloads and uploads data since last update.

  20. A solid article of some sophistication, not least with regard to it’s tackling both Foucault and bio-politics (something which a few years back one would only encounter within hard left academic institutions) and even Agambens, who seems to be flavour of the month right now.
    It’s extremely important to understand how we, as free citizens in theoretically democratic nations can through such technologies (of the self) be effectively governed and controlled, and made to police ourselves. However while this awareness may be a pre-condition of any possibility of a greater freedom in the future, it is also itself at least potentially a mechanism of that control in its own right: the panopitkon in Bentham’s experiment may work to the extent that the guards are vigilant and all-seeing but the self-regulation of course only works to the extent that the prisoners know they are being watched: thus a human panoptikon of any kind (as a prison or within the wider surveillance society) is to be distinguished from say a zoo populated by animals of limited sentience. After all animals do the funniest things because they are not self-conscious, whereas we are, and it is our discovery of the fact that we are being watched, and even our political consciousness of that fact, including perhaps through reading this very article, that is the key component within the technology of the panoptikon.
    Of course that consideration in itself should be enough to turn our attention to the nature of the fact itself. We are told by Snowden for instance that the NSA pretty much knows everything we do (in terms of digital communication at least), and in the latest wikileaks releases we discover that even our Samsung tellies and our Amazon Echoes, and probably our cookers and fridges are watching us, or broadcasting everything we do. We know at least some of this is true but we don’t really know how much, or how many devices are effectively compromised? My point is not so much to doubt the pervasiveness of this all seeing eye, but to point to the fact that if it is the knowledge itself that keeps us in check, keeps us policing our speech and actions etc., then even if the NSA etc knew fuck all, it would be absolutely essential for them to persuade us that they were more or less omniscient. Snowden then, still works for the ABC agencies even if he doesn’t.
    This is one reason why those who dismiss the all-seeing eye of the New World Order as conspiracy theory may be both right and wrong. The NWO isn’t an accomplished fact until you believe in it. Your belief in the NWO is the capstone on the pyramid so to speak (in that particular sense at least….there is more to it than that of course). So in a sense if we were somehow to forget that we were being watched, we would then somehow forget to police and shape our own behaviour, and would then be like those animals in the zoo – they could still work to condition us through classical / operant conditioning but our forgetfulness of their power would itself undermine the greater project of self-governmentality.
    Even with the awareness we have though we do of course have a great deal of freedom though. As some guy – I think it was Victor Frankl – said we have the freedom to choose how to respond to any given stimulus; including to act in such a way as to subvert the likely intended effect of revelations like these (and I’m increasingly inclined to think Snowden is a psy-op designed for this very purpose even if he himself is not in the loop). What kind of subversive response that should be is something that needs further thought – there are any number of possibilities, including of course redirecting the attention of the gaze – but for the moment it’s worth asserting a simple contrary fact that would be worth asserting even if it were not true at all: they are not as all-knowing as they claim they are. Their vision is limited, blinkered even, and their powers of surveillance are in the first instance at least primarily a psy-op and should be treated as such. Deny them your belief. It doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t believe, just deny it anyway. They lie. Why shouldn’t you?

    2. “…but our forgetfulness of their power would itself undermine the greater project of self-governmentality.”
      Just as important to those that are being watched and know it is an evaluation of the costs/benefits of compliance.
      If compliance is more costly than revolt, then the panopticons and their psy-ops fail, unless physical violence is their final resort. Of course, after about 70 years, all forms of manipulation ultimately fail… if they fail to deliver upon the general health of the body politic.
      People and human nature are psychologically resilient. Even Big Brother has a limited lifespan as a result.

      1. that’s probably a good way of looking at it. I would say that for many of those who are non-compliant in the sense that they are beginning to dissent that kind of cost/benefit calculation has already been made. Those at the top are miscalculating badly

  21. I remember seeing a statement that violence is the lowest grade of manipulation. Its like making people believe co2 is a problem(through manipulation) then getting the behavior you want. Heres a jail cell go lock yourself in,… sure!

    1. Use a dummy account through multiple proxies or have a burner laptop using public wifi. Amnesiac operating systems help also. Then let the shit-lordery begin on BBC sites. They can fuck themselves.

  23. Somewhat fascinating how human reactivity inside the Panopticon verifies a Hawthorne effect (aka “observer” effect). This mediated tendency of our modern age of communication/propaganda gets situated in the interplay of our ever-evolving panopticon, accompanied by disinformation, and the emergence of edgy next-level Surveillance Society technologies with a faintly synthetic whiff of “Minority Report” in them (nascent forms of pre-crime, genetically-derived criminal probabilities, etc.).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
    By design the more esoteric underpinnings of the global panopticon require a tacit denial of their very existence. When previously secret avenues are discovered/scrutinized, panopticon architects must be more than ready to dismiss such notions as an unhinged conspiracy theory, when actually you would be red pill / woke / aware in sensing how sublime, layered and steeped in the conditioned response of Psy Ops it is.
    The core idea being that “you’re being watched, so behave yourselves accordingly.”

  25. Did Foucault get interested in the panopticon, and develop his “panopticon theory”, as to denounce… or to endorse? It is highly doubtful whether his theory aims at denouncing a discrete social panopticon or at building a new one. Foucaultians have always assumed the first option while yelling and shrieking, “muh individual right to be a paid transgender AW”. Now that they – the subsidized, tenured, dwelling-inside-the-system – are the power, it seems more like the panopticon and biopolitics stuff was a blueprint.

    1. I have made a similar reflection. I think that most SJW:s are too stupid and lazy to even read Foucault, if it is not a powerpoint version of his writings. They get triggered by books since those require diligence and focus.

Comments are closed.