Hello,
I was with my brother and his group of friends, and one of his friends was talking about various drugs. My brother told him, “Shut up, you’re going to put us on a watchlist,” and he said it in a serious tone. It felt pretty dystopian when he said that; honestly, it was a bit eerie, mostly because he’s being controlled and self-censoring without anyone there, and he seems to be aware of the freedom he’s giving up, yet he continues to act this way. I’ve talked to my brother about privacy and why it’s important many times, but he would rather live this type of controlled life and doesn’t care because “they already know everything about me anyway.” He’s in his early 20s.
Has anyone else had moments like this?
Registering to vote already put me on a watchlist.
We can all be on the watchlist, together… 🤗
I started thinking my internet comms would get me on a list during W’s term. My political leanings have only traveled Left since then. I’m not going to be on one of the first lists: that honor goes to Trans people, then some others, but I’ll be on one of the “when we get around to it” lists.
But the level of self-censorship and the degree of paranoia (nobody cares about drugs unless you’ve got them or you’re talking about distribution) is concerning. Maybe try to find out why he cares that much. I agree with a sibling comment about possible mental health issues to assess. I was early twenties when my bipolar was diagnosed.
Sure have
Are you kidding. Does not matter if its measured in decades, years, months, weeks, days. The slide from 80 to 2000 was practically negligable compared to 2000 to 2010 and the last decade has me yearning for those days of optimism. I think it may start feeling hour to hour soon. My neighbor was asking about help for their smart tv. when I was young if you talked about government listening devices in the tv you were likely paranoid schizophrenic. Now people just buy corporate spying devices for their home and pocket and just shrug.
People are surrendering privacy rights every day: alexa, the battle for the internet, accepting NSA surveillance, etc. It’s awful
It’s worse than simply surrendering privacy rights, they actually pay to have them removed.
People will pay top dollar for a the newest Apple or Samsung device every 1-2 years that scrape your personal data at the OS level and come packed full of bloatware that does the same. And most people pay it as a subscription when they pay over time on a new device and trade it in before it’s paid off, literally paying a monthly fee to have their data harvested for further profit.
The goal is not to avoid the watch lists. The goal is to be on so many that they become useless.
But what if that just flags you as low class citizen at some point, the kind that cant go to certain places and gets actively harassed by police constantly? It will go there eventually if nothing improves.
Shout out to all the homies on the “eats ice cream with a fork” list.
Whoa, hey, getting put on a list is one thing, but no need to be a monster.
I’m pretty sure you’d just SQL JOIN them on social security/passport num and use them all at once
The goal is to be on so many that SQL JOIN goes OOM 😅
Make the feds earn their salaries.
Freedom ain’t free.
Irrational paranoid urges might be signs of mental health issues. Does your family have any history of paranoid schizophrenia? Onset tends to happen to men in their late 20s/early 30s, but everyone is different.
Assuming this is the US, I doubt it’s that easy to land on any sort of watchlist. Unfortunately, paranoia doesn’t require any actual hard evidence.
The point being that people are doing it to themselves and that feeling is coming from some where.
Obidient population is a authoritarian wet dream… Look at Germany and Russia, they will take anything and then cry daddy made them do it.
That was literally the main point in 1984. The mass-surveillance wasn’t literal, but meant to be implied by the despotic authority of “Big Brother”. In reality people were encouraged to tell on each other. A neighbor of the main character meets him while he’s incarcerated at the end of the book, sent to prison because his own children told on him about how he talked in his sleep… and he was proud of them for it.
Not wanting to talk about drugs seems reasonable to me. You don’t give context but one can imagine it wasn’t at home.
It could be reasonable in general but the given reason is bullshit
Bootlicker in training
