Invisible eyes, permanent archives
Want to hear a horror story?
OK: So there’s this basic philosophy concept that beginners learn when they have to deal with issues like compliance and authority: Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon.
Structurally, the panopticon is a prison: it’s a circular building of cells surrounding a courtyard, with a tower in the middle. In that tower is a guard who can observe all the cells at once, but the inmates don’t know if and when they’re being watched. Because they don’t know if anyone is observing them, prisoners would, ideally, always be on their best behavior.This prison design has been applied to asylums and even schools (oh, the irony), but it’s the metaphor of surveillance that enjoys wide use today: Big Brother/CCTVs/algorithms are watching you, mapping your every move, and collecting your information, all without you knowing.
For example: ever notice how social media seems to respond to you by giving you ads for something you searched for—or worse, something you talked about with your friends at a time when you thought you were offline?Someone’s always watching, and we’re being fed things that we like because we’re also liberal in giving up information on our interests, our wishes, our identity.
Social media is indeed a panopticon: we can never tell who is watching or even listening, and if our phones are picking up our conversations and trapping us in an echo chamber without us being aware (or us being aware, but accepting and enjoying the quasi-reality of living among only those who agree with us, while not knowing the nuances of the arguments of those who disagree).
But that’s not the horror story.
See, social media is also a reverse panopticon: there are people in power who need online visibility to survive, be in the public consciousness, be reelected. They amass followers because this means getting the word out, staying popular, getting votes.
But this also means that they never know who is watching, and when, among their thousands of followers.
So why is this a horror story?
In recent days, we’ve seen astute internet users copying and saving statements, and spreading the word of a public official’s untoward behavior even when all official records were thought to be expunged.
This is almost parallel to the tenet that communication majors learn when they are first socialized into the field: the mic is always on.
Once something is said out loud, it is always going to be out there. Nothing is ever deleted or forgotten. There is no such thing as privacy. There is always someone watching, listening, saving.
Take, for instance, the video of the former president threatening a sitting member of Congress. The video might have disappeared from its original location mere hours after it was posted, but it was enough time for internet users to save it as evidence of a madman’s graduation to a possible, overdue reckoning.
Or the repeated statements of the Vice President, accusing people of politicking and nitpicking, all while people are simply asking what purpose confidential funds serve in an education department that has yet to show any progress in its true duty of improving the country’s education system. Social media has become a rich repository of her insults, a place for users to look at the trends in her statements and find that there is no substantive meaning in her words.
Or the videos of so-called influencers who defend the current administration, even as prices are rising and the much-vaunted Maharlika fund has been put on hold. There’s no true deletion for their videos if they do tuck tail and run because various groups already have backup copies for anyone seeking an answer to the question, “How do wayward influencers like to mislead people?”
Or the videos of Israeli TikTokers mocking Palestinians while the bombs rain down and wipe out an already imprisoned, embattled city. The online statements lambasting the United Nations resolution to declare a ceasefire in Gaza. The actual vote by our country on that resolution: a neutrality founded on missing semantics, an implicit consent for further escalation. True, there might be repentance one day, a change of heart, a good explanation. The panopticon of social media, however, has ensured that a snapshot of one’s life, once upon a time, has been taken, stored, and remembered.These files represent the state of our country in a time of dressed-up deceptions, the state of our world in a time of aggression and blindness. One might try to remove the evidence, apologize, rewrite history, kill the person holding the mic; but because the mic is always on, there will always be someone, somewhere, who will have a record of the truth.
So really, this is a horror story for those who like to live in and celebrate lies. Because that’s what lies are: they’re spirits that never stay dead. When justice comes knocking, they will rise and walk like zombies straight to the International Criminal Court.
(Let’s hope it’s really) The End.
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