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When we want to figure out who we are, it takes a lot of exploring and trying things that either do or don’t work out. It’s a necessary and unavoidable part of finding our yucks and yums to think that we like something, fall in love with the idea of it, and then discover that it’s far too different from the ideal that you set for it. Of course, when we find our yucks in this way, the ultimate decision is that we don’t like the thing and we move on. The decision means that we don’t define ourselves through that yuck and we don’t want to be defined by that yuck.

Learning to sing or dance is an embarrassing endeavor if you start after you develop self-consciousness. You have to take yourself seriously for a moment and really try your best to do something that you are definitely bad at. No one who is proficient in singing, dancing, or acting began with a natural talent. Even the people who are physically or mentally gifted in those areas had to discover this gift through effort. Taking yourself seriously is scary while doing something that is the sort of embarrassing that hurts to imagine. Most of us end up in a groove where we’re good enough to stand ourselves, but not good enough to ever feel confident performing for another person. This stage is a healthy stopping point where we receive the benefits of making a deeper connection to the art that we care about most, through private karaoke and dancing that gives us the final, satisfying feeling of integrating into the meaning of the art.

More seriously, consider the things that are more defining to you as a person, the parts of development that we all have to go through to determine who we think we are after newfound independence in teenage. For example, when you wonder(ed) whether or not you are gay, a necessary step in deciding this part of yourself is in playing the role of being you but gay, and deciding whether it made you feel good or bad. If the result is that you felt bad, you probably don’t want to be called gay for that earnest exploration, because that’s not how you define yourself. That’s someone who you thought you might be, but you are not.

There are some cute little things that make us happy that we would be embarrassed about if we were witnessed, like singing or playing with toys. There are some things that we must engage with for us to determine our genuine selves in the most important stages of our personal development.

In the first case, privacy is necessary because we would not engage in those things that make us happy out of fear of being seen and embarrassed. It’s fair to say that we should just get over it and be genuine, but when it comes down to the momentary decision to express your most vulnerable self, most people will shy away from exposing that soft side. If we imagine being watched all day every day by human people who are judging us (especially if we respect and value their opinion), those intimate and expressive outlets are shut closed out of self-preservation. Our well of creative energy is blocked out of fear.

In the second case, privacy is imperative because we simply can’t engage in serious self-discovery if we fear the prospect itself. In our previous example, I don’t know if I’m gay, but I don’t lose anything by assuming I’m not. I do stand to lose a lot if I try it out and people are watching me. Beyond embarrassment, being seen exploring those fringes does lead to social ostracization and sometimes a loss of income. Public figures can lose their careers and reputations. Just in our example of trying out being gay, the public knowledge of that foray has led to suicides of despair across time and in many places because of how damaging it can be.

So the natural cope for this concern is to hope that the surveillance spreading like a disease today isn’t so bad because people aren’t watching. These 24/7 feeds might recognize me and record me, but it’s not a person on the other end, it’s a robot who doesn’t care whether I like to play on the swing set or not. The only times I’d need to worry is when I’m on a hotlist for committing a crime or something. But that’s where you’re wrong. Robots are simply not trustworthy, so there’s always a human to double-check things. Police looking through their surveillance net will survey footage to make sure that it’s who they’re looking for, and to figure out whether they’re doing something incriminating in the footage. Really, in real-world practice today, it’s so easy for police to access this massive database that they have a frictionless experience in stalking their ex-wives. In fact, police from other offices in other places can access shared footage to look into a different county altogether. If I’m a cop and I wanted a certain politician to win, I can look up their opponent, find them in the database, track their movement, and find footage of them cheating on their wife, or recklessly driving, or saying “byeaough” in a weird way on stage. This isn’t theoretical, it’s possible right now.

Given the piles of security vulnerabilities also being entirely ignored by surveillance corporations, we can eschew the police and just apply this to civilians who know how to use a computer and a search engine. You, dearest reader, can track your ex-wife too if you spend a few minutes dorking in Google to find your local unsecured Flock database. So, next time you’re considering dancing in a dark, empty parking lot, learning how to skateboard, trying out a new language in-person, or sharing an intimate and heartfelt conversation with a close friend, just know that you might be being recorded and saved in a searchable, unsecured hard drive in perpetuity. Isn’t that inviting? Wouldn’t you love to try things that you’re embarrassingly bad at in front of a cold, anonymous camera?

If you’re not convinced, I don’t think this is a matter of opinion. At the risk of being too confrontational, I know that no person would be comfortable engaging in invested self-discovery in front of a live-streaming camera of unknown viewership.

cat

12/29/2025