I don’t think george orwell foresaw the find my friends app
surveillance state but it's actually kinda cute
Another brush with the surveillance state arrived back in March. I was at a shackles & champagne party hosted by an acquaintance. Not as kinky as it sounds. The handcuffs were plastic, the champagne was tepid, and the attendees were made up of greasy art school kids. Nothing erotic about that. My friends and I could sit on the couch undisturbed, politely bound together in our Walmart-purchased binds, and catch up on our lives. We meandered on over to a fun conversation topic: the Find My Friends app. My friend S used it religiously to track her bestie’s location when they went out together, as well as check in on others friends’ whereabouts when it struck her fancy. I knew this already, as I shared my location with her whenever we had to travel far to meet up.1 I professed my ignorance with the app; my tracking habits never left iMessage texts, more out of simplicity and laziness than anything else. N indicted me for my lie.
You’re literally tracking my location right now.
What? I am?
You have mine but I don’t have yours.
I checked my phone; it was true. She wasn’t mad at me, not at all, more jokingly indignant than anything. Yet I had no recollection of making the choice to track her. Ever. Honest to god. When had I ever needed to know exactly where she was, coordinates and all, for more than five minutes at a time? It must’ve been a mistake. Or we had shared our locations sometime earlier in our lives and my Luddite brain forgot to turn it off. Either way, when B, the friend I was handcuffed to, announced that we should all share our locations with each other, permanently, I scrambled to acquiesce. This was female friendship, I thought to myself, as we all popped up on each other’s phone screens. This is what being a girl means. Location tracking on.
1984 did not phase me that much when I read it back in high school. Like oh no, a totalitarian regime watching your every move and suppressing any contradicting ideologies! That is so scary and troubling and definitely doesn’t happen in the nuclear family, much less the rest of the world! Whatever shall we do if this becomes a reality! If! IF!
My upbringing was fascist-lite, so I was used to my parents combing through emails and texts, taking conversations out of context to punish me for the perceived subversion of their authority. I lived my life as a thought criminal, perpetually on the brink of exposure. The Internet was refuge and moral battleground. Countless times my mother tried to surprise-attack me, taunting me to “switch my screen” away from the TV/Youtube/Tumblr/whatever else sparked my interest in the moment. She bartered, badgered, wheedled me into a confession. I never told her of my own free will. What was the point? Her sources of entertainment were the Hallmark channel, police procedurals, and NBC comedies minus every single raunchy scene.2 What else could I do when my Ministry of Love rated all acceptable entertainment a hard G?
My interior life was regularly stopped, searched, and interrogated, so it was a miracle that my parents never discovered how to track my physical location. I’m sure they would’ve back then if they knew a method existed, but they never needed to. I didn’t really go anywhere besides school and home, and the infrequent times I did try to be a regular teenager and go out with friends on the weekends had to be coordinated 3-5 business days in advance before I could step foot out of the house. And above all else, they had taught me how to restrict my own movements, self-police my whereabouts even at their most innocuous. I don’t think it’s healthy to get stressed out when your friends spontaneously decide to drive to the mall, a new development not previously approved by Big Mother, a development you know will incur her wrath as she forbids the act of driving on the freeway, a development you refuse to report yet still sit in agony in the back seat, wallowing in your mutinous ways. But that was just life in my own version of Oceania. Protect the children or whatever.
College whiplashed me in too many ways, the foremost being that I could simply exist in my own way, on my own terms. No parameters on my thoughts, no guardrails against my behavior. I could leave my dorm without telling a soul, no one there to clock me in or out of my own life. I could stay up late, take tiny sips of a vodka shot, watch other people make out with each other, wonder what that would be like. Girls gone wild! So crazy loco!!! Hahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In all seriousness though, freedom of movement was [is] a wonderful experience. More than I could ever imagine it to be. I tasted what I was missing, craved it like a drug, and vowed never to give it up for anything. So why was it so easy to relinquish it to my friends? Anonymity and privacy, my Everest and my K2, peaks I had busted my ass to accomplish, disappeared in an instant. The circumstances are completely different, of course. My friends care about me in the way I need to be cared for. They listen, respect my boundaries, and support me even when I make rash decisions or stupid mistakes. Their eyes on my tiny little dot makes no difference to my emotional wellbeing. If they do observe me on their maps, it is only out of sheer curiosity. I do not live under a Thought Police anymore. I am free, I am safe, I am not monitored.
And yet.
I saw B a few weeks ago, at a different kind of party, a lowkey birthday gathering, who asked me what I had been doing in Iowa that week. I hadn’t mentioned my work trip to her at all. Naturally. And that was fine. This is fine. The surveillance state can be quite cozy, actually. Nice to know that people monitor care.
What I’m Reading/Watching
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
I know saying this book is good is like saying the sky is blue, but like?!?!?! The sky is fucking blue!!!!! Absolutely incredible. Every sentence takes my breath away. Márquez is one of those writers who makes me want to deconstruct their brain and find out where all that genius comes from. Can’t believe I’ve waited this long to read him, can’t wait to dive into the rest of his work.
Las Madres, Esmeralda Santiago
Going to be honest, I haven’t read this one in a few days (caught up with work/friends/the actual literary classic knocking my socks off) and can’t give a strong enough opinion right now. The premise is definitely intriguing and I am interested in seeing where the main character goes on her ballet journey. The writing just isn’t gripping me the way I want it to. I probably just need to jump back in ASAP.
Black Orpheus, dir. Marcel Camus
On the one hand, this film has some of the most stunning locations I have ever seen onscreen, great camerawork, and set pieces that were poetry in motion (I mean hello?? The spiral staircase spinning down to the Macumba ritual?? As an interpretation of Orpheus’ journey into the Underworld?? Strike me in my literary heart.) On the other hand, this film portrays its Brazilian characters in grossly racist ways and stereotypes the entire country as a party central filled with simple-minded, hedonistic citizens. So…not great. The bones of the story is, though - I would love to see an interpretation of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth set in Brazil from a Brazilian filmmaker that is not steeped in caricature and ridicule.
AKA take the train to the suburbs
so...three minutes of viewing time per episode. lol