Cameras Everywhere

The Alan Parsons Project was the original APP

Cameras. Once an awesome innovation to capture a still image or memory, now weaponized for big ass data collection. Brought to market by George Eastman in the late 19th century, the Kodak Camera is one of the most iconic inventions in human history. In its beginnings various contributive inventors had the right idea in building a device to capture monumentary moments in the documentation of world or personal history. It’s how you came to know your ancestors when they were working the mines in Butte, Montana or surviving the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Without a captured image, there would be no personal portrait for you to dwell on and understand where you came from. With the evolution of these devices, classic culture has been captured on film and humanity has benefitted immensely.

As photography progressed and videography came on to the scene, the American Century was documented in real time with this magnificent technology. Coming mainstream in the 1930s, the movie industry could now tell stories to a national audience, thus developing a monoculture. The actors were mere moving parts while cameras brought everything to life. Photojournalism became more commonplace during World War II to show the American public how their boys were performing in the European theater and far-flung islands in the Pacific. Such classic images as raising of the U.S. flag on Iowa Jima or the sailor kissing the woman in Times Square, celebrating V-J Day, captured the essence of these important events in real time. By recording and focusing light on a brief scene or a continuous stream of scenes, the camera has greatly benefited mankind. However, fast forward 80 years and there has to be a fucking camera everywhere you go.

Indoors, outdoors, all around your home, somebody has to constantly be watching you everywhere you roam.

You got cameras in every store, making sure you don’t shoplift or have a slip and fall, cameras monitoring your face when you’re self-checking out at Walmart trying to purchase a pickleball.

Cameras on the street corner to monitor your speed, game cameras to monitor wild animals as they proceed.

Cameras all around your vehicle, front to back and side to side, eyes at every angle for there’s no place for danger to hide.

Apparently, everyone has to document everything in their life into small sound bites for they can make internet posts and show the world how awesome they are. Not to mention everyone is paranoid of their neighbor and random strangers in just about every nook and cranny out in public. Everyone has a camera in their pocket courtesy of their phone. Now everyone is a citizen journalist. Our narcissistic society has to put everything out there into the digital universe to trigger FOMO and parade their ass around on the world wide web. Trying to get everybody to “look at me” in a pathetic attention grab, the smartphone camera has devolved into nothing more than stimulating rage bait and showing off your camel toe to complete strangers.

Then you have body cameras. I think it’s in good taste to require law enforcement officials to have to document their every action with the public. The camera doesn’t lie, and there can’t be a coverup when a stream of digital images captures your constitutional rights being violated or a cop shooting a motorist to death. But on the flip side you have the GoPro camera, a device where bro-brahs of all shapes and sizes can document and upload their extreme adventures from a POV point of view. From shredding the gnar on the slopes, squirrel suit flying, to extreme kayaking, the audience now has an even more intimate voyeuristic view with adrenaline junkies. Once the athlete is hyped up on Red Bull and a camera is properly mounted upon their brain bucket, you the viewer get to experience the rush all courtesy of the camera.

Another misallocation in the invention of the camera would have to be its hijacking by the streaming community. Now you have live streamers on TikTok, YouTube, wherever filming themselves doing something in real time. You are essentially watching someone that is watching something else. They may be gaming, posting comments on “cultural content”, or trying to illicit a strong reaction from an Antifa pussy or a Proud Boy, the point is you are wasting your time by watching the watcher. Having your perceptions manufactured through a digital lens, interacting with someone who is doing the actual viewing, you might as well hire a local witch to teach you remote viewing skills. Why rely on an overhead view from a camera, when you could be enjoying a real time view from the eye of a raven?

Thanks to military and commercial drones, now you have a permanent eye in the sky. This invention was originally rolled out to surveil enemy positions and Islamic terrorists but once they figured how to strap hellfire missiles to this technology the camera in the stratosphere now records airstrikes in real time. Thanks to the bloated budgets of the Air Force and NSA, there’s pretty much a fucking camera angle over the entire globe. In the name of national security, all they’re doing is spying on everyone and monitoring Hooters babes on their way to work.

With the nonconsensual roll out of FLOCK cameras, all of your personal errands are tracked in real time for it can be a useful tool for local law enforcement. Cops no longer have to go on patrol and issue citations; they now can enjoy a glazed donut with sprinkles in the precinct war room. With data driven software monitoring your morning commute, your trip to purchase a firearm at Walmart, or what you thought was a private session of public urination, all of your public movements are now monitored and sent to a database. Does an American society that argues that they are the freest country on earth, really going to put up with a camera on every street corner? The good news is the local populace is fighting back by “uninstalling” this technology and pushing back at their city council meetings. The sheep have woken up and flocks of them are organizing resistance to prevent Big Brother from raping them out of their right to privacy and not have the likeness of their image sent to data collectors. Better to protect your 4th amendment rights now than having Flock Safety roll out their drones, for local police can spy on your sister putting on her bra and panties.

What would George Orwell say all about this? 1984 is alive and well here in 2026. Eric Arthur Blair was well aware of the potential for the rise of the technocratic totalitarian state. He hypothesized the overreach of government by a surveillance state through the plot of the most important novel of the 20th century. The party’s issuing of the telescreen wasn’t just an entertainment device; it broadcasted government propaganda and state issued programming. On the back end it was a surveillance device that the party monitored to watch and listen to all of its citizens in their homes. Sound familiar? Things such as Alexa, Ring, your television, and your smart household devices now have a camera and microphone on you at all times to monitor your every action. Today’s cameras are no longer looking outward to capture that perfect image, instead they monitor you in your most intimate sanctuary. When you willfully surrender your privacy, you surrender your intimacy, and when you surrender your intimacy, you surrender your own individuality. When society surrenders it’s right to free thought and opinions, humanity is reduced to a blob.

And it’s only going to get worse if we don’t keep a watchful eye on invasive cameras. In the very near future the government is requiring monitoring devices, cameras, and kill switches in the manufacture of new automobiles. In the name of public safety, Uncle Sam gets to ride with you everywhere you go. Nobody is consenting to this, and nobody wants it. And to complicate matters further, when you go in for your colonoscopy, they shove a camera up your ass during the procedure. And when ladies go in for an annual pelvic exam the doctor makes good use of a small camera looking up into their uterus. If we the people don’t stop the overuse of government sanctioned camera use, in the year 2040, every citizen of this country will be required to have a camera fitted up their ass or up their hoo-ha. Look, the camera is a marvelous invention and should only be used in capturing those memorable private moments. But if we don’t draw a line in the sand on mass surveillance right now, everyone in the future will be walking funny in the street with Big Brother knowing everyone’s menstrual cycle and what they had for dinner last night. This is a dystopian future that nobody should accept.

Self over selfies.

Brian Ss