The New Invisible?
I come from an era when you could disappear if you wanted to. Cash was normal. Purchases could be made without revealing your identity. There was no paper trail.
Now we use debit cards and Apple wallets. We purchase things from the comfort of our sofas by entering very personal data onto our devices. We can buy anything, anytime, from anywhere. And the record of our purchases is indelibly inscribed in cyberspace.
We have smart watches—good for old people in case they fall. But if the watch is monitoring your breathing, blood pressure, the decibel level of your audio habits, and has the capability to contact somebody if you fall and become unresponsive, you can be certain it also has the capacity for somebody or something to be monitoring your every move. With camera and sound.
I don’t have an Apple watch. Yet. And I do wonder what happens if I fall down the stairs when home alone. Or get bit by a copperhead in my garden. Although I never worried about those things before Apple Watches were invented.
Back in the invisible days, we were entertained by sci-fi stories about mind control. These were made all the more scary by the real-life existence of cults that lured young people to join—promising enlightenment and world peace—and then used various physical and psychological tactics to control their converts’ behavior. I knew a couple of people who had succumbed—and recovered. But in the grand scheme of things, it was relatively rare.
Yesterday I read a news article about a more pervasive mind control problem. The story began with the precarious recovery-in-progress of a shopping addict, who is part of the “No Buy 2025” movement. She’s one of gazillions of TikTok viewers taken in by professional influencers declaring their target products essential to life as we know it. Stuff that can be purchased with a mere keystroke on a phone. No reasoning required. And before long, these shoppers’ homes are reportedly cluttered with items that, in the heat of the moment, they were certain they couldn’t live without. To the point where they wind up with three of the same thing because they can’t recall they purchased one yesterday and one the day before. Their homes are overflowing with stuff. They have become addicted to buying without thinking.
Further along in the same newspaper (I use the term newspaper loosely. I read online), I read about TikTok’s future currently lying in the hands of the Supreme Court. Justices are scrutinizing a federal law that will soon shut down TikTok in the U.S. if the company does not divest itself from Chinese ownership. There’s a concern that China could use the platform to harvest data from Americans—and manipulate them.
But Amazon—TikTok’s biggest advertiser—and other U.S. companies are already manipulating Americans who can’t resist the impulse to hit the “buy now” buttons on their devices. Perhaps it’s okay if Americans manipulate their fellow citizens—as long as there aren’t any foreign agents engaging in American mind control.
During the last two decades of my mother’s life, she often proclaimed computers “a friggin’ nuisance” and steadfastly demonstrated a preference for carrying cold hard cash, as opposed to credit or debit cards. I thought she was out of touch. But maybe I was wrong.
I have no real opinion on the TikTok predicament. I don’t use the platform. I don’t shop on my phone. I only occasionally shop online, via my laptop. Maybe I’m as invisible as it gets these days. I feel invisible. But I know better.