Don't watch me!

Sitting in the back of an Uber a couple of months ago, I texted the family chat.

“The worst part of being in the backseat is getting a glimpse of your neck in the rearview mirror that you were not ready for,” I said.

These little, unintended views of ourselves were once relegated to unexpected reflections: Walking past windows in the right light, perhaps, or being spooked by a mirror on the back of a door as you closed it. Then came the security cameras: You’re checking out at Walgreens and also checking out the top of your own scalp.

Now, some people are actually using those surveillance cameras to take self portraits.

“The surveillance selfie has started emerging everywhere: people take photos of themselves being watched by the self-checkout line cameras at Target, and others take self-portraits with their car’s backup cameras,” CNN reports. “A programmer named Morry Kolman even set up a website that helped people use the publicly available feeds of New York City traffic cameras to take pictures of themselves.”

The folks (youngs) doing this make light of the practice, and say there’s nothing that people (olds) should read into — it’s just creativity, you wouldn’t get it! And while I do believe that they are using this as yet another way to capture their own likeness, I still find it pretty unnerving. Even one of the women CNN spoke to likes to caption the security camera videos she posts of herself with, “daily greetings (and fit checks) for my assigned FBI watcher.”

I realize many young people are just trying to eyeroll their way through our bizarre reality, but this doesn’t feel like some coy way of subverting an otherwise dystopian technology — especially when the companies doing the surveillance also keep trying to put a tidy little bow on their tools.

I was among the many left scowling after Ring’s Super Bowl Commercial. What a nasty choice to use a lost dog — mine and at least 42.6% of households’ greatest fear — as a big-hearted reason to install surveillance cameras. It’s never been about finding Fido! It’s been about filming and then posting videos of your neighbors being racist/your husband coming home wasted/the delivery guy drop-kicking your breakables. And as Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert, told 404 Media, it’s been about “widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.”

Turning surveillance technology into cute content seems like a real bone-headed move, when you consider the social implications. As CNN reports, there’s “a widespread concern that all these surveillance selfies are helping to inure people to being constantly watched by cameras controlled by private companies. Ring, which is owned by Amazon, has sold tens of millions of smart doorbells, but has come under scrutiny for its use by law enforcement. Next-generation surveillance cameras like those made by Flock Safety have also been used by law enforcement to stalk exes.”

Really let that last one sink in. And KUDOS to the people cutting down Flock cameras across the country!!!

This takes us to Meta glasses, which are up for my Least Favorite Product Launch of the Year, an award that I made up for the sole purpose of hating Meta glasses. These surv-specs (I am workshopping this) have already come under fire for men using them to surreptitiously film encounters about picking up women for social media. Who could have possibly foreseen tech bros being skeezy?

We should never be filmed without our knowledge or consent, but — and this is a much smaller, but still valid (I think!) argument — we should also never live with the constant, nagging assumption that it could be a real possibility anyhow. “Always on” is not a good way to live. In fact, I think we should have fewer opportunities to think about the way we appear to others. Musing over how we look is not something we need to obsess over more than we already do. The front-facing cameras and Zoom calls of a modern life have provided more than enough fodder to keep Big Retinol’s coffers overflowing.

Maybe there will be a reasonable backlash against it all, both the incessant thinking about yourself and the constant surveillance. There are folks who are even tired of surveilling themselves via wearables. Surprise! Stressing out over your step count because you’re trying to plantar fasciitismaxx or whatever isn’t a great way to improve your wellness. It’s also not healthy to be worrying about your appearance because you want a cute backup camera selfie (really, wtf) or because the bespectacled man you’re chatting with might be filming you. Whether we’re talking about general self esteem, people’s rights, or — I dunno — pushing back against authoritarianism, we need to stop pretending there are adorable uses for this technology.

Under one of Alexa Chung’s security camera posts on Instagram, someone perfectly commented, “Surveillance compliance core.”