Elf on the shelf is problematic, but not because it's authoritarian, but because it isn't. The elf on the shelf doesn't have any way to hurt you in the physical world, it won't actually rat you out, and it's just supposed to be a metaphor for guilt-based morality where you act as if someone is watching even when you know they aren't.
To properly prepare kids for our enlightened world that has killed God and replaced it with corporations and totalizing states, we need to give it power and judgement. We need elf on a shelf with a badge, a gun, and a twitter account. We have to give it a pellet gun, and give it the authority to shoot the children when an integrated AI recognizes an infraction has occurred (don't worry, it won't kill them, it's just really painful and might leave permanent scars or blind them), and give it veto power over the children's next meal. For really bad infractions, send emails to future potential employers in the region so the kid will never be able to get a job. All this "God will judge you after you die so be good while you're alive" stuff is too weak, we need to teach kids how things really are now.
This will prepare kids for the real panopticon we've created, an omnipresent threat of cancel culture, or of the authoritarian government that monitors and punishes your every move we're seeing increasingly around the world, such as the girl in England who was arrested, charged, convicted, and punished for posting a dead friend's favorite song on Facebook (a song which contained the naughty N word), or the schoolchildren who were recently arrested for saying words like "retard", or getting banned from social media for direct messages with another consenting person because social media companies face fascistic pressure from the state to control every word we say to everyone.
We've given up on our guilt-based morality and have begun a new era of fear-based morality. We need to update our traditions to reflect that.
To properly prepare kids for our enlightened world that has killed God and replaced it with corporations and totalizing states, we need to give it power and judgement. We need elf on a shelf with a badge, a gun, and a twitter account. We have to give it a pellet gun, and give it the authority to shoot the children when an integrated AI recognizes an infraction has occurred (don't worry, it won't kill them, it's just really painful and might leave permanent scars or blind them), and give it veto power over the children's next meal. For really bad infractions, send emails to future potential employers in the region so the kid will never be able to get a job. All this "God will judge you after you die so be good while you're alive" stuff is too weak, we need to teach kids how things really are now.
This will prepare kids for the real panopticon we've created, an omnipresent threat of cancel culture, or of the authoritarian government that monitors and punishes your every move we're seeing increasingly around the world, such as the girl in England who was arrested, charged, convicted, and punished for posting a dead friend's favorite song on Facebook (a song which contained the naughty N word), or the schoolchildren who were recently arrested for saying words like "retard", or getting banned from social media for direct messages with another consenting person because social media companies face fascistic pressure from the state to control every word we say to everyone.
We've given up on our guilt-based morality and have begun a new era of fear-based morality. We need to update our traditions to reflect that.
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