What are your thoughts on “elf on the shelf” because I’ve /joked/ about it preparing children for life in a surveillance state but the more I think about it, the more I realise it… actually kind of does. “Be good because you are being watched and if you’re bad you will be punished with no Christmas presents” seems to be the message behind it. And that’s. That’s how CCTV works. That’s how plainclothes officers work. And I feel like “elf on the shelf” teaches children to accept that. Thoughts?

Where I live ‘elf on a shelf’ is not a thing, but ‘Santa knows you’ve been bad and will punish you’ is. Either way, I think ‘
Santa knows you’ve been bad and will punish you’

is an EXCELLENT example of how we drill children to accept a reality of constant surveillance and threat of punishment.

Of course this isn’t unique to ‘elf on the shelf’, a thousand little things in childhood tell children that they should accept surveillance and discipline as a regular part of their lives. Parents enter without knocking, there is CCTV in primary schools, nothing you do is ever really private and on top of all that you’re told that God watches you masturbate and Santa knows when you’ve been naughty. Yeah, we’re drilled to accept this before we can speak.

This is part of a far bigger thing where school and homework prepare us to accept suffocating surroundings, repetitive mind-dulling work and the constant pressure to perform, all so we become good workers. Where we have to ask for permission to go to the toilet so we learn that even our bodies do not belong to us. Where no one protects us from the total power of our parents in our lives. We’re drilled to accept oppression in many ways.