Surveillance today is enforced by cultural norms as much as by technology. From social media oversharing to QR code check ins, everyday habits train compliance and build detailed profiles of your life. This article breaks down how culture acts as surveillance and gives you tactical steps to resist while still staying connected.
Surveillance isn’t always cameras. Sometimes it’s culture. The rules we follow without thinking. The clicks we copy because everyone else does.
The Silent Guardrails
Look at how fast oversharing became normal. Ten or fiveteen years ago, telling the world where you ate lunch would’ve seemed weird. Now, if you don’t post it, people ask if you’re okay.
Same with QR codes. Restaurants, airports, offices they have trained us to scan on sight. No thought. No pause. Just phone out, code in, data sent.
That’s not convenience. That’s conditioning.
Oversharing as a Feature
Social media didn’t invent narcissism, but it industrialized it. Likes, streaks, hearts. The dopamine keeps you feeding the feed.
Every photo you upload: face recognition fuel. Every location tag: movement graph. Every comment: personality map.
It’s not “sharing.” It’s free labor for the profiling machine.
QR Codes: The Trojan Horse
QRs are everywhere and in some places pandemic QR check-ins made it normal to log presence everywhere. Bars. Gyms. Workplaces. Nobody questioned the permanence. QR is just a URL with tracking baked in.
Scan a menu? They know your device ID. Check into a concert? You’re tied to a place, time, and crowd. Link it to your card payment, and the model of you sharpens.
The Compliance Spiral
Norms become obligations. Don’t post your kid’s birthday? People think you’re cold. Don’t scan the code? You’re “difficult.”
Culture does the enforcement. Nobody had to point a gun. The group nudged you into compliance.
My Own Complicity
I used to check in on Facebook. Every city, every bar, every trip. I thought it was fun. I was handing out my location for free. Years later, when I saw the ad targeting, it clicked: I wasn’t just a customer. I was the product.
Not perfect. Just better.
Break the Norms
Here’s how to resist the culture as surveillance trap:
- Stay quiet by default: Don’t announce your moves in real time.
- Post late, post less: Share only after you’ve left, if at all.
- Skip the scan: Ask for a paper menu. Pay in cash. Refuse QR where you can.
- Audit your audience: Who really needs to see this? Who benefits if you stay quiet?
- Redefine “normal”: Privacy doesn’t have to be weird. Make opting out the baseline in your circle.
Adapt Without Isolation
Going silent doesn’t mean vanishing. It means controlling the narrative. You still connect, but on your terms. Closed groups. Encrypted chats. Smaller circles.
Culture can shift. But someone has to break first.
Enduring the Pushback
Yes, you’ll be called paranoid. You’ll be the “tin foil” friend. That’s the price of refusing compliance theater.
Endure it. Because every time you decline to scan or overshare, you remind the people around you that choice exists.
Final Take
Surveillance doesn’t always wear a badge. Sometimes it wears a smile and calls itself “normal.”
The question isn’t whether you fit in. It’s whether fitting in costs you your autonomy.
Refuse the norm. Stay quiet. Build your own.
-GHOST
Written by GHOST, creator of the Untraceable Digital Dissident project.
This is part of the Untraceable Digital Dissident series — tactical privacy for creators and rebels.
Explore more privacy tactics at untraceabledigitaldissident.com.