Entry 2432, on 2026-03-06 at 14:28:09 (Rating 4, Comments)
There are a lot of people out there who I refer to colloquially as "control freaks". These are people who aren't happy with trying to control their own lives, they want to control yours and mine as well. They range from partners and friends at the bottom level, to managers and colleagues, to police and other authority figures, and (of course) at the top (or bottom, depending ony our perspective) we have politicians!
Of course, most of these people don't think they are trying to control others for no good reason. They generally think they are doing what is best for everyone, including the person being controlled, because the leaders are either more knowledgeable, more moral, or just smarter than those "beneath" them.
I'm sure there are examples where this is true: where leaders genuinely are making good decisions which are for the good of the majority, but I am equally confident there are a lot of those decisions being made which are based on poor information, or toxic ideology, or just some sort of subjective factors which might not be easy to justify.
The need to control others is often based on some sort of moral panic. The leaders see a major problem in society which has to be fixed, and as the only holders of truth and high morality, it is up to them to do it. But they are usually wrong, deluded, and just distorting the true situation for their own benefit, often (I suspect) subconsciously, which is far nore dangerous than those who know that they are following a corrupt or irrational path.
Let me give you some examples of moral panics from the past: witch hunts and especially the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the Pedo Panic, the Satanic Panic, and many others. There is a list of moral panics on Wikipedia with 30 or 40 examples.
And what is the latest panic that we must rely on our "betters" (our esteemed political leaders, activists, and other control freaks) to fix for us? I say it is the internet and social media in particular, which allegedly causes a lot of harm to people, especially younger people and kids.
I have already blogged about this issue in "Too Much Control" from 2025-12-11, but more information has appeared recently, and I wanted to mention it here.
According to a guest on a recent podcast from the New Zealand Free Speech Union, there is no good evidence that social media specifically causes any harm, because the studies which might indicate this are not detailed enough and fail to account for the difference between correlation and causation.
So people who use social media might have higher levels of anxiety, but is it the social media causing that, does higher anxiety cause people to use social media more, or does a common cause lead to both? We don't know, and don't know what specific social media activities these anxious people are engaging in.
Surveys of young people about the causes of their anxiety don't indicate social media is the major cause. In almost every case the cause is school, and especially exams and excessive homework. So if we want to reduce anxiety levels maybe we should abolish school, or at least abolish exams and homework!
There is research, by well known scientists like Jonathan Haidt, which does but more blame on social media, but this is just one view, and is not the complete picture. So it is possible to pick and choose evidence to support whichever side is convenient. Why do politicians emphasise the alleged problems but ignore the poor evidence and downplay the benefits?
Maybe it's because it gives them a chance to be control freaks. For years now, they have wanted to control free speech with their so-called "hate speech" laws which were really nothing more than a way to control opinions they didn't like. Sure, a small part of it might be reasonably classified as genuine hate speech, and there was undoubtedly misinformation involved as well, but I have seen what I might view as hate speech and what is by any reasonable definition mininformation come from government sources as well. But those would never be censored, would they.
The strategy of controlling young people in schools and universities has worked well for the groups wanting to destroy Western civilisation and capitalism in recent years, and this just seems like an extension to it. Stop young people seeing alternative views on-line now and you can control them in the future.
Sounds like a conspiracy? Sure, it is. But remember some conspiracies are real. They say that if you want to see who is oppressing you just look at those you're not allowed to criticise. This sure does seem like a moral panic being created out of very little, then used as an excuse for draconian controls over free speech. I think a little bit of risk is worth accepting in order to gain greater freedom. Don't agree? Maybe you're part of the problem then. Is this just another witch hunt?
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