Thank you /u/gyrfalcons & /u/flightofangels for this awesome discussion!
And actually, I was born in Singapore! Raised there for the first 10 years of my life. I knew caning kids wasn't a thing here in the US, but only recently I did I learn that it's really, really, really frowned upon here. So yeah, I now agree I shouldn't go with physical punishment as a plot point, but keep the morally ambiguous parent/child relationship somehow.
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> Is that the cameras are on 24/7, yet George is apologizing to Poppy anyway - how can he do that?
In the newsletter, I suggested a story idea that "Privacy is only allowed for politicians. The higher up you are, the more privacy you get." This is certainly a far more natural extension of the current situation in the US than corporal punishment.
Private lives are public... and public offices are private.
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> If parents don't hurt their children then they shouldn't mind cameras in their homes, right? It's for the children, all to protect the children, that's why the government is watching the children sleep...
This is actually really brilliant and really creepy. I love it.
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> a transition from 'keeping yourself in front of cameras' to 'using the system as it's ideally meant to be used'.
One piece of good news in surveillance I've heard recently is police departments requiring their cops to wear cameras. And this has been effective in reducing police violence & brutality! So that's the kind of ironic inversion I think the game's ending could go for -- making the watchers the ones who are now watched.