It’s rare, but sometimes I do wonder with some patients.

It’s obviously somewhat unarguable if it’s just the more ideological “they’re listening to all of us and generally invading our privacy.” Usually then I’m just like, “TRUTH, but also please either put the pants back on or go to your room.”

But then there’ll be a woman who says the voices telling her to wash her hands until she bleeds are a symptom of the black magic her ex is using to track her. And I’m like: girl, u crazy about the black magic thing. All they need is a fuckin’ AirTag, and he probably is tracking you. So then you call the cops to take down the report, and they’re like, “We can’t arrest the dude for black magic.” And it’s like, no shit, she’s bonkers. But could you at least double-check that the dude isn’t stalking her?

There are so many patients who tell me super fractured stories. They’re impossible to untangle in a way that could even approach a formal pursuit of justice. But based on the details they’re able to express coherently, I genuinely wonder if the story is true.

It’s really that bad. Just ordered a smart TV knowingly that it’s going to spy on me. I will never connect it to the internet and just to be sure, I will try to disable the microphones physically. At this point I believe that it will still try to connect to open wifi’s in my neighbourhood. Can’t be paranoid enough these days.

Um, actually, in 1984 the government spies on you through your TV, but in real life, corporations spy on you through your TV and the government intercepts the internet traffic and/or asks the corporations for the data, so it’s obviously completely different.

We have known ever since snowden, but people kinda just pretended that never happened.

They were called “screens”. I don’t have a smart tv…i have a kick ass dumb tv that works just fine.

Still is in my house. TVs are separate from streaming devices. No remote or speaker has a mic in it. Phones and laptops have mic and video permissions off if not in use.

Do I expect someone is listening? Yes but they are at the nation state level and ain’t willing to risk their tools for less than national level threats.