About

Panopticon refers to a piece of artwork by Adam Simpson depicting a panopticon prison system, a type of prison in which prisoners are in cells that surround a guard tower in the center of the prison block. The image has been used as an exploitable in the late 2010s and early 2020s with the central guard tower altered to represent different surveillance states.

Origin

The panopticon prison system took root in Europe in the 1800s as a theoretical means of ensuring prisoners engaged in meaningful labor. The panopticon has more recently been employed by Michel Foucault as a philosophical metaphor for a surveillance state.^[4] Adam Simpson's "Panopticon" illustration appeared in The New York Times^[1] on July 18th, 2013 in Tom Shone's book review of Jenni Fagan's novel The Panopticon (shown below).

Spread

The image began being used as a meme in December of 2017. On December 5th, 2017, Tumblr account panopticonmemes^[2] posted an I Had To Grind For This View meme with the image, gaining over 4,000 notes (shown below, left). On December 15th, Facebook^[3] user Colin Wilson posted a joke about Santa Claus in the "Santopticon" on his page, gaining over 510 reactions (shown below, right).

The image continued seeing use as a meme through 2020. On December 12th, 2020, Twitter user @radshelb^[5] posted a They Don't Know I'm meme about the panopticon (shown below, left). On December 13th, 2020, user @TheGayChingy^[6] posted an example in which the guard tower reads "Put all your identities in your bio," gaining over 230 retweets and 1,200 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References