I cant be the only one who thinks this is fucked up >watchs

Don't worry, you aren't.

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>>88592838
You're not alone.

That shit is pure mind control. Santa Meets Big Brother.

Santa, the Mud King, with an agent in every household, whispering to him.

Did you hear his offer?

>>88592924
The hell is the mud king?

>>88592996
The King of Whispers. He'll offer you your heart's deepest desire, what you didn't even know you wanted, in exchange for seeing and hearing everything you see and hear, and also controlling your mind to an extent.

No one has ever declined his offer.

>parents buy their children fetish dolls
>tell them that they become embued with life and magic power upon being bestowed a name
>tell the kids that if they touch the voodoo doll it dies

Okay, this is fucked up pagan shit, even for Christmas.

>>88592838
My bravest act of defiance to this day was masturbating in front of it while looking straight into its eyes.

>>88593323
The elves die if you touch them?
>>88593708
Fucking kekd outloud while petting my cat

>>88593708
Dobson made a comic about you!

>>88594120
He what? Damn it, no.

>>88593917

>The elves die if you touch them?

No, they "go back to the North Pole and tell Santa you've been naughty".

>>88594223
Does this really work on them? Sure, most kids are happy to believe in Santa, but every kid I knew when I was little (and I myself) very rarely believed in what we couldn't see for ourselves, maybe because we liked to lie like hell.

>>88592838
There's nothing fucked up about being watched and judged for your actions
the problem is it being a fat guy that gives presents, rather than a loving creator god who knows your feelings and not just your actions, who will forgive you as many times as it takes, and who gives you a fuckton of presents no matter what, but fills your spirit and not just your toybox

>>88594472

Probably not. This is just a stupid gimmick the creators shove into our faces every year, loudly proclaiming that its a "beloved holiday tradition".

>>88594472
I don't know how belief in Santa works in the age of information where toddlers have tablets and can see he isn't real.

>>88594514
Being watched by a judgemental fickle god is even worse. Go fuckyourself christcuck.

I hate that while it was happening before, this is the shit that lit a fire under the ass of the "WE CAN MAKE ANYTHING INTO A TRADITION" people

>>88594751
You should be making your own traditions instead of letting anyone else try and decide what they are, anyway.

24 hours of A Christmas Story on in the background and a medium-rare steak and I'm set.

>>88594726

Aww did Mommy make you go to Sunday School again?

>>88593917
In the cg movie meant to go along with the toys, the elf "loses his magic" when touched. The other elf friends have to save him and rush him to a hospital. I guess he's never exactly in danger of dying, but to me it feels like ripping the magic away from an elf would be a big deal. Like they're basically useless after that, so it seems akin to crippling somebody imo.

>>88594782
Suck gods cock your christian bitch. Your totalitarion belief system needs to be smashed into rubble. It brings only decay and insanity to the world.

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>>88594779
>You should be making your own traditions

Personally I prefer to look up neat preexisting and largely forgotten traditions and draw from those over making something up.

>>88594516
>loudly proclaiming that its a "beloved holiday tradition".

I honestly thought that the elf on the shelf was an obscure as fuck christmas tale that nobody knew of or cared about. I heard the story once when I was in middle school and never again.

I remember the first time I heard of the animated movie and im like, "people actually know about this? and made a movie?"

>>88594929
The dolls began being mass marketed in the early 2000s. I honestly haven't decided whether I believe it existed before then or if the marketers made it up right then and tried to pass it off as just having been previously obscure.

>>88592838
>>88592924
>>88593323
Okay fuck this is hilarious to me. I knew that Elf on the Shelf was a thing, but I never fucking knew about the watching shit. I thought it was just a trendy decoration to bait millennial parents, a twentry-first century nutcracker or something.

Anyone have any stories about how this shit actually turns out?

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>>88595075
About like you'd expect.

>>88595075
It turns out with psychologically scarred children, according to some theorists.

>>88592838
Yeah, reception for the story is mixed because of the anti-privacy statement it makes. Most recent Christmas episode of The Simpsons parodies the elf with Gnome in a Home for Maggie.

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The only part of that special I liked was the elf song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNS7s1jl24M

>elf is feeling super high
>girl elf sticking her butt out at the boy elves

>>88592838
Yeah but the only result of that spying is potential free shit.

I understand where you'd worry about the potential for abuse but in this case it's purely beneficent.

>>88596522
It's not the immediate harm that's the problem, it's the normalization of surveillance culture. By teaching a kid the elf on the shelf concept, you're showing them from a very early age that it is perfectly acceptable for an authority figure to just waltz into your private life and watch you because they can't trust you to not do wrong. Kids internalize lessons like those and take them to adulthood, where they either choose to encroach on others' privacy when they feel they have the power and duty, or allow their own privacy to be violated by authority figures with power over them.

>>88596916
Santa has always been said to know if you've been good or bad. This is really not new to this stupid thing. Santa has always been watching, whether there's a middle man or not.

>>88597068
But there was not a physical presence to serve as a constant reminder of that surveillance. Santa rather served as a distant omnipotent god figure, much like the judeo christian god, that just sort of knew everything. Children were casually reminded of his omnipotence now and then and needed to reflect on their past and future actions, but the elf just sits there constantly right in front of them with its creepy soulless dead eyes, never allowing them to forget enough to feel safe and alone for a moment.

>>88595998
That cancer was stuck in my head for a week

>>88597205
I think that is the more extreme reaction you are having there, not that it isn't true for some kids' anxieties.

>>88595998
Well, at least they try to make the elves look friendly and not out to ruin your Christmas.

>>88597255
Why is their so many black elves?

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>>88592838

>>88598799
OY VEY GOYIM

>>88592924
I think I'm in love with Jerome Opeña.

>>88592838
cough cough federal bureau of "investigation"

>>88597263
so tell us all how you learned to love big brother?