Friction as Modern Power

How control now works without force — and why it feels like progress

Power today rarely announces itself.
It prefers to feel like improvement.

What changes first is not the rule, but the pace.

Power no longer needs to forbid.
It only needs to slow.

The most effective systems of control today do not say no. They say of course — followed by a sequence of small inconveniences, technical explanations, and polite obstacles that make departure feel unreasonable, exhausting, or somehow your fault.

This is friction as modern power.

In earlier ages, authority was visible. Laws were posted. Borders were guarded. Censorship was blunt. Resistance had something solid to push against. Today, control is ambient. Nothing is impossible. It is merely inadvisable, unsupported, or not recommended for optimal experience.

You are free to leave — but not without cost.

This dynamic is easier to recognise when we see it first in human terms. In the schoolyard, the bully rarely begins with violence. More often, they establish norms: who sits where, what is laughed at, what is ignored. The punishment for misalignment is not always a blow; it is exposure. To step out of line is to become visible in the wrong way.

Corporate culture refines this further. No one is ordered to conform. Instead, conformity is rewarded with ease. Meetings flow more smoothly. Systems integrate better. Careers advance quietly. Those who question are not expelled — they are labelled “difficult,” “not a good fit,” or “out of sync with the organisation’s direction.” Again, no rule is broken. Yet the pressure is unmistakable.

At the cultural level, friction completes its transformation into power. Norms no longer need enforcers. They are embedded in platforms, standards, interfaces, and defaults. To align is to move frictionlessly. To dissent is not forbidden — it is merely inconvenient, slow, or subtly embarrassing. The outlier is not silenced. They are made conspicuous.

This is how bullying scales.

The system does not attack opposition directly. It isolates it. Those who comply barely notice the structure at all. Those who resist feel the drag immediately. Nothing overt occurs. No accusation is made. Yet the message is absorbed: life is easier if you stop pushing.

Crucially, this form of power does not feel cruel. It feels reasonable. It speaks the language of improvement: better compression, smarter defaults, seamless integration, best practice. Each claim may be technically correct. But correctness here is conditional. The benefits apply only if you accept the system’s assumptions — and accept them quietly.

Step outside those assumptions and the tone changes. Files behave oddly. Tools require translation. Quality degrades. Time is lost. Doubt creeps in. The individual does not feel oppressed; they feel incompetent. Like the bullied child, they begin to wonder whether the problem lies in themselves.

This is the deepest achievement of friction-based power: it internalises discipline. People adjust their behaviour not because they are forced, but because misalignment carries a social and cognitive cost. The system does not threaten. It waits.

When challenged, it always retains plausible deniability. The standards are open. The tools exist. Others manage just fine. All of this may be true — and still miss the point. A freedom that requires constant workaround, explanation, or self-justification is freedom under supervision.

What makes this mode of control so durable is that it masquerades as progress. We are taught to equate smoothness with intelligence, novelty with improvement, resistance with backwardness. Yet the real measure of a system is not how advanced it appears at its peak, but how generously it allows difference, departure, and reinterpretation without penalty.

The response to this is not solitary heroism. Individual agency matters, but friction is rarely overcome alone. Bullying loses its power when it is named collectively, when those who feel the drag realise they are not isolated cases but part of a pattern.

Collective courage today looks quiet. It appears as shared refusal to accept needless complexity, shared commitment to readable systems, shared defence of those who move more slowly or differently. It is the courage to say, together, this friction is not accidental — and we do not accept it as the price of belonging.

Power once announced itself with force.
Now it governs through atmosphere.

Friction works best when it feels accidental.
By the time it is named, it has already done its work.
What remains unclear is not how power operates —
but how long we mistake its smoothness for consent.

“And like all bullying, it weakens the moment people recognise it — and recognise one another.”

Tomorrow:

What friction does inside us — and why standing apart feels harder than it should.

That single sentence primes the response without repeating content.