If you do not recognise aspects of yourself below, you are extremely lucky.
A Day In His Life
Meet James Ellwood, a 38-year-old compliance officer living Dorchester, Dorset. He’s like many others: educated, employed, and quietly confident in his ability to think for himself. Today, however, we’ll follow James hour by hour, peeling back the layers of his routine to uncover just how profoundly his actions, beliefs, and desires are shaped by suggestion.
06:45 – Waking With the Algorithm
James wakes to the sound of his phone alarm, and immediately checks his notifications. As he scrolls, the algorithm delivers a curated stream of headlines, fitness tips, and news snippets. He doesn’t realise it, but the stories he sees are not neutral; they’re chosen based on his previous clicks. The Guardian article on rising immigration, the ad for a meditation app, the “recommended” video about productivity hacks; each is a suggestion, reinforcing the person the algorithm thinks he is, shaping the person he will become today.
Psychologists call this priming. James, believing he’s simply catching up on the world, is actually being nudged, subtly, constantly, by the logic of engagement and personalisation.
08:00 – Morning Reflection and Autosuggestion
In the shower, James repeats his usual mental affirmations: “I’m in control,” “Today will be productive.” He picked these up from a popular podcast by a self-styled wellness guru. It never occurred to him that this practice mirrors Émile Coué’s theory of autosuggestion, where belief becomes behaviour through repetition. The words aren’t his exactly, but they feel like they are. That’s the genius of internalised suggestion; it’s most powerful when it masquerades as your own thought.
09:00 – Conformity at the Office
James arrives at work. During the morning meeting, a new compliance policy is introduced. He personally disagrees with it but says nothing; everyone else nods along, and so he does too. Solomon Asch would recognise this immediately: group consensus overriding individual judgment. James assumes his silence is professionalism. In truth, it’s conformity; one of the most well-documented results of social suggestion.
12:30 – Lunchtime with Media
Lunch is taken at his desk. James watches a short documentary on geopolitical unrest, produced by a major broadcaster. The visuals are slick, the tone urgent. The message is clear: foreign instability could threaten the UK’s interests. James feels a mild unease, an uptick in patriotism. He doesn’t notice what wasn’t shown: the historical context, the counter-narratives, the structural causes.
Here, we see Chomsky’s theory of manufactured consent at play. The framing of information and the repetition of certain phrases (“our values,” “security threats”) all serve to guide James’s feelings and opinions—without a trace of coercion.
15:00 – Echoes of Philosophy
During a break, James chats with a colleague about the rise in biometric surveillance at work. “Well, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to worry about,” he says instinctively. It’s a common refrain, one he’s heard repeated in the media and among friends.
Unknowingly, James is enacting Foucault’s concept of biopower; the idea that modern control comes not through overt force but through the shaping of what individuals accept as normal. He is, quite literally, policing himself, convinced it’s his idea to do so.
18:30 – Consumer Desires
On the train home, James sees an advert for a new smartwatch, promising improved productivity and health tracking. He hadn’t planned to buy one but suddenly feels behind, incomplete. He adds it to his wishlist. This, too, is suggestion: product marketing laced with implicit social proof.
The philosopher Plato spoke of the noble lie: a fiction propagated by the elite to preserve order. Today’s noble lies are woven into marketing campaigns: you need this product to be whole, to be safe, to be worthy.
21:00 – The Algorithm Returns
In the evening, James relaxes with a streaming service. The algorithm serves up a dystopian series. “Because you watched Black Mirror,” it says. He watches, ironically unaware of the irony. The episode critiques digital control, while the platform suggesting it quietly maps his viewing habits to better influence future choices.
Here we meet the technological evolution of suggestion. No longer dependent on human authority, suggestion now operates through data, metrics, and behavioural predictions. It is efficient, invisible, and omnipresent.
23:00 – A Manufactured Identity
As James drifts off to sleep, he feels, like most nights, that he’s lived a normal day, made rational choices, and expressed his authentic self. And in a sense, he has. But also, he hasn’t. From the headlines he read to the product he coveted, from the opinions he repeated to the silence he maintained, each was shaped, subtly and invisibly, by suggestion.
What James lacks is not intelligence but awareness. The true power of suggestion lies in its invisibility. It doesn’t command; it whispers. It doesn’t argue; it nudges. It doesn’t enslave; it convinces you you’re already free.
A Day In Her Life Life
By tracing the ordinary day of a woman named Amira Shah, from Poole in Dorset, we uncover the extraordinary power of suggestion; an invisible force shaping everything from her thoughts to her purchases, her silence to her sense of self.
06:30 – The Mirror and the Message
Amira wakes early, as usual. Her morning routine begins with a glance in the mirror and a mental checklist of affirmations: “You are enough. You are powerful. Today is yours.” They sound like personal mantras, but in truth, they are borrowed phrases, lifted from wellness influencers on Instagram, repeated so often they’ve embedded themselves in her internal monologue.
This is not mere self-help. It is autosuggestion, a phenomenon identified by early 20th-century psychologist Émile Coué, who observed that repeated verbal cues shape belief and behaviour. The modern version is aesthetic, commodified, and largely feminine, carefully crafted by digital platforms and commercial interests. It presents itself as empowerment, yet it often originates in marketing departments rather than personal insight.
07:00 – The Feed That Feeds Her Back
Over breakfast, Amira scrolls through her phone. The algorithm serves her a feed of tailored content: videos on productivity, articles about “girlbossing” in the workplace, skincare advice, and breaking news framed with emotional urgency. A post warns of political instability abroad. Another urges her to “reclaim her narrative” through journaling and collagen supplements.
She believes she is browsing freely, but her choices are already constrained. Algorithmic suggestion, shaped by her past interactions, reinforces what behavioural economists call confirmation bias. Her reality is filtered; curated to affirm what the system predicts she wants to believe, buy, or feel.
09:00 – The Sound of Silence at Work
In her office, a male colleague interrupts her mid-sentence during a team meeting. She considers pushing back, but then she hesitates. “Better to let it go,” she thinks. “I don’t want to seem difficult.”
Here, the social suggestion is powerful. Research on gendered communication consistently shows that women who assert themselves in mixed-gender spaces are more likely to be perceived as aggressive or unlikable. As philosopher Michel Foucault observed, modern power operates not through visible coercion but through internalised discipline. Amira’s silence is not passivity; it is a learned survival strategy within a system that punishes deviation from feminine norms.
12:30 – Branded Empowerment
Later, during a client presentation, Amira discusses a new campaign targeting young women: a cosmetics line branded around the theme of “self-love” and “radical acceptance.” The strategy is elegant—marketing emotional wellness through anti-ageing creams and lipsticks.
This is where suggestion meets capitalism. As Noam Chomsky’s theory of manufactured consent suggests, consent to consumer ideology is produced not by force but by repetition and aesthetic pleasure. Amira recognises the irony, selling liberation in the language of dependence, but says nothing. After all, it works. The data proves it.
15:00 – Internalised Scripts
Over coffee with colleagues, the conversation turns to relationships. “Maybe I’m too career-driven to find someone,” Amira jokes. Laughter follows, but something in her tone lingers.
What appears to be self-deprecation is, in fact, the echo of years of media suggestion: the notion that women must choose between professional ambition and romantic success. Philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir warned of such internalised narratives: societal scripts so deeply embedded that they masquerade as personal truth.
18:00 – The Power of Packaging
After work, Amira stops at a pharmacy. A sleek display showcases a new anti-wrinkle serum with the slogan: “Redefine ageing. Take control.” She didn’t come in for this, but suddenly she feels she might need it. She adds it to her basket.
Advertising rarely demands outright. It suggests. As Plato noted in The Republic, myths, what he called “noble lies”, serve to maintain order and hierarchy. Today, the noble lie is sold in 30ml glass bottles, whispering: “You can age on your terms… if you buy this.”
21:00 – Entertainment, Suggested
At home, Amira unwinds with a glass of wine and Netflix. The platform recommends a drama series featuring a “strong female lead”; a phrase so often used it now signifies little. She presses play. The story is compelling, and yet… oddly familiar. Another woman breaking barriers, battling inner demons, and triumphing through personal grit.
This is suggestion in narrative form. The entertainment itself is a lesson, suggesting what success, failure, and redemption look like. The line between fiction and aspiration blurs. What she sees onscreen isn’t just art, it’s a model of living, fed back to her as desirable.
23:00 – A Thought Before Sleep
Before bed, Amira journals, as she often does. She writes, “I made strong choices today. I’m becoming who I want to be.” She believes it. Yet if she paused long enough, she might wonder: Whose voice is speaking through me?
Her day was her own. And also, it wasn’t.
The Power of Subtle Control
Amira and James are not unique. It is the story of millions who navigate lives saturated with suggestion; some overt, many silent. Modern suggestion doesn’t shout. It nudges, frames, and affirms. It makes the path of least resistance feel like autonomy.
This isn’t a call for paranoia. Suggestion is part of human communication and always has been. But its pervasiveness in digital capitalism, in identity politics, and in algorithmic culture demands reflection.
Because the most powerful control is not that which tells us what to do, but that which makes us believe we are choosing for ourselves.
